It's because the current YOU can't - you need to change!
If you want to achieve your goals and live your ideal life then you are going to have to become a different person. This is not as radical as it seems – I am not suggesting that you have to become someone else or behave like someone else. But face it – if the person you currently are could have the life you want, you would already be living it! No, you are going to have to respond differently to events in order to get a different outcome.
Last year I shared with you the formula
E + R = O
Or, an event and your response to it creates the outcome. If your current outcome is not your ideal life, then making changes to your responses will change it. This means changing your thoughts, beliefs and actions to bring them more in line with your desired outcome. If you want to lose 2stone in weight but you believe your current weight is your natural weight, you think you will always be overweight and you snack between meals on crisps and biscuits and you eat high fat, high carb meals that are bigger than you need, then you will not achieve your goal.
If you choose to believe that your natural weight is less than you are because your natural weight allows you to feel full of energy, if you think that you can lose weight and you deserve to be your ideal weight and if you choose to eat light, healthy meals and snack on carrot sticks and celery between meals you will achieve your goal of losing weight and, in the process become a different person – slim, confident and successful. You will have a different outlook on life because you chose to make different decisions more in line with who you wanted to become.
How great would it be to love the life you live – to wake up every morning excited about the day ahead and thrilled to be doing what you are doing? It is possible – there are people in the world who feel that way. The main difference between people who love their life and those who merely go through the motions is this - those who love their life decided what it was they would love to do and set about finding a way to do it. They didn’t give up when the going got tough and they were prepared to do whatever it took to achieve their ideal life. Those who go through the motions may not have taken the time to find out what it is they truly want to do, or they may be too scared or too tired to make the effort needed to achieve their dreams. As a friend of mine once put it
“I think fear is people’s biggest enemy, followed by apathy with a side helping of indecision.” Thanks, Rob, for that one.
So recognise the fear for what it is Fantasised Experiences Appearing Real. The fear is all in your mind not in your life so do as Susan Jeffers suggests,
“Feel the fear and do it anyway.”
Apathy usually responds well to action – do something, however small, to set you on the road to achievement.
Still not sure what it is you really want to do? Start by giving the process of excavating your most precious desires and passions time and effort it requires. Go back to what you loved to do as a child or before you were overburdened with worried and all the problems life can bring. If you could do anything you wanted for the rest of your life, what would it be? Maybe you love sport but think you are too old or don’t have enough talent to turn professional. You may be wrong on both counts but even so there are many other jobs within sport that you may be ideally suited to.
Never be too quick to give up on yourself. In his book “The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be” Jack Canfield say that of the hundreds of super successful people he interviewed many of them told him that they were not the most gifted or talented person in their field, but they chose to believe that anything is possible and they studied, practiced and worked harder than the others. We can all do that if the reward is big enough – and rewards don’t come any bigger than the opportunity to live your dream life!
He also shares the conviction that most people fail, not because they lack the skills or ability to achieve their goal, but because they simply don’t believe they can achieve it. Napoleon Hill, bestselling author of “Think and Grow Rich” says
“You can be anything you want to be, if only you believe with sufficient conviction and act in accordance with your faith; for whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.”
Like a rock on top of a high building, we all have a huge amount of potential energy and it is our choice as to whether we use it or not. This energy could be used to do anything you choose. You could choose to carry on as you are – or you could choose to really make your life a success on your terms. It is up to you.
It may be that you have already embarked on this journey of change and have come to the conclusion that it doesn’t work, because you cannot – yet – see results. This is the time when many give up, but not the successful. They keep on because they believe in what it is they are working to achieve. Often it isn’t that results haven’t shown up yet, it is that you have been too caught up in life to notice. This happened to me recently.
At the weekend I was looking back at some mementos from the last ten years. I came upon a brochure from an afternoon out about two years ago. It wasn’t from a particularly important or memorable event, but I distinctly remember the afternoon for one very special reason – it marked the beginning of a new me and a new outlook on life (though I didn’t realise it at the time). It was a Friday afternoon in August and I remember a conversation in which a friend and I mused on how great it would be if we could just take off for an afternoon out whenever we liked. I remember saying that it could be like that though, at the time, I had no idea how it could be achieved. I just believed that it was possible to live that life. We were amazed to realise that, almost since that day, it is how life has been. We had got so caught up in the day-to-day aspects of life that we hadn’t noticed this massive change had already occurred.
In that moment, when I asserted that the carefree life that we were experiencing at that moment was possible, I made a shift in belief and outlook enabling it to be possible. Now I will be the first to admit that the fine detail of the desire certainly needs some fine tuning – because I wasn’t sufficiently specific - but a mental shift has clearly taken place. It has strengthened my belief that it is possible to create my ideal life if I keep on working towards it and keep on believing it is possible.
If you are looking for inspiration then go to www.freepersonalrebrandingbook.co.uk and claim your FREE copy of my book "The Ultimate Guide to Personal Rebranding for Professional Females Climbing the Corporate Ladder" - go on - it really is FREE and it is packed full of information that you can't afford to miss!
“It’s time to start living the life you’ve imagined.” Henry James, American Author.
Copyright © 2011, Sue Courtney – Success & Image Ltd. All rights reserved.
