14/05/2017
IF YOU'RE SERIOUS ABOUT GETTING WHAT YOU WANT …. Read this…
One night back in 2006, I woke up in the early hours. With a feeling of absolute anxiety. I had woken up with such a feeling many times before, but this time it was more than ever. It was more intense. The silence of the night, the dark room, the distant sound of passing cars everything felt strange, so hostile & meaningless. It created in me a deep hatred of the world. I felt empty & useless. I wondered the reason for my existence.
What was the reason for me to live with this burden of misery? Why should I carry on with so many business failures? I could feel my invasion by the deep longing for disappearance from the world. The desire to die had become more dominant than that of living.
“I cannot be so unfair to my employees, I cannot live with myself any longer.” The thought kept repeating itself in my mind.
Then suddenly I became aware of what an unusual thought it was. I had occupied my mind with the thought, “I am a failure. Everything is against me.” I had closed my toy manufacturing company a week before. I had laid off 16 employees with at least 60 other people depending on them. I had transferred the same employees from another business I had closed a year & half earlier.
In hindsight both businesses were viable. But I let my limiting beliefs stop my dreams! More on that later….
Have you ever felt the same? You have.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was right when he observed
“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm”
You are judged every moment if you are active or dead. There are masses of dead ones everywhere. They make the vast army of failure. These are dead to opportunities, dead to embracing change, dead to perseverance, dead to positive thinking. The drive to believe in themselves & action are simply none existent.
They put nothing out of life & put nothing into it.
What you want in life comes through action. Action only, brings results.
What influences your action? The answer is simple. Your feelings.
How you are feeling determines the energy & attention on your action. And the results that follow.
It's like this. Your RESULTS are determined by the ACTION you take. Your action at any time is determined by how you are FEELING. Control your feelings to act better. And get better results. You agree? Yes you do, it makes sense.
To achieve great results, you need to act on your goals with enthusiasm. Without enthusiasm, whatever you want will lie dormant. Remains wishful thinking.
There are 3 things which affect how you feel. What you focus on. Your environment & your physiology at a particular time. Today we will talk about Focus.
You are a human being of filtration. Each moment you are at liberty to choose what to focus on. You can focus on the past, the present or the future.
Most humans, the unconscious, focus on the past & the future. The past is recollection. Memory. This is your past programming through your teachers, parents, relatives, friends, religion, life experiences etc.
These form the basis of your beliefs. These form your polarity on your emotions, whether negative or positive. These determine the meaning you put on what you are currently facing.
Let's do a quick exercise. Not recommended when you are driving.
Close your eyes for a minute and think of anything. Do it now.
……………………….
Welcome back.
Write the thoughts which came into your mind. How many of the thoughts brought negative emotions such as anxiety, regret, anger, desperation, stress, depression, demotivation etc. I guess more negative than positive thoughts came through.
Your mind is designed to be defend you. Hence the focus on thoughts that could harm you. This is unconscious thinking.
How does that kind of thinking affect what you want to do now? It affects how you feel.
When you feel low, like when a close relative has died, you cannot be as productive. When you think about the death today, now, you feel the same. Low feeling. Here is the thing, thinking of the death now, does not help you to be enthusiastic enough to be productive now. You are simply recycling irrelevant emotions. It always happens when you want to start a new project or business. You start thinking of your past failures. Fear embraces you.
You are paralyzed. You can't act. You do not achieve your desired results.
It happened to me. And still does. Sometimes.
How then can you avoid this? It's simple.
Relinquish the past. Bring it along, only when you need to use the lessons leant. The best education is to forget the irrelevant beliefs & re-learn the ones necessary for you to achieve your dreams.
Erase thoughts like, I am not capable, I am not enough, I don't have enough, I can't, I am not good enough, I am not worthy, I am a woman, I am disabled, what will mum, friends or relatives say, in our family none has ever succeeded, I am a failure, I made mistakes etc!
Do you agree? You do. Let's continue.
Be intentional about NOW. It's the only present you have from the Creator, the PRESENT.
You might be thinking "How can I change what I focus on?"
The answer is simple. Be conscious of what you are feeling. Does it serve you in achieving what you want? If no. Do something about it.
If it's a habit then you need more will power. You cannot change something engraved inside you like your bone marrow by yourself. Invest in instructional books or audios. There are plenty. Or seek assistance. From a Coach.
Sometimes you have a tendency of thinking of the future. What will happen if I lose my job, if my business fails, if I get broke, if I fall sick.
Stop it! The future is yet to come. You are causing unnecessary anxiety. Draining your energy from what needs to be done NOW. Anxiety drains. It sucks energy out of you like a vampire sucking blood.
Yes, it's important to have future goals. But don't get attached to the result. Focus on the present. Do what you need to do now.
Here is the thing, if you allow ENTHUSIASM to wake you up in the morning instead of an alarm, you will never fail in life.
You also need to focus on what you have & not what you don’t. Also how you use your time. I will talk about that in future posts. It’s a cancer in all of us. I wish I could write for some more time. But I must go.
Your Rafiki in Success
Till next time ciao.
PS. If you didn’t do the 1 minute exercise, do now. Where your focus is, your energy goes.
PSS. In the next post, I will talk about how your environment affects how you act. Re-read all the posts. The freshness in the text is not lost. Actually, their transformative power intensifies.
