Author: Joe Barnes
The 4 Keys to Being Noticed in your Industry
I used to be a big WWF fan. Back in the early 90’s, my favourites were The Ultimate Warrior and Bret ‘The Hitman’ Hart. Although I don’t watch it anymore, I occasionally listen to podcasts where the old wrestlers talk about what it was like back in the day and share behind the scenes stories.
Something I didn’t expect to hear, though, was advice on how to get known/become successful in any industry. I was listening to Jim Cornette (former manager of Yokozuna) on Jim Cornette’s Talking Sense. One of the guests called in and asked Jim for advice on how to be a successful pro wrestling commentator. Jim’s answer surprised me in its wisdom;
“The only school you can go to is by watching wrestling, listening to great announcers, being able to figure out in your head what’s good and what’s bad, having a good voice, having the opportunity to get in front of somebody, getting plenty of experience on the job doing it and hoping that some day you get good enough that somebody will notice you.”
There’s a common misconception, when it comes to breaking into an industry, that there must be a secret to success. We get fooled into thinking there’s one particular tactic, technique or strategy the pros use that if we also knew, we could experience similar results. However, Cornette’s comment reveals that there isn’t. Instead, it’s about a number of things.
1. Model the greats
Jim mentions that you have to spend a lot of time OBSERVING the industry you are passionate about and studying the greats within that particular field. This gives you a knowledge base of the terminology unique to that field, an understanding what’s going on and a clear example you can turn over to your subconscious of the expert level you need to aim for.
Use the greats as your benchmark, breakdown what they do that allows them to be successful and then incorporate that into your own product or game.
2. Identify your Talents
Jim identifies ‘having a good voice’ as a vital attribute of an expert commentator. This is all about talent. Sure, you can train your voice, or whatever skill it is you want to become an expert in, but it helps if you’re naturally gifted. It’s not the most important quality, but it does make the learning process faster.
Therefore, make life easier for yourself by pursuing the passions that come naturally to you.
3. Get Noticed
Jim mentions ‘having the opportunity to get in front of somebody’. Rarely, will you make it on your own. You need to be noticed by someone with access to an audience larger than yours who will them promote you to this audience. This is how your popularity grows.
However, don’t think that someone is going to pluck you out of obscurity and push you into the limelight. It’s more than likely that YOU’LL have to be proactive in making these connections and building relationships with your industries kingmakers.
4. Get used to performing under pressure
Jim talks about ‘getting plenty of experience on the job’. This is slightly different to practising. While practise is important, you develop real confidence when you have to perform over and over when the pressure is on.
Therefore, whatever your craft is, spend hours and hours performing it in a paid or pressurised situation. Take advantage of whatever opportunity you can get to do this – no matter how small – because something magical happens when you do. After a while, your anxiety fades and you begin to relax. This enables your true personality and qualities to shine through, helping you stand out from the crowd.
(image taken from Ryan Moomey photostream on flickr.com)
What to do if You’re Thinking About Giving Up on Your Dream
Yet another failure! As I checked the sign ups to my newsletter, my heart sank.
I’d heard good things about Facebook Ads. Authorities I respected said they were a great way to gain exposure and increase your following. Of course, you had to pay, but I didn’t mind as long as I saw a return.
That was the problem, though, there were no returns. Despite paying close to £500 on filming a video, editing and the ads themselves, I received no more than a handful of subscribers to my website. Yet another failure.
Of course, on its own, this failure was not catastrophic. However, when it’s the tip of a humongous iceberg, that stretches back 16 years, it’s hard to process.
It reminds me of a time, back in 2003, when I was struggling to get tennis coaching clients and wasn’t sure if I could make enough money to continue working.
It reminds me of a time, back in 2005, when I was spending money on advertising, to build awareness for my new hypnotherapy business, and nothing seemed to work.
It reminds me of my early and mid-twenties when I couldn’t get a date. No matter how many girls I asked, or what tactic or approach I used, nobody was interested.
And this mentions nothing of the struggles I’ve experienced attempting to become a personal development author and speaker. I had to rewrite my book four times, as I learned to gather and present my thoughts in a coherent fashion.
Even when the book was published, the failures continued. The next 6 years saw setback after setback as I attempted to learn the steps to building a brand and promoting my work.
Of course, it hasn’t all been doom and gloom. Over the years, there have been many successes. I got enough tennis coaching and hypnotherapy clients to build a successful business. I found the love of my life. Many copies of my book have been sold and I’ve received a lot of satisfying feedback on my work. However, my recent experience with Facebook Ads reminded me of those moments during my twenties when I just wanted to give up.
I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling this way. Many of you reading this will have had similar experiences. There’s something you want to do with your life, something you care about so much, yet no matter how hard you work and no matter what strategy you try, all you’re met with is a closed door.
Sounds familiar?
Well, if that’s the case, then I want to share something with you. I want to give you the strategy and reasoning process that got me through. I’m going to explain the dilemma you face, what your options are and help you understand what to do in these testing moments.
The Options
When considering giving up on your dreams, the first thing to understand is that your options are limited. You only have two (although there are sub-divisions within these options). They are,
Stick at what you’re doing.
Or,
Return to The System’s Path.
Unless home schooled (and even then, it’s difficult to completely escape its influence), you will have walked The System’s Path. It begins when you’re taught about the importance of getting good grades. These, you are told, will help you get into University. Once at University, you then have to get a good degree – life’s golden ticket and the route through which you secure a ‘good job’.
Once you get this job, though, the chase isn’t over. You must now pursue promotion after promotion, hoping you can earn enough money to retire early and wait to die in relative comfort.
Even if you don’t go the University route, you’re still indoctrinated on the importance of earning money. You have to trade your time for financial reward. It doesn’t matter how you do it (as long as it doesn’t break the law), and the subject of whether you enjoy it is irrelevant, but you must be able to provide for yourself.
This is The System’s Path. Most people begrudgingly accept it because a) they believe there is no feasible alternative or b) they’re afraid to challenge what so many people accept. However, when you leave the education system, you’re presented with a unique opportunity.
For the first time in your life, you can start walking your own path. A rare few grasp this opportunity immediately. Some do so in their 20s, after they’ve left University or are frustrated with a few years spent in the world of work. Finally, some make the brave decision later in life when they have the responsibilities of paying a mortgage and supporting a family.
Undoubtedly, some of you have also taken advantage of this opportunity. You’ve identified a passion and made inroads into earning a living from this project. However, as is inevitable on this journey, you’ve encountered failures and difficulties and now you’re questioning the validity of your decision.
What do you do?
The situation is serious. Your project hasn’t been as successful as you anticipated and now you’re faced with the pressing needs of making money and avoiding the heartache of continual failure.
In such moments, you consider returning to The System’s Path. You tell yourself you could get a regular job. This would remove all your financial concerns and help avoid the challenge of continually having to grow.
Also, you wouldn’t have to put up with the stress of thinking for yourself. Just do what everybody else does. Clock in. Work. Go home. Get drunk at the weekends. Or, watch TV. Go shopping or use the few free hours a week you have to take part in your hobby. Just focus entirely on your children and forget about yourself. It’s not a bad life. You’re not in pain (yet). You just have to put up with some boredom and stress.
But is this a long-term solution?
Yes, it may alleviate your immediate financial concerns but, six months down the line, will the symptoms that caused you to break free from The System’s Path not return?
Will the restlessness not re-emerge? Will the feeling that you could be doing so much more with your life not begin to haunt you again?
It’s likely it will.
So, I ask you again, what can you do?
You appear trapped between a rock and a hard place. Continuing to pursue your dream presents further, almost unendurable, financial and emotional hardship. Returning to The System’s Path only presents a short-term solution.
To answer this question and find a solution to your dilemma, you must gain a deeper understanding of what you really seek.
Listen to your Heart
Moments of desperation, brought about by repeated faiIure, create a vortex. The trivia of day to day life disappears as you gain clarity on the bigger picture. In these moments, you’re closer to your source of guidance.
Go deep inside your mind. Slow everything down. Notice your breathing. Now ask yourself, ‘what is my heart telling my to do? What do I know is right?’
Your hearts response will always be to follow its deepest calling. Behind the object of your quest (to sell a million copies of your book, to have your product on the shelves of major retailers across the world, to win a contest) is the desire to express yourself, to give and receive love and to realise your potential. In short, to be complete.
This is what you need to remember.
Then, you need to ask yourself a powerful question, ‘can this be achieved through walking The System’s Path?’
With the daily sacrifice of your inspiration and conscience this entails, the answer is, ‘no’.
Then, you need to ask yourself another question, ‘is the dream I’m currently attempting to achieve the vehicle through which I’ll become complete?’
Don’t expect an immediate answer. Instead, it will be revealed with time. You’ll have to return to your present quest, pick up the pieces and continue along your journey.
If it’s not the correct path, you’ll begin to see signs. Others ideas will present themselves to you. Ways of achieving your dream in a manner you hadn’t anticipated will become apparent. (For example, I genuinely thought I’d only need to release one book to become a best-selling self-help author. I now realise that I’ll need a whole series.)
Remember this golden rule – you only give up on your dream when you find something more inspiring.
If you do, be flexible. Be open to what your heart is telling you. It can be hard to walk away from a project when you’ve put so much into it but you rarely leave with nothing. The lessons you’ve learned, the skills you’ve developed and the character you’ve built, will go with you into the next one and ensure your success.
Martin Luther King used this technique for guidance when doubting his path as leader of the civil rights movement during the 60s. He faced death threats, jail time, physical harm and the opposition of state governments and local police forces. In a candid passage from his autobiography, he describes the exact process he went through when considering giving up on his dream,
“I got out of bed and began to walk the floor. I had heard these things before [referring to a death threat he’d just received over the phone], but for some reason that night it got to me. I turned over and over and tried to go to sleep, but I couldn’t sleep. I was frustrated, bewildered, and then I got up. Finally I went to the kitchen and heated a pot of coffee. I was ready to give up. . .
With my head in my hands, I bowed over the kitchen table and began to pray aloud. The words I spoke to God that midnight are still vivid in my memory:
“Lord, I’m down here trying to do what’s right. I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right. But Lord, I must confess that I am weak now, I’m faultering. I’m losing my courage . . .”
At this point it seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice saying: “Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo, I will be with you. Even until the end of the world.”
I’ll leave you by paraphrasing Martin Luther’s message – live for what you believe is right. Stand up for what you love. The Universe will be with you, guiding you to where it wants you to be.
The 2 Paths to Financial Freedom
Earlier in the year, I was speaking to a friend who works at prestigious multinational bank. He’s young (about 23), and passed through their graduate training programme to land a top job. The starting salary was an impressive amount in the high five figures.
He wasn’t happy though. A typical working day sees him wake at around 5.30am and, sometimes, return home at 9pm. Occasionally, he’s also required to work at the weekend.
Oppressive working hours weren’t his only complaint. He also mentioned a lack of interest in his work, contending with office politics and having to deal with asshole bosses and managers.
This got me thinking. He had, what society would consider (but I don’t), a great job. Furthermore, he was already earning a lot of money and his salary would only continue to grow (perhaps it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch of the imagination to see him earning upwards of £150,000 by the time he turned 30). However, despite his position and financial prospects, he felt stressed, overworked and unsatisfied.
Is this the route to financial freedom?
Work your ass off in, what society considers, one of the top jobs available, amass a ton of money, and, if you’re lucky, retire early at the age of 50.
The Real Cost of Following The System’s Path
A closer look at the implications of earning a large salary, and the cost of living, reveal that The System’s dream of early retirement could be hollow.
To start with, a salaried job will require you to pay a lot of income tax. Depending on which country you live in, you might only see £65,000 out of the £100,000 you earn.
Then there’s the mortgage or rent. Of course, this figure will depend on your earning potential. However, it’s not uncommon to be paying 25% of your income (after tax) on putting a roof over your head.
Then, when you factor in the rising cost of food, transport, holidays, the debt you might be paying off from university and socialising, even the highest grossing salaries leave little to be saved or invested.
This isn’t all, though, as these figures say nothing about the phenomena of keeping up with the Jones’s. The more money you earn, the greater your expenses. If your social circle all possess a four or five-bedroom house, several large cars and holiday at exclusive resorts, it can appear a necessity that you do the same.
Being unable to resist peer pressure will take a huge chunk out of your freedom fund – the money saved to ensure you’re never obligated to work a job you don’t enjoy, either by making smart investments or launching a business you’re passionate about.
So, even if you earn £100,000 a year, when you factor in all these costs, perhaps you’re only left with £10,000.
Not bad, you might be thinking, but how long is that going to last?
Even after 10 years, you’ve only got £100,000. Will that be enough to support you for the rest of your life?
When you analyse The System’s Path a little closer, it begins to seem like a trap. The massive cost of living, whether by design or not, keeps you within it and dependent upon it. If someone earning £100,000 a year, within the top 2% to 3% of salaried incomes in the UK (according to IFS calculations using the Family Resources Survey 2011 – 2012), finds it difficult to escape, then what hope is there for the average person?
Not much, and this is my point. If you’re looking to win your financial freedom through The System, then you’re looking in the wrong place. Even if you follow all the rules (get great grades at school, your shiny degree and the kind of job that would make your parents proud), it’s still likely you’ll be waiting until you’re 50 to be free.
So, what are your options?
Work/Create a Job you Love
Before we go any further, you must enlarge your definition of financial freedom. It’s not exclusively about earning enough money so you never have to work again. It also means living a life where money doesn’t determine your decisions. For example, you work a job you love doing, irrespective of the amount it pays.
Think back to the previous two examples of my friend at JP Morgan, and the theoretical £100, 000 a year salaried worker. Neither are financially free. Despite both earning a lot of money, they are still trapped by their need to make it.
My friend doesn’t work at JP Morgan because he loves being there. He works there because he gets paid a lot and has the prospect of earning even more. He trades his time for money. Therefore, he isn’t financially free (and won’t be for many years to come, despite increases in salary) because money dictates one of his major life decisions and compels him to spend time doing something he doesn’t enjoy.
Ironically, your salary could be a third of my friends, yet because you love your work, you experience greater financial freedom.
This is a liberating message. If you can ignore societies’ conditioning, telling you that to enjoy your life, or be of value, you need a certain standard of living, then you have the opportunity to be financially free. Find a job or, more likely, create a role that you love doing and spend every day of your life stimulated and engaged.
Surely that’s worth having one less zero in your bank account at the end of the year?
Go for your ‘Crazy’ Dream
You may feel that I’m being presumptuous in my financial assessment of doing the work you love. Who says that you won’t end up making a lot of money and outstripping the employed high fliers? In fact, doing the work you love seems to be the only route to become mega rich.
Society is divided into three sections. First, you have the poor. They struggle to survive (and sometimes don’t) or live off the welfare state.
Then you have the largest section of society that, whether willingly or not, follow The System’s Path. The degree of wealth within this category varies greatly. At one end of the spectrum, you have those with no savings or investments and, possibly, living in debt. However, despite having low paid jobs, they still manage to function in society, follow the rules and accept the social norms.
At the other end of the spectrum, you have people like the two I highlighted in my earlier example. Society considers them rich, yet they are not financially free. They still live a life where, the majority time, they’re doing something they don’t want to do. They just get more handsomely rewarded than the rest.
The final section is the mega rich. Irrespective of age, they have the kind of wealth that means if they didn’t want to work another day in their life, they wouldn’t have to. With the exception of breaking the law (and even then, they can sometimes buy their freedom), they can do what they want to do, when they want to do it. They’re the multi-millionaires and billionaires and they share one strange thing in common.
Unless their wealth is inherited, they reached their exalted position by rejecting The System’s Path. They refused to conform and, instead, followed their ‘crazy’ dream or idea. Think Richard Branson dropping out of school and starting his record label. Think Jeff Bezos resigning from a well-paid, secure corporate job and risking it all to set up an online shop. Think of the countless sports stars who, as children, get told their dream is a one in a million shot, yet still follow it and eventually make their way into the professional ranks. All of them defy the conventional logic of the society they live in, yet all of them end up financially free.
So, what’s the message?
If you have a ‘crazy’ dream, or idea, that has the potential to make millions, then go for it. Despite The System’s protestations, you haven’t got much to lose.
What’s the alternative?
Working your ass off for thirty or, more likely, forty or fifty years doing a job you don’t enjoy just so you can stay afloat or, at best, be comfortably well-off. Why not give yourself a shot at true financial freedom by pursuing the only path that promises virtually unlimited wealth?
Either way, as long as you make a minimal amount of money to cover your expenses, you win.
With enough time, you might succeed and create your fortune. And even if you don’t, or it takes you longer than you expect, you still get to spend your days feeling stimulated and alive.
Conclusion
I hope this blog post has got you thinking. Following The System’s Path is not going to lead to your financial freedom.
If you want a safer life, where you can, largely, remain in your comfort zone, then choose this option. However, don’t make this decision thinking you can use the corporate ladder to slowly increase your salary to the point where you can retire early and walk off into the sunset.
One way or another, it will end up using you!
(Image taken from Keith Cooper photostream at flickr.com)
Transform your Life with Fight Club Philosophy
Are you looking for a radical way to shake up your life?
Are you bored with the seemingly meaningless way of life The System offers?
Would you like your life to be one big adventure?
If you answered yes to any, or all, of these questions then I have the solution. It comes in the form of a 1999 film that introduced a revolutionary new character with a dark, yet liberating, life philosophy.
I am, of course, talking about Fight Club and Tyler Durden and, by learning from its philosophy, you’ll be able to transform yourself into the person you’ve always wanted to be.
Philosophy Number 1: Live a Life that Makes You Feel Alive
What was the fight club in Fight Club all about? A chance for some blue and white-collar workers to vent their aggression?
No, it was an opportunity for a group of men, totally disconnected from life, to feel alive.
Fight Club was criticised for the level of violence displayed. People said it promoted fascism and misogamy. These critics totally missed the point.
The men in Fight Club were so numb from a life of pumping gas, waiting tables, working in offices and chasing the empty dream of consumerism, that they needed something as extreme as fighting to remind them they were alive.
Remember what led Jack (Edward Norton’s character) to Tyler Durden and the creation of Fight Club. He was an insomniac. His life was so dull, he described himself as living in a state that was neither ‘asleep nor awake’.
What happened when he started attending fight club? He slept like a baby!
The lesson here is that without stimulation, your mind is prone to turning in on itself, shutting down or seeking other more destructive outlets such a drugs, emotional eating or gambling. Therefore, you must engage in, and with, the pursuits, people and activities that make you feel alive. This prevents mental illness, increases your happiness and unleashes your creativity.
Philosophy Number 2: Let Go of the Need to Control
‘Hitting bottom isn’t a weekend retreat. It isn’t a god damn seminar. Stop trying to control everything and let go. LET GO!’
– Tyler Durden
Do you find that attempts to control your life often backfire?
Whether a natural impulse, or inherited from growing up in such a demanding society (exams, deadlines, work targets etc.), the need to control is hard to resist. We struggle, push and strain, hoping that if we can exert enough effort, then we can achieve our goals.
But what if there was another way?
Throughout the film, Tyler urges Jack to let go of his need to control. This, he teaches him, is the only way to evolve and be free.
To prove his point, he lets go of the steering wheel while they’re driving on the freeway. Jack immediately urges Tyler to take control of the car. Tyler refuses. Jack’s been questioning him about the exact direction that Fight Club is taking as it transitions into Project Mayhem. He’s insisting that he’s kept informed of all developments.
Tyler doesn’t want to hear this. To him, it’s a sign that Jack hasn’t learned a thing since coming to Fight Club. He doesn’t realise that projects evolve and grow and can’t be micro managed. Sometimes, the destination isn’t clear, but if we’re open to where the journey might lead, we can still achieve the outcomes we desire.
Of course, without Tyler controlling the car, it crashes and careens off the road. It’s an extreme lesson and, for a moment, the viewer is left wondering what it’s about. However, Tyler, in his twistedly brilliant way reveals all, as says to Jack while scrambling from the wreckage, ‘God damn, we’ve just had a near life experience.’
He wants to show Jack what happens when you learn to let go of your need to control. You don’t die. Your world doesn’t fall apart. You don’t lose all motivation and you’re still able to function and perform important duties. However, what does happen, when you stop attempting to control every tiny detailed, is that you are opened to the adventure of life.
Defeats turn into opportunities. A blocked road alerts you to a more interesting path. Being injured or unable to do something, frees up time for you to explore other areas.
The message is that your subconscious mind is connected to a deeper wisdom than your conscious. You can’t possibly control all the millions of outcomes that need to go your way to be successful. It would take too long. At some point, you must let go and trust that everything that needs to happen will occur.
Philosophy Number 3: Do What Matters and Forget Everything Else
In one of the most powerful scenes of the film, Tyler holds a gun to a convenience store workers head. The worker (Raymond) is terrified. He thinks his store is being held up. However, his terror soon turns to confusion as Tyler starts questioning him about his life.
Raymond has been putting off becoming a vet because of all the obstacles he believes stand in his way.
Tyler views everything Raymond says as an excuse. So, he gives him an option. Either he can enrol in veterinary school and follow his dreams, or, Tyler can re-visit him in six weeks and blow his brains out.
Extreme and cruel?
Perhaps, but Tyler also makes a brilliant point. Far too many of us don’t follow through with the truly important things in our lives. We’re too willing to believe our own excuses and spend our lives focusing on the small stuff we think needs to be done.
The problem is that, unlike Raymond, none of us are faced with a life or death choice. When walking The System’s Path, our decline is slow. We don’t notice the loss of vitality and health until it’s too late. Looking back, we rue the wasted years and regret the dreams we didn’t follow but, at the time, we have no perspective.
When faced with a life and death situation, you see clearly. When threatened with the loss of everything, you realise you’re free to do anything. What else matters? Paying the rent on the crappy apartment you hate? Paying a mortgage to a bank who’s ripping you off? Turning up on time to a job that bores your brains out?
Are you really going to be thinking about these things on your death bed?
No, so why let them stop you going for the life you want?
The lesson here is that living your dreams is relatively simple. There’s nothing stopping you. If someone put a gun to your head and told you to follow through on that idea you have for a business, or pursue your dream to be an actor, you’d do it, and probably be successful too!
Final Thought
In, perhaps, the most powerful speech of the film (or any film), Tyler tells the group of disaffected men congregated at Fight Club, “We’re the middle children of history. No purpose, no place. We have no great war, no great depression. Our great war is a spiritual war; our great depression is our lives.”
It’s a sentiment echoed by another great thinker – Victor Frankl – when he wrote this in his best-selling book, Man’s Search for Meaning,
“Every age has its own collective neurosis, and every age needs its own psychotherapy to cope with it. The existential vacuum which is the mass neurosis of the present time can be described as a private and personal form of nihilism; for nihilism can be defined as the contention that being has no meaning.”
At its deepest level, Fight Club is a film about finding meaning. Life seems pointless because you’ve been conditioned to value things that make you feel empty (accumulation of wealth and status). If you can reject this conditioning and, instead, win the ‘spiritual war’ of your soul (obey your inner voice, rather than societies, in all your major life decisions), then the sense of purpose that eludes so many of us, will be yours.
(image taken from Jess’s photostream at flickr.com)
To read more on Tyler Durden and Fight Club, please check out Self-Improvement is Masturbation: Tyler Durden’s 3 Rules for an Exciting Life. With over 3000 shares it’s the sites most popular post.
How your Mind is being Controlled and What you need to do to Stop it
Did you know that you only have 5% conscious control over your daily actions and decisions?
The other 95%, according to neuroscientists, is determined by your subconscious programming. This means that when you choose what to eat, perform in a presentation, compete in a contest, sleep at night and interact with loved ones, you have very little direct scope to influence the outcome.
Instead, what occurs is decided by your subconscious programming. This is determined by years of repeating certain actions (e.g. practising a musical instrument), behaviour (e.g. always choosing fatty foods) and also the beliefs you’ve adopted about yourself and the world.
There’s a problem with this 5%/95% balance. So that you don’t have to learn important skills and, even language, from scratch every time you engage in a task, you have evolved to run mainly on autopilot. However, it’s likely you’ve had little influence over part of the programming that controls you when in this mode.
Of course, you can repeat actions over and over and, thereby, learn a skill, but the proficiency with which you use that skill will be determined by your beliefs. Most of these beliefs (unless you are an exceptionally conscious being and have been since early childhood) will have seeped into your programming unconsciously.
Consider The System we’ve been raised in and you’ll see why this is a problem. We’ve been taught that so much is impossible and that we have weaknesses and limits. Furthermore, we receive conditioning through the various influential figures in our lives – parents, teachers, bosses, popular people we want to impress, girlfriends or boyfriends, religious leaders, therapists – who comment on our ability and worth. If their influence is strong enough, then we’ll believe what they say, whether their comments are true or false, positive or negative.
I hope the picture’s getting clearer. A person running largely on autopilot, receiving a large amount of negative environmental conditioning, over which (especially at a young age), they have little ability to filter out, ends up feeling powerless and frustrated.
Have you ever felt like this?
If so then I want you to know you’re not a victim to chance, God or genetics. Furthermore, your life isn’t doomed to play out the way it always has. There is a means to unlocking your potential and living the life you want but you need to be aware of The System’s manipulation.
In this article, I’m going to explain the ceiling it imposes on you and show you how to break free. For if a lack of understanding about the power of belief can shrink your opportunities, then clarity will open the gates to a life beyond your wildest dreams.
How Powerful is The Power of Belief?
The placebo effect provides the most compelling evidence of the power of belief. Throughout medical history, there are numerous documented cases of patients reporting healings, or that their symptoms have disappeared, after treatment with ‘fake drugs’ and, even, ‘fake surgery’. Of course, the patient doesn’t know this at the time. They believe they are the recipient of the correct medical intervention and respond as if it is so.
Take an example from the 2002 New England Journal of Medicine. In this case, prominent knee surgeon Dr Bruce Moseley, conducted an experiment on three groups of patients, all of whom experienced osteoarthritis of the knee.
Dr Mosely had enjoyed great success with his previous surgeries and wanted to discover exactly which part of the procedure was effective. Therefore, with the first control group, he shaved the damaged cartilage in the knee. In the second, he flushed out the knee joint, removing material thought to be causing inflammation. With the final group, he did nothing. He performed a fake surgery, making the standard incisions but carrying out no medical procedure. Of course, the final group were led to believe they’d received ground-breaking surgery and were put on the same postoperative care program as the other two.
The outcome?
The third groups knee conditions improved to the same level as the first two!
Take a moment to let that sink in. It means that belief played just as powerful a healing role as surgery.
Can your mind fathom that?
The System we’re raised in teaches us that physical injury or illness needs a physical cure. We’re like machines. If one part doesn’t work then you take it out, either replacing it with a new one or removing altogether.
Yet here we have an example proving there’s a force beyond the physical that also plays a role in healing. The mind, if convinced of the truth, can compel the body to produce a healing effect.
With this kind of power, what else do you think it could do (or more pertinently, prevent you from doing) if manipulated or harnessed in the correct way?
Let’s explore that question.
The above example was taken from a book called, The Biology of Belief, written by Dr Bruce Lipton. Further on, he provides another fascinating example but this time concerning the power of a nocebo – the reverse of the placebo effect where a suggestion or diagnosis causes illness when there was no physical cause.
In this example, a patient called Sam Londe was treated for a believed case of esophageal cancer. At the time (1974), the medical establishment believed this form of the disease to be fatal. Nothing could be done but ease the patients suffering and prolong their life before an inevitable death. His Doctor, Clifton Meador, treated him with this belief, and although initially helped Londe, was certain that the cancer would return.
Sadly, there were no surprises or miracle healings in this example. Londe died a few weeks after his diagnosis. However, there was a big surprise when the results of the autopsy were revealed.
It turned out that Londe had very little cancer in his body. There were a couple of spots on the liver, and one on the lung, but not enough to kill him. Furthermore, there was no trace of the esophageal cancer that was believed to be the cause of his death. Dr Meador told the Discovery Channel, ‘He died with cancer, but not from cancer.’
So, what killed him?
We can only conclude that it was the power of belief. The Doctor, an influential and powerful figure in society, presented Londe with a diagnosis that was not true. However, because of his status, Londe had not thought to question the Doctor’s diagnosis and instead, accepted it for the truth.
What followed was Londe’s death. Although there was not enough cancer present in his body to kill him, he’d developed a belief that there was. Due to this programming, his body was compelled (via the 5%/95% mechanism) to act upon this belief.
I’ve included these two examples in a deliberate attempt to blow your mind. I want you to understand the role the power of belief can play in your life, often without you realising it. I believe The System, either accidently or deliberately, uses the power of belief to blind you from how amazing life could be, both for you individually, and humanity.
Set the Elephant Free
Another reason for the second examples inclusion was to demonstrate the power we accredit the people The System considers influential. Do you think that if a friend told Sam Londe he had esophageal cancer and, therefore, had no chance of recovery, then his body would have responded in the same manner?
It’s unlikely. It was because the role of Doctor is so respected in our society, and seen as a keeper of knowledge that ordinary mortals do not possess, that his suggestion about the terminal nature of the cancer carried so much weight.
When you consider that Doctors are just one of many influential figures our system ascribes a significant influence over our minds, you begin to see the extent of the problem. When these voices combine, telling us how the world is, and what our opportunities are within it, a model of our possibilities is created in our minds. And much like the diagnosis the Doctor gave Sam Londe, this model shuts us down.
We no longer need the nine tenths of our brain we famously don’t access because, apparently, our possibilities are so limited. In fact, we hardly need anything at all to function in The System’s world. Just work hard and comply. Our creativity, innovation, imagination, personality and uniqueness have no purpose because we’ve been led to believe that a world where our dreams come true is pure fantasy.
So, how do you free yourself from The System’s manipulation and harness the power of belief so you can do whatever you want with your life?
This story, taken from Brett Moran’s book, Wake The F#ck Up, will point you in the right direction,
‘In Southeast Asia, elephants are still used for transportation. At the end of each day, the elephant handlers prevent them from running away by looping a thin piece of rope around one of their legs and attaching it to the ground using a small stick. Do you think the elephants, capable of moving massive loads, couldn’t simply pull out the stick and do a runner? Of course they could, so why don’t they?
When the Elephants are young they are restrained by hefty ropes and no matter how hard they struggle and pull they can’t escape. Over time they give up fighting and by the time they reach adulthood they have been conditioned to believe they can’t move when they’re tied up, even though the smallest of tugs would set them free.’
You are the elephant; wise, mighty and powerful.
Realise this, pull your rope out of the ground and do whatever the hell you want!
(image taken from DavidBlackwell stream flickr.com)
How To Get The First 1000 Subscribers To Your Website
The 29th December 2016 will forever be a significant day.
It was a Thursday, and every Thursday, I open Campaign Monitor (the email marketing company I use) and check how many new subscribers I get each week.
I knew I was getting close. Two weeks prior, I had an article featured on Pick The Brain. This brought in the usual flow of 30 to 50 new subscribers and got me within 15 of hitting the magic number. However, after all these years, 1000 subscribers still seemed quite far away.
Imagine my delight, then, when I opened Campaign Monitor and saw that the magic number had been surpassed. There, on my screen (as you see in the image below), was the total figure of 1019 subscribers (you need to add together the Pre-Book Release and the Screw The System Monthly Newsletter to get this figure).
The Backstory
I want to tell you about my journey to gaining 1000 subscribers. Commencing April 2012 when this website went live, and finishing on the hallowed date listed above, the 4 years and 8 months saw a lot of struggle, hard work, mistakes, experimentation and lessons learned.
My hope is that you’ll learn something from my experience. Of course, I’m no expert when it comes to internet marketing (the length of time it took me to gain 1000 subscribers clearly indicates this). However, my story is real and this is where its value lies.
You may have a similar goal. Whether your message is intended for a personal development audience, or a completely different niche, I believe you will find something of value here. I’m going to share with you what worked, what didn’t work and some of the most useful resources I discovered when it came to building an audience.
I entered this game green. I knew absolutely nothing about internet marketing or how to build an audience. Someone told me that if you have a message to share, then you go on social media, start posting or tweeting about your blog or book, and people will show an interest.
Simple, I thought. I believed in my message. I believed in my book. I would just let the quality of my work speak for itself.
That was my first major mistake.
Promotion is possibly more important, and, likely, more time consuming, than creation. You need a strategy and to be equipped with the knowledge of how to bring an audience to what you’ve created.
Remember, you’re operating on an internet with over 250 million active websites. How else is anyone going to see your work?
It took me a while to learn this. At first, I feared the reason I was failing to gain the desired number of subscribers was the quality of my work. Despite having spent four and a half years developing my writing skills under the tutor ledge of a best-selling author, perhaps I just didn’t have a message worth hearing.
You might have similar thoughts. Dumbfounded by the lack of interest in your work, it’s easy to question yourself and reach the conclusion that you haven’t got what it takes. However, this might not be the case.
There’s every chance you have a message worth hearing but have underestimated what’s required to get it heard. If so, you’ll take heart from what you are about to read. If I can struggle and scramble, with no prior knowledge about internet marketing, and still build a following of 1000 plus subscribers (and counting), then I’m certain you can too.
Here’s how I did it.
April 2012 – October 2014: The Wasted Years
As mentioned, social media was the only strategy I had for building an audience when I began my journey. For me, this equated posting and tweeting on Facebook and Twitter.
I’d go on these platforms, with maybe 50 friends and 100 followers at the time, tweet a link to my website or post a status update with a section of my book, and rub my hands waiting for those subscribers to roll in. I’d be lucky if I got a single like, a retweet was totally out of the question.
Despite my lack of success with social media, though, I did get one thing right. My website was set up correctly. Sure, it could have been optimized to gain more sign ups, and I could have spent more time figuring out what keywords I wanted to rank for, but I had the basics covered.
My blog was there, and updated monthly, so readers could get a taste for my work. I had an About Page, so they could resonate with my WHY. And, most importantly, I had my free book as an incentive for signing up.
My first mini breakthrough came 4 months after Screw The System went live. Although I wasn’t pursuing it as a strategy for gaining subscribers, I decided to write an article for a personal development blog I’d been reading. I liked their message, and their submissions process seemed straightforward, so I applied.
To my delight, Finerminds featured my guest post on ‘Letting Go’. This brought me in the highest concentration of subscribers I’d seen to date – about 15 in a week (compared to the 2 a month I’d been averaging before).
You’d have thought a lightbulb would have flashed in my head. Clearly, guest blogging on prominent personal development sites was the way forward.
It didn’t.
Perhaps because of the overwhelm I was experiencing at learning the new skill of marketing, and acquainting myself with the workings of social media (which seemed harder than understanding a foreign language), I wasn’t thinking with a great deal of clarity. I didn’t follow up my semi successful first guest post for another 5 months. Instead, I plodded along making daily social media posts, writing blog posts for my own site (that sadly no one would read) and making ineffective YouTube videos.
By the time my site had been active for a year (April 2013), I’d amassed a grand total of 83 subscribers.
Moving into Screw The System’s second year, I was marginally more informed than when I started. Although I’d overlooked the power of guest blogging, my mind did occasionally wander back to this avenue. However, the research required to find sites to write for, the infrequency with which they accepted articles, and their poor response rate to my emails, put me off.
So, instead of guest blogging, I decided to start writing bimonthly blog posts on my own site. Sure, some of these were popular, and for (at the time) a tiny site like mine, received a high number of social shares, but it did very little to increase my subscriber numbers because so few people knew Screw The System existed.
Moving into 2014, I was spinning my wheels. I crossed my two-year anniversary with only 197 subscribers.
Little did I know, this was all about to change . . .
November 2014 – December 2016: Working Smart
The watershed moment in the history of Screw The System’s (the site’s name before I changed it to Escape The System in Nov’19) growth came at the end of October 2014. It was then that I read an article on Jon Morrow’s website, Smart Blogger, with the title ’11 Traffic Techniques That Are a Waste Of Time For Beginners’.
In the section entitled ’11 Traffic Techniques You Shouldn’t Be Using’ I recognised all my mistakes. In his ‘The Only Four Traffic Techniques That Work for Beginners,’ I saw the blueprint for success.
It’s hard to describe the bitter sweet emotions I felt as I digested this article. On the one hand, I felt like a total idiot. On the other, I was jubilant with the knowledge that, after two and half years of fumbling around in the dark, I finally had a clear strategy to follow.
Saving my advertising budget for later, not having the time to create a podcast and having had bad experiences with outreach, I decided to focus on the first point on the list – Guest Blogging.
Of course, I’d already had some success with this avenue but it took reading Jon Morrow’s article to snap me out of my inertia and start me submitting content to other sites.
Using the 80/20 principle as my guide (I found that, when my articles were featured on sites like Elite Daily, Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life and Motivational Memo, although prestigious, they didn’t bring in a great subscriber rate) I decided to focus my guest blogging efforts on Pick The Brain. Between November 2014 and December 2016, I had fourteen articles featured on their site. This brought me in an estimated 550 new subscribers.
GUEST BLOGGING WORKS!!!
There are two other occasions that deserve a mention in the story of this sites rise to 1000 subscribers.
Twice, I’ve had key influencers share my work and the results can only be described as guest blogging on steroids.
First, my writing mentor, Tom Butler-Bowdon, was kind enough to feature me in his newsletter on two occasions. Once, back in December 2012, and again in May of 2016. Both times, he primarily focused on the book he helped me create, but links were also left to my website and this yielded close to 100 new subscribers.
The second time a key influencer featured my work was blind luck. Or was it?
In early December 2016, Susan Cain, best-selling author of, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, posted a link to one of my Pick The Brain articles on her Facebook Page. The article was entitled, ‘The 3 Reasons Why You Don’t Need to ‘Fit In’ and it proved popular with her audience.
I didn’t know what was happening at first. Over the space of two weeks, I’d received an additional 150 subscribers and I had no idea where they came from. I didn’t have a guest post out on Pick The Brain so I was a little dumbfounded (although delighted) with the sudden growth. Fortunately, one of her fans got in touch and explained he’d reached my website through her Facebook page.
This boost to my subscriber base could easily be written off as luck. I hadn’t contacted Susan and asked her to feature my work. She just did and a chance experience like this can’t be relied upon to consistently build an audience. However, there’s a reason why she featured my work.
Susan Cain, or one of her associated (I flatter myself in thinking it was her – although most likely it wasn’t), clearly felt my article resonated with their audience. They liked it. They thought it was of a sufficient quality, and strong enough message, to share.
This isn’t luck.
It comes down to those endless hours I spent developing my writing craft, and my obsessive (occasionally verging on unhealthy) insistence that every piece of work I put out had to be of the highest possible standard. This is what caught the attention of a key influencer and led them to share my work.
The Final Analysis
Why am I stressing the importance of breaking the 1000 subscriber barrier?
It’s partly personal, partly practical.
When I started my journey back in April 2012, 1000 subscribers seemed like an impossibly large number. Although I believed in my work, I couldn’t see how I would attract that many people to my site. Therefore, to have crossed this boundary is to achieve the impossible. The boost this gives my self-belief now has me aiming for 10,000 subscribers and knowing I’ll get there.
The practical aspect of achieving 1000 subscribers relates to the monetization of your blog. An influential learning resource for me was Chris Guillebeau’s PDF, 279 Days To Overnight Success. This eBook charts the story of growing his blog (The Art of Non-Conformity), and becoming a full-time writer, in just 279 days. In it, he counsels his readers thus,
‘When can you start thinking about getting paid for your great work without compromising the integrity that helped you create the following?
Your numbers may vary, but I think the approximate number to start thinking seriously about this is 1000 followers or subscribers.’
Of course, you (and I) want to make money from your website or blog. There’s nothing wrong with that. However, it’s difficult to do that with just 100 or 200 subscribers.
Therefore, achieving the 1000 subscriber mark represents the beginning of making a living from your website or blog. With a well engaged email open rate of 20% – 25%, you have an audience of 200 to 250 people who are interested in your work and have a greater inclination to purchase products you offer.
Before I end this article, I want to mention a couple points I left out of the main body of the story, yet still feel could be of benefit to you when building your audience.
1. Although the growth of my subscriber base between Nov’14, and Dec’16, had a lot to do with focusing on a strategy, the increase in the number of hours I spent working on my website also played an important role. As you will read in this article, between April 2012 and October 2014, I was far too easily distracted by earning an income through my other work as a tennis coach and hypnotherapist.
That all changed after reading another Jon Morrow article, ‘Why Your Site Gets Such Pitiful Traffic (and what to do about it)’. His advice, ‘For the next 4-6 years, dedicate 20 -40 hours a week to learning and practising traffic generation,’ caused me to reassess how many hours I was putting into growing my audience. I found myself lacking. As a result, I set myself a demanding (alongside my day job) new goal of working 20 hours a week on my website. Achieving it, played a crucial role in the consistency with which I could produce content to share on other sites.
2. Generally, social media was a ineffective and time inefficient means of growing my subscriber base (although good for engaging with my followers). However, there was one exception.
Sharing posts from my Escape The System Facebook page to a popular, and active (this is the key), Facebook group (in my case Supporters of David Icke and his Work) proved to be a very non labour intensive way of gaining extra subscribers. I would still say guest blogging brought greater returns, but you can’t argue with spending 5 minutes creating, and sharing, a Facebook post to receive 10 extra subscribers.
* * * * *
And so, my epic journey ends.
It’s been demanding, exhausting even, but, ultimately, very rewarding.
I just want to take this opportunity to say a MASSIVE THANK YOU to you – my (now) 1160 subscribers for believing in me and your continued support. I truly appreciate it and I promise to continue putting everything I have into my work.
(image taken from iSchumi photostream flickr.com)
Don’t end up Sleeping in Bed with your Mommy
Talk About It!
And this was the problem. One was a rugby player, one was a fireman and one was a comedian. The person they had to show the world, the man they felt they had to be to successfully navigate their strong male environment, never expressed the deeper side to their nature. Eventually, this shut them down.
Final Thought
The Insanity of Humanity
I’m currently watching ‘Beyond The Flood’. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio and focuses on the devastation being caused by climate change. For today, 30th October, it’s free on a ton of different devices and on YouTube. My advice is to watch it.
It’s shocking, heartbreaking and disgusting. I don’t know what to think about humanity. It honestly leaves me with a feeling of revulsion that we knowingly continue to use sources of energy that are destroying the planet at an alarming rate. It’s beyond criminal.
I just saw this statistic. 50% of the oceans coral reefs have been destroyed in the last 30 years. 80% of the tropical forests in Indonesia have been burned and cleared so that corporations can grow palm trees to provide palm oil in most of our products, both food and cleaning.
I feel helpless and enraged at the same time. I studied Politics at University. I wanted to go into it when I left but I saw it as futile. I didn’t want to be a Yes man in the Conservative or Labour Party and I believed the party I believed in – The Green Party – was so far from ever making an impact that it was pointless. Instead, I thought I’d get into personal development – a field I love. I thought I’d become successful in that and then, using my profile, I’d be able to transition into Politics and have an impact. Writing that seems laughable. What impact am I really having?
Anyway, there are some small measures we can all take to make a difference. It’s unlikely governments are going to take a lead on climate change because they’re in the pocket of big business. Ruthless scumbag industrialist like the Koch brothers in the USA (who really should go down in history alongside Hitler and Stalin) own a large portion of the fossil fuel industry and lobby government to make sure no measures are taken that would harm their interests and promote the protection of the environment. Therefore, it’s up to us to make a change. Here’s what I do (and I’m very very far from perfect).
Positives:
Buy mainly organic food
Observe meat free Monday
Limit my beef consumption to only one meal a week
Use a green electricity supplier (Ecotricity)
Didn’t fly at all in 2015
Refuse to buy shares and invest in companies that are unethical (which means virtually all of them)
Don’t work for unethical companies
Negatives and things to be improved:
Flew twice in 2016
Still eat way too much meat
Drive a petrol car
Have way too many hygiene, toiletries, cleaning and food products containing palm oil
My banking is done with HSBC
Rant over!
(image taken from Jan Smith photostream flickr.com)
The 5 Ways The System keeps you Trapped (and what to do about it)
Do you have any idea what you are truly capable of?
Can you grasp the awesomeness of the life you could be living RIGHT NOW?
You, yes YOU, were born with the potential to be great and have all the resources needed to be happy, loved and wealthy.
What, then, causes the vast majority of us to lose sight of the bigger picture? What causes us to lose belief in ourselves, suppress our calling and make the majority of our decisions based on a fear of what could go wrong, rather than the possibility of what we stand to gain?
THE SYSTEM
This invisible prison, comprising all the things we’re told by our parents, teachers, bosses, friends, colleagues, the media, government and religious leaders (concerning what can and can’t be done and what’s acceptable and what’s not) sets boundaries in our minds regarding life and our possibilities within it.
Most people stick to these boundaries. They accept life as it is presented to them and do their best to ‘fit in’.
For some, though, it’s impossible. They know there’s got to be more to life but, sadly, can’t define what it is or lack a belief they can achieve it. In short, they feel trapped.
If this describes you then I have something very important to share. There IS a way to break free. There is a way to access all of your potential so you no longer have to accept the life The System presents you with and can, instead, create your own.
To do this, you have to free your mind from The System’s conditioning. It traps you in 5 key areas that I will now explain.
1. By Encouraging you to Live in a State of Fear about what might happen in the Future
We worry about getting old; we worry about illness or developing a life threatening disease. We worry about losing our jobs and not having enough money to pay the bills. We worry about failing at work, in our hobbies and with our dreams.
We are constantly projecting ourselves into the future and imagining events going wrong.
Where does all this worry come from?
Is it a natural human condition?
Absolutely not!!!
It exists because we exist in an environment of fear. Newspapers, and the wider media, are always telling us about what’s going wrong in the world. Our parents and teachers inform us of the consequences of not studying hard at school. Employers and colleagues play on the fear of being out of work.
What happens when you are conditioned into accepting these outlooks?
You stop taking risks. You stop taking advantage of opportunities because all you imagine, when contemplating action, is failure.
The solution to this problem is letting go. Using awareness and discipline, you must monitor your thoughts on a daily basis and remind yourself to let go whenever a fearful projection of what might happen in the future arises.
Do this and you’ll learn that 85% of your fears about what might happen never occur. And even if you do make a mistake, the chances are that you’ll be able to use it to your advantage or, at the very least, learn from it and improve.
2. By Keeping your Mind Focused on the Trivial
In my book, I talk about ‘The System’s trance’. This term describes a state of consciousness where we’re permanently distracted by various information streams.
When in ‘The System’s trance’, it’s possible to spend an entire day without any form of deeper thought. You get ready for work while listening to the radio. While commuting, you’re reading the newspaper. While at work, you’re focusing on the job at hand but also browsing the internet and scoping out social media. The journey home might involve plugging into your song catalogue. When you get back, it could be an evening of TV or box sets.
What happens when you live this way?
You end up living in a permanent state of distraction. You jump from one information stream to the other, getting a brief buzz from being momentarily entertained, yet never experiencing any peace and, more importantly, struggling to focus your thoughts.
You need your mind to be able to escape The System. Your ability to get clear on what you want, and then focus obsessively on achieving it, is the number 1 factor in determining whether you will be authentically successful.
So what can you do to break ‘The System’s trance’?
Clearly, you’ll want to keep your engagement in the information streams listed to a minimum. Beyond that, you must take time to harness the power of your mind. Meditation to clear your thoughts is great, but you’ll also have to set aside time to really focus on what you want to achieve.
3. By Influencing you to Worry about what other People Think
Most people spend their lives unable to be who they want to be, or take the action they want to take, or say the thing they really feel because they are worried about what other people will think.
Playing on this fear is one of The System’s most effective strategies for keeping us trapped. From our teenage years, we’re taught that ‘fitting in’ is the path to being popular and happy and as a result, a pathological fear of standing out develops. The safest policy appears to be filtering our actions and words in such a way that we’ll never offend and be acceptable to all.
If we don’t follow this approach, we’re told, we risk being branded a troublemaker, weird or an outsider. All kinds of problems occur when we get stuck with one of these labels. Our options for socialising diminish, our circle of friends shrinks and we end up spending more and more time on our own.
As unappealing as these outcomes may seem, though, there are consequences to allowing a worry of what other people think dictate your decisions and behaviour. A lack of spontaneity, an inability to express genuine concerns and an unwillingness to be seen to fail will all stop you from advancing your life.
The best way to overcome this worry is to push yourself out of your comfort zone. Do the thing you fear being ridiculed for and you’ll discover your fear was disproportionate to the reaction you actually receive.
After-all, most people are far too preoccupied with their own lives, and themselves, to spare you a second thought. Use this to your advantage.
4. By Encouraging you to Chase
As children, we’re taught that we need to get good grades so we can go to University. At University, we’re told that we need to get a degree so that we can land a so-called ‘good job’. However, when we get the job (assuming you do), the chase isn’t over. We now have to seek promotion after promotion so that we can earn enough money to retire as early as possible. When we retire though, we’re so burnt out from a lifetime of chasing that we can never really enjoy the moment.
The System teaches you to want things. Accumulating more and more of them is the route to happiness. The problem with things, though, is that you always have to work towards them. As a result, it’s very hard not to spend a lot of your life focused on the future.
This saps your energy. Chasing after something you don’t have involves struggle. It also dulls your happiness and damages your ability to enjoy the present. Worst of all, it places you in the wrong mind-set to be successful. After-all, how can you achieve your goals when you approach them from a position of lack?
The solution to The System’s trap of chasing is to regularly practice living in the now! Enjoy each moment as much as you possibly can. Let go of all of your worries and stop seeing your happiness and success as being dependent on you achieving something in the future. Do this, and not only will you have more fun, you’ll also find you have more energy for the goals you want to achieve.
5. By Influencing you to be Afraid of ‘Being Yourself’
Did you know that one of your greatest resources for authentic success is non-conformity?
Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? However, have you ever noticed how the people celebrated by society are the ones who are not afraid of being themselves? They don’t play by the rules and they don’t keep their heads down. Instead, they embrace who they are and they allow their personalities to shine.
Perhaps the best example of this is Muhammad Ali. At first, the 20th centuries greatest non-conformist was reviled by many sections of American society. However, as the time passed, and he insisted on staying true to himself and his beliefs, he attained an adoration that can only be achieved when you’re living from an authentic place.
The problem is, though, that The System will do everything in its power to make you afraid, and ashamed, of being yourself. It plays on one of your greatest fears – being rejected – to cow you into conformity. You’re taught that uniqueness is something to be mocked and that expressing opinions, or following interests, that run counter to what’s considered popular is uncool.
The consequences of bowing to this pressure are spending your days living someone else’s life. Whether it’s the life your parents want for you or the life your friends say you should have, the success you achieve will feel hollow because it is not determined by you.
You escape this trap by having the courage to be yourself. Over the course of the next week, I challenge you to tell someone you know something about you that would surprise them. Whether it’s a big dream you want to achieve or exhibiting a behaviour you would normally keep to yourself (for example, singing while in their presence), taking this action gets you out of your head and makes you more comfortable in your skin.
Remember, most of the concerns you have about doing this will never materialise. As always, your greatest enemy is the fear The System puts in your mind.
Before you Go
This article is one of a two part series. While this one focuses on how The System traps you personally, the next article focuses on how The System traps you professionally.
So if you want to discover how to break free from a job you hate and begin making money from something you are passionate about, then be sure to subscribe below. You’ll receive the next update in roughly a month’s time.
(image taken from Craig Sunter photostrem flickr.com)
1 Weird Hack that will Massively Increase your Motivation
Do you believe in time travel?
I do!
Not in a ‘Back to the Future’ sense of the word (although wouldn’t that be cool), but I do believe in our ability to go back into our minds and memories and relive experiences from the past.
Some of you will know that, when I’m not running this website and promoting my book, I work as a hypnotherapist. One of the techniques I trained in is called Time Line Therapy.
This technique, created by NLP Master Trainer Tad James, asks the client to go back through their memories to a significant emotional event connected with the problem state they are experiencing in the present. For example, a person terrified of public speaking might go back to a humiliating childhood memory, of being laughed at, while trying to speak in front of a class at school.
They are then asked, ‘What’s the one learning that the you now, would tell the you back then, that were they to live it, would completely free them from this feeling of X (whatever the problem state might be)?’ If the client successfully embraces this learning, their subconscious is then updated and they are freed from an emotion that has been holding them back for years.
This is a simplified explanation of Time Line Therapy (and if you want a more detailed idea of how it works then watch this video of Tad James in action) but the point is that, through our minds, time travel is possible.
If you can get into a relaxed enough state, and focus clearly on a powerful memory from the past, after a while, you will be drawn deeply into that memory so that it begins to feel real.
You then have two options. You can just enjoy, or experience (if it’s a bad one), the memory. Or, you can use the Time Line Therapy question above and try to work out what you needed in order to successfully progress through what you were experiencing.
I’ve been using this hack a lot lately with some amazing results. I wander back in my mind to some key moments in my development, centered around the time when I first started getting intuitions about what I felt was my life’s purpose, and then ask this question, ‘What would I have done back then if I’d had the knowledge that I now possess?’
You see, back then, I wasn’t the person that I am now. Although I had this embryonic dream of writing a best-selling personal development book, it was also one of the darkest times in my life (I was 22 at the time and had just finished University).
I was lost and full of self-doubt. On top of that, I had these doubts echoed to me on a daily basis by careers advisers, parents and an environment of lack (lack of supportive friends, lack of my own money, lack of any contacts or ideas on how to break into the personal development industry).
As a result, my progress was incredibly slow. It was a case of one step forward, nine tenths of a step back. I doubted every decision (or proposed decision) I made and had to test the water with everything I did (rather than diving straight in, learning from my mistakes, and making progress).
With this approach, it’s hardly a surprise that the meteoric rise to the top I frequently imagined, never occurred.
But it could have done! And this is the point.
If only I’d known back then, what I know now, my progress would have been so much quicker. If I’d approached my dream with the energy that I now possess, I could have halved the time which I took to achieve it.
I don’t want you to fall into the same trap as you advance in the quest to live your dreams.
My problem was self-doubt but there could be any one (or more) of an array of problem states that currently block or slow your path. How can you tackle them?
As crazy as it sounds, by using the technique above!
Altering the Course of Your History
Right now, I want you to recall a pivotal time in your life, when you had the opportunity to make significant progress or alter the course of your life in a positive way, yet you didn’t take full advantage of it.
Drift back into the memory. Focus on where you were and what you could see. Remember the possibilities and excitement of the time. Try and recall what you were doing. You’re looking for a specific memory. The more you focus on it, the more real it will feel. Close your eyes if it helps (it probably will!).
Now ask yourself this question, ‘What would I have done back then if I had the knowledge that I now possess?’
Now see yourself doing it. Rewrite your own history and feel the excitement of putting that knowledge into action.
Then, once you’ve immersed yourself in the experience, write down your answer.
For help doing this, read the following example. It’s taken from my ‘success diary’, that I’ve been keeping since September 2002, and is an account of me going through the process outlined above.
The entry for the 1st May 2016 reads as follows:
The event I was thinking about last night was from May 2002. A month away from finishing at Manchester University, I was in the Library on the first or second floor, staring out of the window pondering my future. I was starting to feel alive again after having spent the last 3 years in another time and place. The power of my dream was calling me and I could feel the excitement of its possibilities. However, I didn’t throw myself into it wholeheartedly. There was too much doubt, delay and confusion in my mind.
If only, if only I could go back there now. I would attack my dreams full tilt. I’d have knuckled down and written my book [referring to what was to become Escape The System] in 6 months. It wouldn’t have been perfect but at least I’d have had something. I’d then have started promoting myself by starting up groups and perhaps gained a life coaching qualification. Then, as my skills developed, and my writing became more refined, I’d have got a publishing deal by 2006.
I’ve got to stop there because it’s pointless saying what I would have done. I can’t go back. All I’ve got is now. And as of today, I must approach my dream full tilt. Risk everything and don’t hold back. I can’t do anything about 2002, but, sure as hell, I can do something about today. Throw yourself into it. If these 14 years have taught me one thing, it’s that I never fail by taking risks to advance my dream. I fail when I delay and opportunities (and life) pass me by.
I highlighted my key learning (and answer to the question posed above) in bold. I’ve then taken that knowledge and lived it every day since the 1st May this year.
As a result, my motivation has increased immensely and I no longer fear cutting back on higher paying tennis coaching and hypnotherapy clients to make time to work on my greater, but less well paid (at the moment), dream of becoming a best-selling author. Experience has taught me that taking risks works and that removes any reservations I have about what I stand to lose. Therefore, my mind is clear and I’m free to act, certain in the knowledge that my actions will bring success.
Don’t Keep Repeating the Same Mistakes!
My learning demanded that I take greater risks and attack my dream with unrestrained energy.
What did yours teach you?
In whatever way you can, I urge you to apply that knowledge.
The increased motivation it provides is immense. How could it not be? Here you are, in exactly the same position as you were in the memory I asked you to recall (i.e. with an amazing opportunity to advance your life) but now you have the chance to benefit from your increased wisdom.
What could be more motivating or exciting?
You see, in some way, we do have the opportunity to go back and correct our mistakes from the past. We do it by taking on board the lessons they’ve taught us and then acting on them NOW.
(Image taken from Ape Lad photostream on flickr.com)