I believe that everyone has aspirations of being better, doing better, and having more. Especially if you are reading this post and have followed my journey over the last couple of years, I attempted to give you aims, attitudes, and aspirations that you can use to achieve your biggest dreams and goals.
Yes, if you are honest with yourself, you want to leave a legacy for future members of your family, your friends, and your business and for your life to have mattered once you are near the end. Not everyone feels this way, but I don’t talk to or interact with many who don’t. They’re just not part of my audience. And that’s ok. But since you’re here, Mr. or Ms. Legacy Builder, let’s continue!
Whether you are a dreamer on an achiever, if I ask you what you are working on and where you are looking to improve, I suspect that we all are working on and concerned about the same sort of things. Notably, our health, our wealth, our relationships, and our faith. These are all excellent and normal aspirations, and I would encourage you to continue to pursue growth in all of those areas of your life. But I think you are missing the key component that will make you more proficient in these areas and every other area of your life. Do you care to guess where I am leading you to?
It is, of course, your mindset! I always talk about the importance of mindset. You are welcome and encouraged to search mindset and read my other posts related to the importance of developing a winning mindset. Today I want to cover just one of the many things that impact your mindset. I would argue that it is the most important thing you can do to improve your mindset. I will caution you that the simplicity of it makes it seem not that important as with so many things.
If you’re like me, whether you are setting a goal or just dreaming in your head about what you need to do to achieve peak performance, you immediately start thinking about the things you have to give up to achieve it. If you want to lose weight, you’re going to have to give up high-calorie, low-nutrient foods. That pint of ice cream a night habit has to go! If you want to get into better shape, you’re going to have to give up sleep to get up early enough to exercise for 30-60 minutes every day.
Let me encourage you to stop and ponder, on the other hand, what can you give yourself to achieve peak performance? I believe we don’t focus nearly enough on what we feed our minds. There are obviously numerous outside inputs that you can utilize to feed your mind the good, the important, and the truth. I’d like you to dig just a touch deeper and think about this week; what are you telling yourself?
When it’s just you alone with you, what does the voice in your head say to you? We talk to ourselves ten times, maybe one hundred times, more than listen to other people. I want you to consider whether you are telling yourself the good, the important, and the truth? I heard a great analogy this weekend that I hope will illustrate this principle for you as vividly as it did for me.
If you are outside in the bright sunlight and are wearing a pair of sunglasses and then suddenly walk inside to a much more dimly lit room, yet leave your sunglasses on, what are you going to see? You’re going to see the same thing everyone else does: the people, the fixtures or furniture, the windows, etc. You see the same things, but they look different. Why? Because you are looking at everything through the filter of your sunglasses.
My friend, the facts and the truth, for that matter, don’t change. What changes is the filter through which you see them? So my encouragement and accountability for you this week is to spend some time thinking deeply about how you are looking at things. This is why I so strongly encourage you to develop the habits and skills of meditation and journaling. I cannot tell you exactly how it works; I can only tell you that it does. It has worked for me, and I am yet to have a person I have encouraged to do it tell me it didn’t work for them.
For this week and the next several weeks, your homework is to get honest and go deep with yourself. The good is the enemy of the great so get yourself to telling yourself the truth. Think about it, write it down, and confess it – until you believe it. How you see yourself will transform how you see – and show up – in every other area of your life!
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I also invite you to review my coaching page on my website here. I have only a couple of spots left in my Personal Development Coaching Practice. Each week I offer two free strategy sessions on a first-come, first-served basis to people interested in exploring how to become a person who pursues their goals and dreams. These special hour-long sessions prove again and again to be invaluable to those who participate. You can book these directly on my coaching page – I look forward to serving you.