Are you excited about the year ahead?
Do you know what you want to achieve?
Do you have a plan to achieve it?
More importantly, do you have the right mindset to achieve it?
Right now is as good a time as any for a shameless plug for my upcoming “Quantum Resonance” Program. A 6 Month program especially designed for people who really want to shape the destiny of their lives. The main focus of the program will be training you on how to dial in to the exact frequency of your thoughts to attract the things that you want to have show up in your life.
We tie this in with other advanced techniques for eliminating the blockages that may have been preventing you from being successful up until this point.
You can go to my website now for more information and to book in for a FREE complimentary Discovery Session.
But right now, what I want to do is get the ball rolling for you by talking about something very important for achieving your Goals and that is to have the right mindset.
In particular, what I want to talk about today is Communication. By that, I mean the Communication that you have with yourself. Your Self-Talk. You see I’ve come to realise that we really do live in what you might call a “fake world”. What I mean is, there is no such thing as the “real world”, only what we perceive as the real world.
Things happen around us and our senses take in all the raw data and send it to the brain for processing. The brain processes all of that raw data and builds a picture of how it believes the real world is and what is happening around us. Take for example, 2 people reading the exact same novel may have very different images in their minds of what is being described in the book.
So the way you communicate to yourself about what is happening around you will determine the meaning that you give to those events. The meaning that you give to those events will actually determine WHAT you think happened.
I’m not talking about merely seeing the world through rose coloured glasses, I mean the way you communicate what happens will determine WHAT you actually think happened. What you perceive has happened to you in the past will determine the way that you move forward.
Now is the perfect time for you to start thinking forward about what you want to happen this year. This will be influenced heavily by how you communicate what has happened to you in 2016. At the start of a new year, most people are filled with hope and promise of what is to come. You feel as though “This is going to be YOUR YEAR!” anything is possible. By contrast when we look at the year that has gone, most people focus on all the things they DIDN’T accomplish. All the things they DIDN’T do. They make the promise to themselves that this year will not be another year like last year.
This is precisely the WRONG approach. If you see last year as being a failure, then this year will almost certainly be the same. Instead, if you focus on all the things that you HAVE accomplished, then you’ll be filled with a sense of achievement and that sense of achievement will propel you forward to an even better 2017.
Tony Robbins constantly talks about the communication that you have with yourself as being essential to success.
I’ve recently taken the time to do my own audit of 2016 and review all that I accomplished, and I can tell you it was a truly thrilling experience. I was kind of going along thinking that last year was OK. But when I actually took the time to stop and think about it, I realised it was actually WAAAAY better than that!
When I really think about it, by any measure, 2016 was the BEST, MOST PRODUCTIVE, and MOST LIFE DEFINING year of my life so far!
Thinking back to this time last year, that seems like quite an ironic thing to say because 2016 didn’t turn out the way that I thought. Things changed throughout the year and I had to make some course corrections. Looking back, I now see that all the changes that I made last year have set the scene for even greater success in 2017.
Let Me Give You My Re-Capp on 2016
At the beginning of 2016, It was all happening for me. I was working on not 1, not 2, but 3 different businesses ventures, including my Coaching Business. So it was definitely an “All Systems Go Go Go” time for me.
Now I had what I thought were pretty lofty goals for each one. So let me tell you what happened. Well one of them became a runaway success, one of them didn’t turn out as I had hoped and so I had to let it go. The third, required a re-calibration to head in a different direction. So by the end of the year…
I achieved more than I could have imagined in one.
One didn’t work out at all.
One ended up going in a different direction than I originally planned.
So What Was Happening in Each of Those 3 Businesses?
Well I won’t bore you with the details or the sales pitch for each one. But let me give you a quick overview. One of those businesses became a runaway success!! I achieved more than what even I could have hoped for in my wildest dreams. The business is today a huge success, it bought in a lot of revenue for me, but more importantly it gave me a lot of personal growth too! It taught me a lot of invaluable business insights such as how to analyse results, track where my best revenue streams are. All of which will serve me well with my other businesses.
End Result = SUCCESS !!
Now the second business was a brand new business at the start of 2016. I had recruited a Business Partner to go into business with. When I interviewed him with a view to going into a partnership together, he said all the right things. He seemed ambitious, had the right values, the right work ethic. It seemed like the perfect fit. So we went into business together. Unfortunately, it didn’t take too long to realise that all was not as it appeared. He was definitely ambitious, and you couldn’t argue he certainly had a high work ethic. But when it came to the most important things such as his character and his values, alarm bells went off. This person simply lacked character, he had no integrity in what he did, no values. This is completely out of alignment with me. To me, integrity and ethics are at the heart of any business and I cannot be associated with anyone who doesn’t share this philosophy. I made the hard decision to walk away from that business. It was a hard decision to make, but in the end, it was the ONLY decision to make. I left with my integrity intact, which is the most important thing for me.
End Result = WALK AWAY, CLEAR SPACE FOR A NEW OPPORTUNITY !!
If you haven’t guessed already, the third business was my Coaching Business. Now coaching was something that I’ve been doing kind of “unofficially” for quite some time, but by the beginning of 2016, I was really starting to take it to the next level.
Now coaching was something that I got into kind of by accident. It was never really a goal to become a Life Coach. I just did so much personal development stuff myself that I was able to help my friends and I would have impromptu coaching sessions with them to help them with what they were going through. It really helped them, they started referring their friends to speak with me, and the rest as they say is history!
But I’d never really approached Coaching from a business perspective before. I’d simply gone from doing free coaching with friends and then their friends, to starting to charge money for each coaching session. That had worked well and I was looking to simply build on that in 2016 and attract more clients.
But as the year progressed, I realised that The Universe was calling me towards a much higher calling than I had been thinking. I realised that I had to really step up and take things to the next level. So whilst continuing my coaching with clients in 2016, I realised that what was going to have the most impact on people was not 1 or 2 coaching sessions, which is simply not enough to create lasting change for most people. But rather a full on 6 month coaching program where I work 1 on 1 with people for 6 months. I spent most of 2016 working on this. This meant that I took on less clients than I otherwise would have because I had to spend the time to create my coaching program. The end result however is that I am now in a position to really help more people in a much more powerful and life changing way in 2017. It did require some re-calibration from my original plan, but the end result is worth it. I am now in a position to have much more of an impact on the world!
End Result = RE-CALIBRATION
It’s important to note here what I was saying earlier about communication. How you communicate things is so important. Most people would have said that my first business was a complete success and the other 2 were failures. Most people reduce things down to a simple formula which says you achieved more than you planned in your first business, therefore it is a success. You didn’t achieve what you planned for the other 2 businesses therefore they are failures.
But notice the “End Result”. I never used the word failure. That’s because I don’t communicate what happened in any of them to myself as being a failure. Notice that I used positive language for each of them. And I’m not just talking about putting a positive spin on things. I’m really talking about having an actual positive meaning to each of the 3 outcomes.
Now the first business, I achieved more than I planned. It’s a success, that’s a no brainer. But the second business, I was faced with a situation where I was in business with someone who didn’t share my sense of ethics or integrity. There’s no way I’m going to allow myself to be in that situation, neither would anyone else with integrity. To stay in that situation would have been the ultimate failure! Now, what positive successes can I draw from that. Well…
I had the wisdom to notice things were not right. SUCCESS
My own moral compass told me what to do. SUCCESS
I had the courage to walk away. SUCCESS
I kept my own personal integrity in tact. SUCCESS
So now, looking back I can see that the whole experience was a MASSIVE SUCCESS for me. Not only that, I know for sure, without a shadow of a doubt that my own integrity is not for sale. I know now that if I’m ever in that situation again, I am the sort of person who is capable of realising that, capable of having the courage to walk away.
Now let’s look at my coaching business. My goal at the start of the year was to increase the amount of coaching clients that I had. But I actually intentionally DECREASED the amount of clients that I had. That of course meant that I was making less money, but that wasn’t important to me. I’m making good money from my other business anyway so I don’t need the money. What was important to me is that I realised that I was thinking too small. I was being called to a much greater vision than the one that I had planned. The Universe was telling me, “You’re capable of more!”. I had to answer the call and step up. I had to ask myself, if I’m being called to be of greater service to the world, how can I step up, how can I help people more, how can I ensure that I have a greater impact on people. When you start asking the right questions, The Universe will provide you with the right answers.
"Give up, to go up." ~ John Maxwell
One of my mentors John Maxwell, describes this process as give up, to go up. Meaning that you have to be willing to give up something short term in order to move forward long term. So I started giving up helping clients in the short term so that I could help people even more long term. I gave up the impact that I was having in the short term in order that I might have greater impact long term.
So anyway, that is my summary of the year that was for me. Now let’s turn this over to you. How’s your self-talk? How you communicate what happened to you in 2016 will largely determine what happens to you in 2017. What are you saying to yourself about 2016? Are you lamenting all the things that you didn’t do, or the things that didn’t work out? Or are you celebrating all of the success that you DID have?
Leave me a comment below to let me know what you’re going to take away from this. How could you maybe change your thinking about 2016 to ensure that you have an awesome 2017?