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Be prepared for something in this next post to challenge you or even irritate you.  Pay attention to how you feel as you read because it may hit a nerve for you.  It is best to consider why you are irritated at any point in reading this blog so that you can learn something about yourself.  Ask yourself why you are irritated.  If you experience any negative emotion when reading this blog, breathe into your stomach, observe your feelings and ask yourself why.  This information is meant to challenge you and you have a choice about whether you will rise to the challenge or not.  

At this point, you may want to consider how much you are actually applying your insights.  You have read 18 blog posts so far, each one very dense with important principles and axioms. Some of these axioms are explicitly stated, while others are more implicit, needing to be discerned through active reflection.  Learning this information occurs in two distinct and necessary realms: the academic part and the applied part.  Reading these blogs and generating insights about the information is the academic portion of your training. While the academic realm is very important, it will do nothing for you until you actually apply your insights that you are really learning.  

I have been telling you this all along.  Why do you think I keep reminding you of this?  Because it is easy to get lost in academia in order to avoid application.  Most people need to be reminded.  You will know you have reached an elevated state of growth and development in your life when I don’t need to remind you to apply your insights.  I won’t need to remind you because you will have already developed the habit of reminding yourself.  Great students take what they are learning and apply it.  Great students learn to produce great results because they don’t need to be told such a simple and obvious truth.  They do not read for intellectual stimulation alone.  They read to gain practical insights they can apply right away.  Do you want to be a great student?  The choice is yours alone to make.  

We learn so much more by doing. This, of course, does not invalidate thinking and reflecting.  In fact, it is the thinking processes that should make up the majority of our focus.  The key is to act this thinking out with words and physical movements all throughout the day.  If you are really focusing on this information correctly you won’t be able to help but apply it.  Reading about reframing is one thing.  Finding a negative thought, reframing it and then acting from this new view is another thing altogether.

It is very easy for one to read with a goal of “finishing the book.”  However, what takes something from you is to pause and reflect on the information from time to time, and then act.  Without application, you are on track to become someone like the business professor at a university who has never created their own successful business.  He can promulgate theories to anyone who will listen but he knows nothing of business in real life because he has never applied his theories so see if they work.  Reading this blog and other academic trainings may have given you a lot of theoretical information but if you have not used this information to effect real change in the physical world, do your theories even matter?  Without action, many of your ideas may even be wrong and you wouldn’t even know it.   

Application is necessary.  Remember that wisdom is a function of action.  If you have no intention of applying this information to your real life, you may want to consider stopping here.  Don’t read these posts anymore.  What would be the point?  Go read a fiction book. Play with your kids.  Do something fun.  This isn’t helping you if you aren’t actively generating insights on which you can act.  Nothing in your life will change if you don’t apply this information.  Be offended all you want but you know what I am saying is true… so why not embrace it?  Become someone who applies what you learn.  This information works but only if you work it.  If these trainings really do resonate with you, you’ve got to take the next step.  

 

Here are some actions to consider from the information in previous posts:

Notice where in your life you are “at effect” and begin to hold in your mind the point of view that you are “at cause” until you see new actions you can take.

Determine where, in your life, you are afraid of failing. Then choose to move forward in the face of your fears.

Actively spend time noticing your unconscious filters and create new filters that empower you.

Investigate your underlying motivations for acting by asking yourself “why?” over and over again while paying attention to how you feel.

Become aware of some of your negative thoughts, tell the truth to yourself about how you feel and then find the most empowering story you can tell that you actually believe.

If you are too close-minded about something and it is impacting you negatively, endeavor to open your mind. If you are too open-minded about something and it is impacting you negatively, endeavor to close your mind.

Sit down with pen and paper and ask yourself where you have been lying to yourself in your life.  Begin to tell the truth to yourself by acknowledging these inauthenticities and confronting them.

Create an intention for your day, your week, your month, your year and pay attention to results over time. 

Are you putting junk into your mind or body? Make a decision to make the change you know would make a difference.

These are just some examples of ways you could apply this training, but it is not an exhaustive list. Come up with your own insights about what you have read and think of a way you can apply it right now. Then apply your insight.

What are you waiting for?  

Successful people don’t wait to get started.  If you wait for all the lights to be green before you start driving you will never get anywhere.  You must move forward.  When you do, you will see the next step after that.  If you start now, you will be so much further ahead tomorrow, next week, next month and a year from now.  There is never a perfect time to start.  You must break the ice.  You must get the ball rolling.  You must do something even if it is small.  Success is just a thousand little choices made one at a time over time. 

To become the person you really want to be, you will have to make acting on your insights a regular habit.  Make the training contained in this blog real for yourself and your success will be just as real in your life.  It won’t happen overnight.  Success takes time.  However, if you never get started, success is guaranteed never to happen at all.  All successful people apply what they learn.  Seminar junkies settle for the illusion of success.  Reading this blog will give you tools but you have to use them.  You don’t have to get it all done at once.  In fact, you can’t get it all done at once.  Yet, each time you apply your insights is a victory.  Each new choice is a win that you can repeat again and again.  You can do it but you have to consider the possibility that you are infinitely more capable than you think. You must invite the possibility into your mind that you can create so much more than you can even comprehend right now.  

Let these words challenge you.  Accept the challenge. Then, once you do, let it become a fun process.  Make it a game.  See how many times you can actively reflect on this information and then try it out.  If you don’t like the way I am talking to you right now, take responsibility for your negative views and change them.  You have enough information to do this.  Get started now and this blog will become way more enjoyable for you.  It will no longer be a reference book.  It will transform into an instruction manual; one you can use to master yourself and become the best version of yourself.  This game is never over so you might as well accept it and learn to play the game well.

When it comes to creating success (however you define it) some people think they know which actions are the best actions to take and yet their actions fail to produce the results they truly desire. Others feel they have no idea what action to take and so they remain paralysed, never moving forward on what they want to create.  Regardless of which side of this spectrum you find yourself, this next conversation will give you an important perspective about how you can begin to get your motivations correct so that truly inspired action (action that produces real results) can occur more naturally.

I would recommend that you do not underestimate the significance of this conversation because the more you truly understand it, the more you will have the power to drastically change the trajectory of your life.  This  blog is meant to be read with active reflection on its meaning.  You must think about what you are reading to get the most benefit.  These posts should never be skimmed.  They are to be studied.  To grasp these ideas fully takes intellectual and emotional effort.  This is your reminder to read, reread, pause, reflect, and repeat.  

We have talked about the importance of having a correct why as the motivation for action.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, correct action is less about choosing the correct action and more about choosing the correct motivation. This is because action is always flowing out of our motivations.  This occurs regardless of whether we are aware of what these motivations are or not.  Action cannot be turned off.  Even sleep is an action.  Inaction is impossible so long as you are in a physical body.  The quality of our action can, however, be elevated by deliberately altering and adjusting our motivations.  As our motivations change, so do our choices.  These new choices lead to new outcomes.   

Most people do not examine the why’s of their actions nearly enough.  Instead, they may skip the whys and attempt to accomplish their goals anyway, unaware that their actions are being motivated by false why’s.  They will carry on for years experiencing little to no change in the quality of their lives.  They focus on trying to do more actions or different actions but they consistently fail to realize that it is the reasons for their action that must be altered if any meaningful success is to be achieved. 

Even if you are someone who accepts the idea that getting your motivations correct is of critical importance, you may still struggle to actually do it if you have yet to learn its many subtleties.  My intention with this blog is to give you what you need to be able to actively develop the skill set of correctly aligning your thoughts, emotions and actions.  Each blog post is piece of the puzzle that forms a tapestry of success principles and axioms.   This tapestry becomes your new “success” operating system, so long as you consistently apply what you learn over time.

What is a false why/motivation?  

Simply put, a false why is a reason for doing something that is based in falsehood.  For example, if you believe that you must make a lot of money in order to be valuable, your drive to make money is based on the lie that you are not valuable. The idea that you are not valuable has no rational basis in reality.  This underlying belief driving your pursuit of money is untrue and so it is a false motivation.  There is nothing wrong with wanting to make more money.  It is the soundness of the motivation that is important.  

The “How?”

You must understand that your “why’s” always determine the “how’s”.  It never works the other way around. Motivation always precedes action.  Mind precedes matter.  Energy precedes the physical.  All action is motivated by something.  Even if you are forcing yourself to do something you are not inspired to do, there is a reason for this choice that preceded your action. We have a reason for everything we do, even if we are not aware of what that reason is. 

This means that if you have false motivations for your actions, you will take actions consistent with these false motivations.  Many of these false why’s are running unconsciously in the background of your mind and, since you do not know they are there, you have no choice but to continue expressing them in action.  

When we talk about the “how,” we are talking about the actual steps or action plan.  The “how” is the actionable pathway for achieving what you want to create.  It is the method, the procedure and the physical movements.  

Once you know why you want what you want, you certainly still need a pathway (how) to make it happen in your life. However, the misconception is that you can force a “how” to be known to you before the timing and energy is right and before your thoughts and emotions are correctly aligned.  The pathway for fulfilling what you want can/will only be revealed to you once you have delved deep enough into your why’s and clarified them correctly. 

Do you understand the significance of what is being said here?  The results you have in your life today are a product of past thoughts.  These past thoughts produced action which then produced the results you have today.  If we understand this correctly, we would be very interested in getting our thinking correct today because it is the thoughts we are having today that motivate the next actions we will take.  In this way, our current thoughts create our future results… for better or worse.

The “Why?”

The “why?” is, therefore, the most important thing to focus on because it is the starting point to all creation.  You don’t have to “get” a why as some gurus like to say.  You already have a myriad of “why’s” motivating everything you do.  Everything you say or do is motivated by a why, even if this why is not something of which you are consciously aware.  The real work you have to do is to become conscious of these why’s so that you can give more attention and energy to the truest motivations within you.  You must clarify the why’s that already exist within you so you can release the false why’s that are displacing your true why’s and focus instead on your true why’s.

Most of a human being’s life is driven by unconscious motivations.  These motivations come from your beliefs about who you are and what is true about life.  They come from thoughts, decisions and ideas you’ve had in the past that have become the filters through which you experience reality.  By seeing an unconscious why clearly, you can choose to change it. When you don’t see an unconscious why clearly, you won’t be able to change it.  The moment you acknowledge it is the moment you have a choice.  If it goes unacknowledged, you continue having no choice. 

The challenge here is that you can have an ostensible why that is rooted in a false thought or belief of which you are not even consciously aware. For example, you may unconsciously feel like you are unwanted because, when you were young, some event occurred and you came to this conclusion about yourself.  This belief then shaped the rest of your life with every subsequent choice/decision you made. You became, for yourself, an unwanted person and lived your life as though this unwantedness was the true reality about you.  This false belief displaced your true why’s and now you needed to find some way of fixing or overcoming that you were unwanted, which of course was not even true to begin with. You then held an ostensible why that was false.  For instance, your ostensible why may have been to make more money or to get into a relationship or to lose some weight, but really, all of these goals were motivated by an unconscious need to fix the untrue belief that you were, in this example, unwanted.  

To make this even more clear, imagine there was a situation that occurred when you were 4 years-old. Perhaps your mother was 30 minutes late picking you up from school.  She had always been there on time to pick you up right when school was finished. However, on this particular day, she just didn’t show up.  You were unable to understand all the possible explanations for why your mother did not show up on time to get you. You were only 4 years old.  You didn’t understand all the complexities of life.  You just knew that your mother wasn’t there.  For 30 minutes, you experienced this strange new feeling and you came to a simple, child-like conclusion that your mother didn’t care about you anymore and so you were unwanted.  Even if she picked you up on time every day after this one, the damage had already been done.  You were now unwanted and would spend the rest of your life unconsciously gathering proof that your mother didn’t care about you and that you were unwanted, without any awareness of the moment this feeling began.  

It may be hard for some to imagine but it is these kinds of conclusions in moments like these that shaped the rest of our lives. The specific events and conclusions are different for everyone, but the mechanisms that drive them are the same for all.  Luckily, there are learnable and applicable methods for uncovering these unconscious past decisions and rectifying them.   

In the next post we will focus on a powerful practice you can use to expand and deepen your awareness allowing you to begin resolving these issues.