In my past life in the Corporate World I achieved a lot! I was always one of the top achievers, top performers and people would often ask me how I did it. I would always say that one of the keys to my success is that I was totally fearless.
I never worried about job security because I saw my security as coming from excelling in the role I was in and not from the particular company I happened to be working for. I reasoned, that if a company was worthy of me then they would be desperate to keep me! If they weren’t, and for whatever reason we parted ways, I never worried because I knew that with my ability and track record, I would quickly be snapped up by another company. In my life, this is exactly what has happened.
Now I don’t say this to brag or to say how great I am. I say this because I want everyone to know what I know, which is that your sense of security in any aspect of life, comes not from what you have done to date, but from what you are capable of in the future.
So in my working life, I knew that my security came not from the company I worked for, but from my ability to excel in my role. If I excelled in my role, I knew I had security because even if I parted ways with 1 company, if I excelled in what I did, there would be another company desperate to take its’ place.
Your financial security comes not from how many assets you have or how much money you have in the bank, but in your ability to create wealth moving forward. How many times do we hear stories of people who won the lottery but a couple of years later had lost it all! Their wealth came by a 1 off fluke. They lacked the fundamental skills to manage their money and so lost it. Your true wealth comes from your ability to create wealth. No matter how much or how little money you have today, if you know at the core of your being that if you lose everything tomorrow, you’ll still be able to bounce back and become wealthy again, you’ll never have to worry about losing it.
You are wealthy because you have the mindset of wealth and the mindset of abundance. So no matter what happens, you believe that you will always be able to reach a state of wealth and abundance. And guess what, once you truly believe that you never have to worry about it, you’re less likely to lose it in the first place. You attract what you fear because often that’s where you’re focus goes. If you fear losing money, you’ll attract losing money into your reality. When you know at the core of your being that you never need to worry about money then you attract a life of never having to worry about money into your reality. Going back to my earlier example, I was successful in the Corporate world because I never feared losing my job. My confidence came not from the company, not because I had a good “Performance Review”, but from ME! That’s not to say that there weren’t times when I found myself working with companies whose values and integrity did not live up to my own standards of values and integrity. In those cases it was best for me to part ways with that company and find another whose values were aligned with my own. And I never doubted that I would find new companies and I always did!
So why in life do we so often fail to back ourselves. I think a lot of people have a fear of taking on full responsibility for something. I once heard someone say that most people would rather lose their life savings through no fault of their own than become a self-made millionaire.
Think about that for a moment !
I think this a learned mentality. We hate to take full responsibility for what we’re doing and where we’re going in life because then it’s all up to me! If it fails, it’s because I fail. If on the other hand we give others the control over our lives and they do something wrong then we have someone to blame. Say for example you lost your life savings through no fault of your own. Now you can play the victim and say it wasn’t my fault. Not only that, but in our society, what happens? Queue the rush of people to come and give you sympathy and tell you how great you are and how unjust the world is, and how terrible ‘these people‘ are who did this to you.
So what does it take to step up?
What does it take to be the sort of person who is willing to stand tall and say you know what, this is my life and I’m in control. I’m going make this happen no matter what! If you do this, there will inevitably be setbacks along the way. Things won’t always work, and yes, you will sometimes make mistakes.
The key to stepping up is to develop a mindset like Tony Robins talks about where he says there is no such thing as failure, only outcomes. Whenever you try to achieve something, you’re always 100% guaranteed to succeed in producing a result. Now it may not always be the result you were hoping for, but that’s OK. Now, if nothing else, you at least know what doesn’t work! You have raw data that you can use in your next attempt.
Someone once asked Thomas Edison how he invented the Light Globe. He replied, “It was actually really easy. I just ran out of ideas that didn’t work!”
Here’s your assignment, make a list right now of 5 simple things that you are going to take full responsibility for. Ask yourself these questions…
What kind of ideas or mindset have prevented you from taking responsibility for this in the past?
What has been the consequences so far of not taking responsibility for this?
If this were to continue, what consequences might you expect to happen in the future?
Why is taking responsibility for this right now so important to you now?
How will you feel when YOU accomplish this goal, because YOU stepped up and took action?
What does it now say about you as a person, that you have within you the POWER to step?
How does that make you feel?
How will developing the ability to step up benefit you moving forward in your life?
As always, leave me your answers in the comments section below…