The War Is Won In Your *MIND*
Plant a thought and reap a word;
plant a word and reap an action;
plant an action and reap a habit;
plant a habit and reap a character;
plant a character and reap a destiny.
The war is won in your mind. Your thoughts perpetuate themselves into the things that you say. The things that you say eventually become the things that you do. Your continual thoughts, words, and actions will then become your habits. Your habits make up who you will are, what you stand for, and eventually, what you will become.
Make your thoughts worth while. Make your thoughts in your best interest. Your mind is powerful. If you can conjure up a vision of what you want, you then can set forth a plan to achieve it. It must be conceptualized first.
Notice we are talking about the WAR here. Not the battle. Controlling your mind’s thoughts and ideas is the first step to achieving the long term goals. ALWAYS think long term. Live in the moment but always invest for the long term.
Overthinking and miscalculations.
As powerful as your mind is, often times it is where we dreamers spend most of our time. Thinking about our dream life, our goals, our grand ideas, but never doing the hard things to make them come to life.
The hardest thing I am talking about here is consistent action. You will find out that once you start, it is easy to do and also easy not to do. We neglect the things we know we should be doing for immediate satisfaction or gratification elsewhere. Distractions come in many forms in today’s world. None the less, we all need to take a page from our previous generations and learn to be more stoic. This in the end, will give us the ultimate satisfaction.
I am personally guilty of trying to “figure everything out”. The “oh, well I don’t know how to do this, or that, or this, or that” and so on. This is simply just another form of distraction and procrastination. We have to stop doing this if we want to be successful.
I like to think about the journey towards our goals and dream life as a long road. Along this road we will have many traffic lights, detours, traffic jams, construction zones, and other crazy drivers that will make us slow down and scare the hell out of us.
What we cannot do is try to calculate for all of these unknowns ahead of time. When I head up to the gym, that is about five miles away from my home, I cannot try to predict if the lights will be green ahead of time. No, I just have to get in the car and start heading in that direction. I would LOVE for all of the lights to be green which would allow me to get to the gym as fast as possible but I know that is unlikely. I have resources such as google maps that will help me plan my route or let me know of immediate traffic jams that could cause delay but the minutiae is where it gets lost.
Our journey and our life is just like this. We can have folks help up out, learn from others mistakes, and have guides point us in the right direction, but it is foolish to think we will get it right the first time. There is no amount of planning you can do that can account for the little stuff. It happens and we have to adjust and pivot. It is crazy to think that we won’t have delays, set backs, detours, and craziness along our road that could cause some turmoil. Yes it sucks, and sometimes it doesn’t go exactly as planned but what do we have to do? We have to get in the car and go. We are the car and we start with the first step.
Become a visionary.
As much as this pains me to say, Kanye West is a great example of.a visionary. What exactly do I mean by this? He envisions the world that he wants to live in, then he makes it happen. The same can be said about Richard Branson who is the extremely wealthy owner of Virgin Airlines and many of companies.
Richard was stuck on an island after a hurricane many years ago. With no way off the island and no money, he some how found a way to use other peoples money on the island to charter a flight to pick them up and take them back to the states without spending a dime of his own money. In fact, he actually made a profit off the whole ordeal. That experience led him to eventually start the massive Virgin Airlines we know today.
These are just two people who saw the world that they wanted to live in, and took action to model their lives around that. You see this in almost every successful person in all meanings of that word. We must do the same and this starts in the mind and your thoughts. Think about how your dream life and what you goals look like. Conceptualize them to the highest degree. Now work backwards in making them become the world around you. The way you carry yourself. Embody the charisma, attitude, and confidence of the best you. You will be it, long before you ever have it. That’s the secret.
As the saying goes, “Every Battle is already won before it is ever fought.” Plan, prepare, and act. We have the ultimate control to create the life we want to live.
Go straight for it.
There is this misconception surrounding goal attainment. For some reason, we seem to think we have to take this long way around approach. Chipping away at the big goal is key but there is no reason we can’t just go for it. I think the reason we take the round about approach is due to the scariness of the big dream. The big dreams and goals tend to scare the hell out of us. So, we play around the edges, 1 foot in and 1 foot out.
In all honesty, there is no one out there can tell you no. There is something that you are really good at. I am not talking about what your momma says your good at or your family. No, I am talking about something that you know you are exceptionally gifted in. Maybe you are not currently in the top 5% in this thing yet, but with some refinement, you can be among the best.
That is what you should attack head on. Go straight for it! Do the hard things first.
The Positive Mind
Take extreme ownership of your life. I highly recommend reading the book “Extreme Ownership”. It was written by two former Special Task Force Navy Seals who detail their deployment in Iraq. Their stories serve as stark reminders that we are where we are in life due to our own choices and it is only within ourselves to make a change.
There will be things we mess up BAD on. But we have to own that shit. Step up and say, yes I made a mistake and it will certainly never happen again. No matter the outcome, circumstance, punishment, or repercussion, it is important to own the bad as well as you own the good. It is only by doing this that we can take positive steps forward.
You have to believe things can change. You have to believe you can accomplish ANYTHING! We can change at any moment. The person you were even 1 second ago, doesn’t have to be the person you are or will become.
AVOID WHAT YOU LOVE
UNPOPULAR BELIEF ALERT! This is going to start an argument but from personal experience I believe it to be true. You always hear people say, “Do what you love!” I don’t buy into that any more because just like physical love, the passion will die when you approach things like a job.
When you lust over the things that you do, and you do it repeatedly, you will eventually take advantage of it. At some point in time, we turn the things we love into a job. We commoditize it. We sell it or do it for a buck. The things we love eventually define the things we do which in turn leads to loss of purpose. Don’t do this.
Do what you LIKE. Certainly you have to enjoy the things you do for a living. They will paint the picture of your legacy but leave the things you love for yourself. Enjoy those things separately. Be practical in this sense that you can always “tap dance to work” but don’t take the things you truly love and are passionate about and run them into the ground. Trust me, its not a case of if… its when. Live your life on your terms. Enjoy ever moment which you are taking the steps to achieving the big goals and loving your contributions. Just keep the things that are truly special to you separate from your work.
Set a Brain Budget for Personal Development
This goes back to the worth a damn factor I have talked about in previous posts (idea which came from Tai Lopez). Investing in yourself is the best form of investment as it will lead to more skills and opportunities for you to help others. Helping others will undoubtably lead to more fulfillment and happiness. Sometimes it is hard to see the immediate return on the investments we make in ourselves via thousand dollar seminars, training courses, and book expenses but it is so worth it. This is truly the most key and fundamental concept you have to take away from this.
Personal development trains your mind. It sharpens it. It is like working out or resistance training. The things you learn will lead to new thoughts, which will leads to new ideas, which will lead to new words and actions, and so on.
Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon, says “we innovate our way out of our problems”. When you learn new techniques and skills, you not only increase you value but also boost your ability to innovate and find new methods to overcome the “roadblocks” on the way to your goals!