Life Chapters – Your Negative Inner Voice

What would you miss?

If you were to die today what would you regret not being able to do?  Write your answers down.

1. Are you doing the things you wrote down now?
2. If not, why not?  Especially, if you would regret not being able to do them why are you not doing them now?

What are you waiting for?  If what you wrote down are important things, why are you not doing them?  It’s funny how we say one thing yet do another.  Why do so many of us listen to our inner voices of doubt and fear?  The voices we make up in our head to help run our lives keeping most of us stuck at average nowhere near awesome.  Why do you accept average and not awesome?

Your Inner Voices

Our inner voice tells many of us that it’s okay.  The voices say “Why try for awesome if we are doing okay at average?”  As one gets closer to taking the first step towards something new or awesome their inner voices of doubt and fear get louder and louder until they stop the individual in their tracks.

Think about what has stopped you in your tracks. Were you listening to your inner voices of doubt and fear telling you “Don’t do it; why are you doing this?” and many other reasons not to do whatever it is.  The voices go on and on, louder and louder until you stop in your tracks.  The problem with this is that it’s your own self, your own inner voices that are telling you that you are not good enough to take the step.  Your inner voices are telling you things without even knowing the facts as though your inner voice is the absolute authority.

Your inner voices of doubt and fear provide the excuses you need to avoid difficult situations or decisions.  In some cases this might be a good thing especially when you want to ring someone’s neck however; many times those voices are detrimental if you let them be. 

Trusting Your Inner Voices

How many times have you heard “Trust your inner voice,” or “What’s your inner voice telling you?”  Time and again my inner voice has helped me.  The difference is I don’t let my inner voices of doubt and fear have a voice.  By shutting down my doubt and fear inner voices, I don’t let them control my life or what I do.

Over the years I have talked with hundreds of people about business.  I have started a few small businesses with a few failures and a few successes.  Many of the individuals I have spoken with stated they were unhappy with where they were in their career or life.  I would ask “Have you ever thought about starting your own business or why not find another job or career that makes you happy?”  The common response I receive every time is “Oh I can’t do that” or “I could never start a business” or “I am not trained for…”  With each I would respond with “Why can’t you?  Have you already looked into it?”  My questions would open the floodgates of excuses almost always ending with “I just know inside it’s not right for me.” 

When you stop accepting the difficult challenges and take the average path you disengage with the world around you and engage your inner voices of doubt and fear using them for control and comfort.  If left unchecked your inner voices will become self-deprecating, chipping away at your confidence, self-esteem and self-worth.  Allowed to happen long enough over time they will become habits which become very comfortable and hard to break.  If allowed to persist, no matter what people say to help build you up, your inner voices will not go away.  I leave you with this from authors David Molden and Pat Hutchinson:

“We all have a tendency to judge, speculate and compare, as your inner voice describes what you see and hear in terms of good/bad, right/wrong, small/large, perfect/imperfect, must/mustn’t, can/can’t, should/shouldn’t’, etc. If this type of thinking leaves you feeling anxious, angry or sad, your self-confidence will take a knocking. Whilst most people make judgments, confident people do so the least; they are more inclined to be curious about the world and seek to understand it, not judge it. When you understand, you can be confident.

Confident people often have a code for how they engage with the world, like a set of principles to live by, such as ‘trust what people do, not what they say they will do’, or ‘help other people along the way whenever you can’. This is what their inner voices used for – to keep life-principles at the forefront of their mind. This helps them make quick decisions and feel certain about themselves.”

So stop shooting yourself in the foot by allowing your negative inner voices to run your life.  Start today; listen to what you are saying to yourself.  Shut down the negative voices - ask yourself a simple question “Is that thought helpful or hurtful to me?”

Life Chapters - All Things Are Possible

“Pain is temporary – however if I quit it will last forever.” – Ray Lewis

The First Step

There are times when life knocks you down and you feel like you have no strength left to get up.  Those are the times that define who you are.  It’s when your inner voice tells you “it’s possible, just take the first step.”  All things are possible but you have to be willing to take the step.  That first step is the most important – it’s when you have to have faith, courage and confidence in yourself.  It doesn't matter what others think or believe – it has everything to do with what you believe.

Greatness Within

There is greatness within you.  Everyone has it but not everyone believes it.  Do you listen to your inner voice when it tells you “this is what I believe and I am willing to do anything for it”?  We are all made to shine, not just some, but all of us.  The issue is not everyone believes they can shine as bright as others or shine at all.  If you don’t believe in yourself who will?

Untapped Potential

Do you want more from life?  Or is being average okay with you?  If you had one shot at what you really wanted would you take it or let it slip away fearing the possibility you might fail instead of succeed.  The question becomes how bad do you really want your one shot; bad enough to do whatever it takes to achieve it.  If not and you decide not to take that one shot have you considered what you will do with the rest of your life?  Of course you can just survive and get by.  The first step when taking that one shot is to understand and believe that anything and everything is possible.  We all were created to succeed.

The most important and most successful parts of your life may still be in front of you.  There is untapped potential inside each of us.  What you decide to do with this untapped potential is the difference between success, failure or just getting by.  An individual’s potential for success is unlimited so long as they choose to succeed.   You must be willing to look past the obstacles and have a larger view of the world. 

Confidence

Do you have the confidence knowing you can and will seize the opportunities ahead if you choose to?  You and only you are the one that makes the decision on which path to take.  Only you make the choice to not let others stand in your way.  Believing in yourself and what is possible makes anything possible – you just need to believe in yourself and the possibilities.

Let go of the things that are holding you back and look past the obstacles.  Most importantly, once you decide to succeed never give up.  Dream big, succeed big.  Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t you’re right.”  If you want something bad enough then go after it and don’t stop until you get it.  Things don’t always work out the way you would like but if you never try, how would you ever know the outcome?  When you don’t give up, you don’t fail so never give up in your pursuit of success.

“Make of your life a dream and of a dream a reality.” – Antoine de Saint Exupery

Life Chapter – Think Big

Thinking Big

When you think about where you want to be next year or in five years do you think big?  Do you envision big goals for yourself, I mean really big goals?  Or do you set safe comfortable smaller easy to achieve goals for yourself?  Thinking big opens your world to big opportunities.  When you think big and set big goals you may not reach the big prize but there is a good chance you will get close.  When you think really big and set really big goals you don’t place the limitations on the results as you do when thinking small and setting comfortable easy to achieve goals.

Common Traits

A common trait shared by successful people is the ability to think big and set big goals.  The problem is most people have been conditioned to abide to a certain mindset and thinking outside of that mindset is uncomfortable.  Thinking big and setting big goals challenges limiting mindsets.  Consider the Wright brothers.  The mindset back then was humans could not fly.  If the Wright brothers had not challenged that thinking by setting big goals where would we be today?  Or what if Bill Gates had not challenged the conventional wisdom that great business success could only be achieved through a Harvard education when he dreamed big, dropped out of college, and started Microsoft?  

Go Beyond Your Comfort Zone

Thinking big challenges you to go beyond your comfort zone and pushes you beyond what you believe are your only options.  “Most people think small because most people are afraid of success, afraid of making decisions, afraid of winning. And that gives people like me a great advantage.” – Donald Trump It is easy to focus on the shortcomings and failures making it difficult to see a clear path to achieving big goals.  However, setting big goals challenges you to expand your means; rather than existing below your means.  Living below your means is a small thinker average achiever perception.  People like Donald Trump, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and the like don’t live below their means.  Rather they grow their means to suit a desired lifestyle.  Big thinkers don’t accept average results; they strive for excellence.

Purpose

Thinking big provides a sense of purpose.  It provides something worth pursuing.  President Kennedy was a big thinker.  When he set the goal to put a man on the moon it became the nation’s challenge worth pursuing and provided purpose for many individuals.  The Wright brother’s notion of human flight became their life’s purpose.  We all have a purpose here on earth.  The challenge is to think big to discover yours.

When you picture yourself realizing success what does that picture look like?  Are you the type that bets on the lottery for achieving big success or are you setting your sites on real success by building something bigger than yourself?  Are you counting on yourself and working towards the big goals you set or are you counting on others and working towards their goals and ideas?  Howard Hughes once said, “I intend to be, the richest man in the world.”  Are you a Howard Hughes type person or the type person Donald Trump described above?