Stop Wasting Your Life & Do Something (3 page)

If you could just take one action, and do it often, and make it consistent, what would you do?

Here’s another thing about discipline. Every positive discipline has an impact on every other discipline. Think of discipline like a muscle. The more you use your self-discipline, the stronger it gets in ALL areas.

To become stronger in your arms you must exercise your arms. To become stronger in discipline, you must exercise your discipline. The only way to BECOME disciplined is to actually do the things you know you should. You cannot become disciplined by thinking about doing things. You can only do it by actually taking actions, and taking them consistently.

You can’t build a reputation on what you are
going
to do! – Henry Ford

Chapter 6

What Will You Accept For Your Life?

What do you want for your life? I mean what do you REALLY want?

What will you accept? Will you accept mediocrity? Will you only accept excellence? Will you accept people pushing you around? Will you accept a life of being less than what you want?

I have friends that are very intelligent. They are smart. Yet they have been stuck in the same job for 30 years and they hate it. They are always telling me that they want to change their job, and their life, but they won’t do it.

They tell me they are unhappy, but they don’t do anything about it.

This upsets me because what I want for myself, I want for everyone. I want everyone to walk the path of self-actualisation and self growth. I want everyone to be happy.

This doesn’t mean that I want them to be happy in the same way that I achieve happiness as everyone is different, but I want them to be happy. It also frustrates me when people won’t take the actions that THEY know will improve their lives.

The problem is that there are MILLIONS of people like that in the world. They WANT a better life, but not if it means they have to actually make it better themselves. Some are scared of change. Some are too cynical to change. Some believe they cannot change.

None of these things would hold you back if you had decided that you would no longer accept a life that you do not enjoy. That is all you have to do. Decide. I will no longer accept (fill in the blanks)…………. In my life.

When you get to the end of this book, I’d like you to come back to this chapter and make a list of the things you will no longer accept in your life. These could be small things such as never accepting an untidy car again, or they could be big things such as never accepting alcohol in your body again.

When you actually decide, write them down and commit to them. Make them public to give them strength, and see your life change.

Section 1

Happiness

Chapter 7

Relationships

If your relationships are good and they’re strong, then you are more likely to be happy than if your relationships are strained and full of stress and tension.

This is obvious, but what a lot of people don’t realise is that they are 100% responsible for their relationships.

Most people would assume that if they were relating to one other person, then they would both be 50% responsible for the relationship. This is inaccurate, and I’ll repeat it: You are
both
100% responsible for your relationships.

How come you ask?

Let’s say that I am in a relationship with you. I am 100% responsible for how I treat you. I am 100% responsible for how kind I am, how loving I am, how present I am in your company. I am also 100% responsible for how I respond to you.

Likewise, you are 100% responsible for how you treat me, how kind you are to me, and how you communicate with me.

If you say something to me that I don’t like I have 100% responsibility for whether I get mad, or respond in a healthy way. However, as you are 100% responsible for how you treat me, you can have a positive or negative effect on me by how you treat me and how you communicate with me.

The words we use.

When we relate to others, we need to choose our words very carefully. The actual words we use have a massive impact on the response we are likely to receive. For example:

If I say to you “What’s wrong with you?” that sounds very different to “What’s troubling you?” or “What’s on your mind?”

Although I MEANT the same thing with each question, the interpretation of it could be very different.

Think about the last time you had an argument with a significant person in your life. Can you remember the words you used? Can you remember the words they used?

Could you have used different words but got your point across nevertheless?

Sometimes we need to pause before we speak.

Don’t say things that are hurtful just to try and win an argument. It’s better to be happy than to be right. If you use personal, critical, hurtful words when communicating with important people in your life, don’t be surprised if those relationships break down.

Time for another story.

A young man had a terrible argument with his wife and sorely regretted his words. He said some terrible things, and brought up incidents that had long past in order to win the argument. The next day, he went to a wise old man and sought his advice.

The old man told him to go out, and get a sack full of feathers. The man did as he was asked, and returned to the wise man the next day.

The sage told the man to go about town, and spread the feathers on the floor in the streets and empty the sack of feathers. When this was done, he was to return the next day.

The man returned the following day and sat opposite the wise man. The old fellow told the man that he should now go out with his sack and collects all of the feathers up. The young man said that this was impossible as they had blown away all over the town and he would never be able to find them.

“Those feathers are just like your words. Once they have been scattered, they can never be returned”. You need to be as careful with your words as you are with your feathers.

Blame is another thing that can cause problems in relationships. If you’re always blaming people for what they have done wrong then it makes them defensive, and they will put barriers up. Likewise if someone you’re in a relationship with is always blaming you, it will make you defensive. Instead, try to look at the situation as it is, ask WHAT happened, not WHOSE fault is it. If someone is always doing something that upsets you, you do need to tell him or her, but tell them in a constructive way that won’t cause a problem between you both.

Here are my rules for a positive relationship:

One – Always listen to each other. I mean really listen. Not the “I’m just surfing the web, so I’ll kind of grunt an answer” type listening.

Two – Try putting yourself in their shoes. What’s important to them? What are they worried about or concerned about? What do they need help with?

Three – Make time for each other. You can’t have a relationship if you’re too busy for each other.

Four – Set aside time with no distractions such as IPhones, laptops, and the TV.

Five – If you disagree, don’t let the disagreement turn into an argument. Try to reach a compromise or agree to disagree without being disagreeable

Six – Have rules. If somebody breaks one of your rules, tell them in a constructive way.

Seven – Make time for yourself. Don’t live in each other’s pockets 24/7 or you may just drive each other mad.

Eight – Have fun. Doesn’t matter if your relationship is with your partner, your kids, your friends, or your co-workers. Try to have fun and not take things too seriously all of the time.

Nine – Avoid blame and don’t bring up the past. If you’re disagreeing, then just disagree on the point in hand. Don’t bring up something that happened seven months ago.

Ten – Think about the words you’re choosing. Pick your words carefully, and pause before you speak if you have to.

Chapter 8

Mental Strength

"Now if you are going to win any battle you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up. It is always tired in the morning, noon, and night. But the body is never tired if the mind is not tired."

- George S. Patton, U.S. Army General, 1912 Olympian

A few days ago I was listening to the audio version of Thomas Stanley’s “Stop Acting Rich”, and one of the things he mentions about how the wealthy became wealthy was that nearly all of them had to overcome some form of adversity in order to become successful.

Now I know we’re not talking about money yet, but this is very relevant to happiness as well as finances so I’m going to discuss it now. Plus, it’s MY book so I can talk about what I like!

In order to be happy or successful, you need to be able to overcome challenges. If every little set back gets you down, then you will never get anywhere.

People that get handed everything on a plate don’t develop the mental strength, tenacity, determination, persistence, or learn the skills and mindsets that are required to overcome challenges.

Here’s a great saying that I think sums this up perfectly:

Good timber doesn’t come with ease. The stronger the wind, the stronger the trees.

Some of you may have already learned this lesson in life. I learned it when I was so broke I was eating stuffing mix, and gravy granules with hot water in a cup 5 nights a week. I was in a place where I had ZERO money. I had to learn pretty quickly to go out and make it. I had to sell my stuff, I had to start a little business, and I had to tighten my belt and stop spending money I didn’t have.

I had to work harder in my job to make more money, and learn some strategies to handle the money I did actually make so that I didn’t lose it all again.

Whilst I was going through this stage (it lasted about 6 months) I hated every minute of it, but now, looking back, I think it was probably the best thing that could have happened to me (paradigm shifts sometimes take a while to gain perspective).

If I hadn’t gone through that pain, I would have been happy to plod along through life with no ambition and no desire to have a better life, but when you get to the stage where you’re so fed up with how things are that you’ll do ANYTHING you can to get past it, you learn some very valuable lessons.

Many people in the world have overcome massive challenges to succeed in their personal lives, their health, their business, and their relationships. People such as that will immediately know that this is true. When you’ve overcome a massive obstacle in your life, you don’t see normal day-to-day challenges as being difficult any more and you just get on with things.

So with this in mind, what can you do to develop mental strength?

Set yourself a series of increasingly difficult challenges. Start small and gradually build it up. This will not only allow you to grow as a human being in terms of skills and abilities, but the very act of doing this will improve your self-esteem and self worth.

People that have the fewest worries are the people that know that they can deal with challenges that come their way. That’s why they’re not worried.

Ok, back to setting yourself challenges.

Let’s assume that you want to set yourself an extreme challenge such as running a marathon, but you’re unfit, overweight, and currently do no exercise.

Would you set yourself the challenge to run a marathon in a month’s time? I certainly wouldn’t recommend it.

However, could you set the challenge to run a marathon in a year’s time? Yes.

You would now need to break down this challenge into a series of mini challenges.

Walk your first mile

Jog your first mile

Jog your first 2 miles

Jog your first 3 miles

Etc…

Each one of these milestones will feel good. Each one will make you realise that you can accomplish more than you thought you could.

Each one will force you to become better than you were before, and each one will show you that you are the kind of person that can overcome difficult challenges.

Let’s say you have a goal of having £100,000/$100,000 dollars in the bank, and at the moment you have zero money saved.

Likewise, you wouldn’t set this goal for a month’s time and you will need to exercise discipline and patience in order to achieve it. You’ll also have some milestones to achieve along the way.

Save your first £10/$10

Save your first £100/$100

Save your first £1,000/$1,000

Each of these milestones again, will make you feel good and will make you realise that you can be more disciplined and overcome challenges.

Have a fear that you’d like to conquer? Well set yourself the challenge of overcoming it. There are so many techniques for overcoming fears these days from NLP, Hypnosis, EFT, Journaling, and Therapy…

Why not set yourself the challenge of getting rid of your biggest fear. That will take some courage, some discipline, and some sweat!! You’ll have to grow, and how much happier would you be without that fear?