At the beginning of a project you are excited and maybe a little scared. You are full of all the possibilities you dream of and then the negative chatter in your head starts. Success in any venture is hard and requires discipline to create a plan, execute that plan, and inevitably adapt that plan again and again or even scrap it and start over. If it were easy everyone would have done it. So why do some people succeed, and others don’t?
You think “I don’t know enough yet”; “I’m too busy right now”; “The timing isn’t right”; “I need a better office”. However, while these sneaky thoughts may appear to make sense to you in the moment, this thought pattern may be sabotaging your success. If you find when tomorrow comes and you go through the same reasoning it becomes a never-ending loop of procrastination. You need to develop the attitude of a Yankee.
David is a die-hard Yankees fan. When the Yankees are playing, I make sure that I have a good book. However, I have learned that they know what it takes to be winners, even though they may not win every game. They know how to come from behind and they NEVER quit thinking like winners.
Frequently when success eludes us, it is because we are not in the right frame of mind. Success is as much an inner game as well as an outer game. Every moment of every day we have a choice to believe or not to believe every thought that comes into our head. It is possible to observe our thoughts separately from yourself, as if you were an observer, and then choose what empowers us.
It is important to understand and control your thoughts, as it is your thoughts that determine what actions you are going to take. Careful planning, the willingness to adapt and grit and determination are the secrets to success. People often quit because they feel it is too hard. What would happen if you didn’t quit but evaluated what you were doing, regrouped and started again?
When the Yankees are behind in the 9th inning, they aren’t thinking “We are going to lose” - they are thinking “What do we need to do to win?” In other words, they have learned to control the negative chatter and replace it with more empowering thoughts.
If you are not aware of your thoughts, they will be invisible to you and control your actions. You may be unintentionally creating what you don’t want in your life. Observe your own thoughts and evaluate if they are helping you or holding you back. Your thoughts can be sneaky so be brutally honest.
Here are the steps that I have found lead to success:
Grit and Determination is the fortitude required for the inevitable failures and setbacks that life throws at you. By creating empowering beliefs, it will help you through the tough times. Beliefs such as the following will get you to the finish line: “In every situation there is a hidden opportunity”; “When someone says I can’t do it, it just makes me stronger and more determined”; “I see opportunities others can’t see”; “I strive for excellence, not perfection because nothing is ever perfect”; “I surround myself only with people that lift me higher”. You literally are what you think so you may as well think yourself into success!
Here are some ways to create empowering beliefs:
Thomas Edison's teachers said he was "too stupid to learn anything." He was fired from his first two jobs for being "non-productive." As an inventor, Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb.
"Failure provides the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently." ~ Henry Ford
"So, we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So, then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.'" ~ Apple Computer founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and HP interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer.
Winston Churchill repeated a grade during elementary school and, when he entered Harrow, was placed in the lowest division of the lowest class. Later, he twice failed the entrance exam to the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. He was defeated in his first effort to serve in Parliament. He became Prime Minister at the age of 62. He later wrote, "Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never, Never, Never, Never give up." (his capitals, mind you)
Have a Solid Plan & continually evaluate – No amount of positive attitude and self-confidence can ever replace a good, carefully laid out plan. Start with your goal and work backwards. Let’s say your goal is to do minimum $250,000 worth of sales in a year. If you are already a travel advisor take the amount of profit you average for each sale, or, if you are new to the business, how much you would like to make per sale. Then determine the number of sales you would need per month and per week to attain your goal. Keep a weekly running total of your sales.
You don’t necessarily have to increase the number of sales you make to achieve your goal:
You will likely go through a lot of ideas before you hit upon something that starts to work and, even then, you will need to tweak it. An example is I was sending out group invitations to clients and friends to join me on a hosted trip that was an exceptional deal. I was shocked at the lackluster response. Since I knew the deal was exceptional and the destination popular, I figured that there had to be another obstacle. I decided to send out invitations to the same people one at a time figuring I would gauge what worked and what didn’t. I was surprised to find out that sending out personal invitations one at a time was the key. Was it a lot of work – you bet, and it was time consuming, but people wanted to feel special. I ended up having 33 people in that group. I have been sending out individual invitations ever since.
Listen to feedback –It is important to get feedback from people you respect, admire and are qualified. It is possible to get so entrenched in a project that you can’t see the pitfalls or even potential opportunities clearly and an outside opinion can create a clearer vision but be careful who you listen to. Your well-meaning friends will have opinions about what you should do. As an example, I wouldn’t take financial advice from someone who is broke or heavily in debt. Or listen to business advice from someone who has never been in business. By having someone who is qualified objectively confirm or deny the solidity of your thinking allows you to refine your vision and increase your odds of success.
I believe in leaning from the best and luckily, the internet makes it easy and inexpensive to do so. As an example I have learned a lot from T. Harv Eker a self-made millionaire who went from being a barely surviving businessman, to an extremely successful millionaire in just two and half years and you can too by using the very principles that he now teaches in his books and seminars
Improvise and Try Again – It is possible, even probable, there will be a moment when you will get stuck and not know how proceed. Take time to mull things over. Take a walk, go to the beach. Brainstorm. I am a big fan of Tony Robbins and his advice is to ask a better question which I find a great way to view a challenge from a different perspective:
Disempowering emotions don’t promote action, they promote avoidance. Quality questions generate empowering emotions which drive action. However, you must TAKE the action.
Examples of quality questions:
How can I learn from this?
How have other people succeeded?
How can I break this down into manageable chunks?
Who can I learn from or ask for advice?
Where is the opportunity in this tough situation?
How does this serve me?
How is staying in my current situation a disservice to me?
What will be the benefits of change?”
By Tony Robbins
Manage Fear
We all have areas we excel at and other areas that we struggle with. The things we are good at we find easy to accomplish and we stay motivated because they come easily to us. Then there are things that we are inherently not good at. These are areas that we are aware of in ourselves with have mostly learned how to manage by either struggling through or getting help. Then there is a third area, and because it masquerades as something else, you may not recognize for what it is and may be the key to you meeting your goals or failing. Fear disguises itself as bad habits such as procrastination, being critical of yourself or others, redoing something over and over until it is exactly right or self-talk such as “I can’t, that is just the way I am”. It helps to understand that our brains can’t differentiate between real danger, such as actually something like falling off a cliff, and fear which is the sense of vertigo that you get when you are safe but you look over a railing at a height.
When we feel the intense feeling of fear in the pit of our stomach, we can get frozen in inaction, busy work or analysis paralysis. This type of modern stressor (also known as the terror barrier) causes us to be constantly bombarded with warnings to keep us safe when in fact these warnings may be keeping us from reaching our goals. Another instance could be you are asked to give a presentation in front a group that could potentially generate a lot of business for you. Maybe you are terrified of public speaking which causes your palms to start to sweat. Yet you turn down the opportunity by justifying that you are not good at public speaking or you are not good at technology and can’t give a Power Point presentation, blah, blah, blah when what is your brain, which isn’t distinguishing between real danger and fear, is running the show.
Fear will never disappear but by understanding it you can learn to manage it. Continually presuming that the feeling of fear is the same as being in danger you are creating your own reality and you are reinforcing your belief of “I can’t do it”. This self-talk chatter will come up with many, many seemingly good reasons to back you away from the “danger” of the unknown, just as it does when you are confronted with heights or public speaking. These thoughts manifest themselves in sneaky ways such as “I don’t have time”; “I’m not good enough, smart enough, educated enough, etc.”; “I am not organized”; “I can’t”…”.
So how do you reduce the power fear has over you, so you have the courage to live into your dreams despite negative thoughts? Just by realizing that coming up against your Terror Barrier will not literally kill you, just your dreams, your goals and your ability to excel may be enough to propel you into action. Also, by observing your thoughts as if you were an outside observer, allows you to recognize that you have a choice to act or not.
Fear is not real, but danger is. If you are looking over a railing into a deep canyon, you may feel fear, but you are not in danger. We tend to get confused over what is causing us fear and what is true danger and we are held back from acting because we let our fear control us. The only way to get over fear is by facing it. Afraid of heights? Stand in a safe place and look down until you feel the fear abate. Afraid to speak in public? I joined a networking group where once a week I had to talk for 1 minute. The first time I did it my knees were literally shaking. After a while I became completely comfortable with public speaking. If fear is holding you back, you need to choose what is more important to you: holding on to your fear or accomplishing your goal. By not letting fear gain power over your rational mind will allow you to take the steps needed to move forward and you will begin to develop feelings of pride and accomplishment.
Visualize yourself being successful and see yourself winning. Remember, perception is reality and by altering your perception your mind is freed up to see alternatives.
To quote Eleanor Roosevelt: “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
Elevate your thinking
You need to elevate your thinking to be successful at anything, not just travel. Many of us have hidden, limiting beliefs that are usually completely invisible to us, that keep us from getting to where we want to go. 99% of success takes place in your head so it is important that you master what you think. I believe that if you want to elevate your thinking learn from the best. Some of the people I have learned from and admire are:
Tony Robbins has coached presidents, royalty, sports stars and people like you and me. You can attend one of his live seminars, an audio program or one of his books. He is an amazing teacher and will leave you forever changed. I took his Unleash the Power Within course which is a live 3 ½ day event designed to help you unlock and unleash the forces inside that can help you break through any limit and create the quality of life you desire. In this course I learned how to surpass my own limitations when I walked over hot coals. After doing that anything seems to be in the realm of possibility!
Landmark Education
Landmark offers courses that will help you understand yourself and others better and make peace with your past. They use transformational technology that allows you to change rapidly so you can think and act beyond your existing limits. Offering training in personal and professional growth, training and development company focusing on people achieving success, fulfillment and greatness. http://www.landmarkworldwide.com/
T. Harv Eker - The Millionaire Mind Intensive is a great free course created by T Harv Eker http://millionairemindintensive.com/thanks/#register You can sign up for other courses that you pay for lead by experts. While I highly recommend their courses and have taken several, you will get tremendous benefit if you only take the free Millionaire Mind Intensive. Here are three quotes by T. Harv Eker a self-made millionaire several times over:
One of the most discussed topics in the Millionaire Mind Intensive are non-supportive beliefs around money. Money is a highly charged issue for most people, and we tend to believe that our beliefs around money are correct and we never take a moment to question them or understand where they came from. If you believe that money is the root of all evil or it is not right to be rich when there are people who are poor your subconscious will see to it that you never have money. The good news is that beliefs are just beliefs and are not inherently right or wrong. Meaning you can change them if they are not helping you. Look at this list of beliefs and see if any of them resonate with you. Then ask yourself if the belief serves you or should it be replaced by one that is more empowering.
In summary:
You think “I don’t know enough yet”; “I’m too busy right now”; “The timing isn’t right”; “I need a better office”. However, while these sneaky thoughts may appear to make sense to you in the moment, this thought pattern may be sabotaging your success. If you find when tomorrow comes and you go through the same reasoning it becomes a never-ending loop of procrastination. You need to develop the attitude of a Yankee.
David is a die-hard Yankees fan. When the Yankees are playing, I make sure that I have a good book. However, I have learned that they know what it takes to be winners, even though they may not win every game. They know how to come from behind and they NEVER quit thinking like winners.
Frequently when success eludes us, it is because we are not in the right frame of mind. Success is as much an inner game as well as an outer game. Every moment of every day we have a choice to believe or not to believe every thought that comes into our head. It is possible to observe our thoughts separately from yourself, as if you were an observer, and then choose what empowers us.
It is important to understand and control your thoughts, as it is your thoughts that determine what actions you are going to take. Careful planning, the willingness to adapt and grit and determination are the secrets to success. People often quit because they feel it is too hard. What would happen if you didn’t quit but evaluated what you were doing, regrouped and started again?
When the Yankees are behind in the 9th inning, they aren’t thinking “We are going to lose” - they are thinking “What do we need to do to win?” In other words, they have learned to control the negative chatter and replace it with more empowering thoughts.
If you are not aware of your thoughts, they will be invisible to you and control your actions. You may be unintentionally creating what you don’t want in your life. Observe your own thoughts and evaluate if they are helping you or holding you back. Your thoughts can be sneaky so be brutally honest.
Here are the steps that I have found lead to success:
Grit and Determination is the fortitude required for the inevitable failures and setbacks that life throws at you. By creating empowering beliefs, it will help you through the tough times. Beliefs such as the following will get you to the finish line: “In every situation there is a hidden opportunity”; “When someone says I can’t do it, it just makes me stronger and more determined”; “I see opportunities others can’t see”; “I strive for excellence, not perfection because nothing is ever perfect”; “I surround myself only with people that lift me higher”. You literally are what you think so you may as well think yourself into success!
Here are some ways to create empowering beliefs:
- Pay attention to what you are saying to yourself. Is your self-talk mostly positive or negative? Take notes and keep a journal about what you are thinking.
- Question your self-talk. Do you have evidence for what you are saying? What would your friends say?
- Change your self-talk. Make a list of positive things about yourself. Instead of saying “I can’t…” ask yourself “How can I…” or “What would be possible if…”.
- Meditation. Sometimes I find it difficult to shut out the negative chatter no matter how many times I say to myself: “Thank you for sharing” and push the thoughts away. When I find myself stuck, I use a guided meditation app called “Let’s Meditate” to help get me on the right track again.
Thomas Edison's teachers said he was "too stupid to learn anything." He was fired from his first two jobs for being "non-productive." As an inventor, Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb.
"Failure provides the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently." ~ Henry Ford
"So, we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So, then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.'" ~ Apple Computer founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and HP interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer.
Winston Churchill repeated a grade during elementary school and, when he entered Harrow, was placed in the lowest division of the lowest class. Later, he twice failed the entrance exam to the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. He was defeated in his first effort to serve in Parliament. He became Prime Minister at the age of 62. He later wrote, "Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never, Never, Never, Never give up." (his capitals, mind you)
Have a Solid Plan & continually evaluate – No amount of positive attitude and self-confidence can ever replace a good, carefully laid out plan. Start with your goal and work backwards. Let’s say your goal is to do minimum $250,000 worth of sales in a year. If you are already a travel advisor take the amount of profit you average for each sale, or, if you are new to the business, how much you would like to make per sale. Then determine the number of sales you would need per month and per week to attain your goal. Keep a weekly running total of your sales.
You don’t necessarily have to increase the number of sales you make to achieve your goal:
- You can increase the amount of commission you make on each trip with add-on sales such as pre or post cruise packages, insurance, private tours which is an invaluable serve to your clients as well.
- You can also examine ways to reach a more lucrative market. Think about your community. Is there an area that is under served? Do you have friends that belong to a wine club? Does someone you know work for a corporation that would allow you to market or do a free presentation to its employees? Is there a local clothing boutique where you can do a packing demonstration where the store could feature clothes appropriate for travel? You could do something similar at a luggage store.
You will likely go through a lot of ideas before you hit upon something that starts to work and, even then, you will need to tweak it. An example is I was sending out group invitations to clients and friends to join me on a hosted trip that was an exceptional deal. I was shocked at the lackluster response. Since I knew the deal was exceptional and the destination popular, I figured that there had to be another obstacle. I decided to send out invitations to the same people one at a time figuring I would gauge what worked and what didn’t. I was surprised to find out that sending out personal invitations one at a time was the key. Was it a lot of work – you bet, and it was time consuming, but people wanted to feel special. I ended up having 33 people in that group. I have been sending out individual invitations ever since.
Listen to feedback –It is important to get feedback from people you respect, admire and are qualified. It is possible to get so entrenched in a project that you can’t see the pitfalls or even potential opportunities clearly and an outside opinion can create a clearer vision but be careful who you listen to. Your well-meaning friends will have opinions about what you should do. As an example, I wouldn’t take financial advice from someone who is broke or heavily in debt. Or listen to business advice from someone who has never been in business. By having someone who is qualified objectively confirm or deny the solidity of your thinking allows you to refine your vision and increase your odds of success.
I believe in leaning from the best and luckily, the internet makes it easy and inexpensive to do so. As an example I have learned a lot from T. Harv Eker a self-made millionaire who went from being a barely surviving businessman, to an extremely successful millionaire in just two and half years and you can too by using the very principles that he now teaches in his books and seminars
Improvise and Try Again – It is possible, even probable, there will be a moment when you will get stuck and not know how proceed. Take time to mull things over. Take a walk, go to the beach. Brainstorm. I am a big fan of Tony Robbins and his advice is to ask a better question which I find a great way to view a challenge from a different perspective:
Disempowering emotions don’t promote action, they promote avoidance. Quality questions generate empowering emotions which drive action. However, you must TAKE the action.
Examples of quality questions:
How can I learn from this?
How have other people succeeded?
How can I break this down into manageable chunks?
Who can I learn from or ask for advice?
Where is the opportunity in this tough situation?
How does this serve me?
How is staying in my current situation a disservice to me?
What will be the benefits of change?”
By Tony Robbins
Manage Fear
We all have areas we excel at and other areas that we struggle with. The things we are good at we find easy to accomplish and we stay motivated because they come easily to us. Then there are things that we are inherently not good at. These are areas that we are aware of in ourselves with have mostly learned how to manage by either struggling through or getting help. Then there is a third area, and because it masquerades as something else, you may not recognize for what it is and may be the key to you meeting your goals or failing. Fear disguises itself as bad habits such as procrastination, being critical of yourself or others, redoing something over and over until it is exactly right or self-talk such as “I can’t, that is just the way I am”. It helps to understand that our brains can’t differentiate between real danger, such as actually something like falling off a cliff, and fear which is the sense of vertigo that you get when you are safe but you look over a railing at a height.
When we feel the intense feeling of fear in the pit of our stomach, we can get frozen in inaction, busy work or analysis paralysis. This type of modern stressor (also known as the terror barrier) causes us to be constantly bombarded with warnings to keep us safe when in fact these warnings may be keeping us from reaching our goals. Another instance could be you are asked to give a presentation in front a group that could potentially generate a lot of business for you. Maybe you are terrified of public speaking which causes your palms to start to sweat. Yet you turn down the opportunity by justifying that you are not good at public speaking or you are not good at technology and can’t give a Power Point presentation, blah, blah, blah when what is your brain, which isn’t distinguishing between real danger and fear, is running the show.
Fear will never disappear but by understanding it you can learn to manage it. Continually presuming that the feeling of fear is the same as being in danger you are creating your own reality and you are reinforcing your belief of “I can’t do it”. This self-talk chatter will come up with many, many seemingly good reasons to back you away from the “danger” of the unknown, just as it does when you are confronted with heights or public speaking. These thoughts manifest themselves in sneaky ways such as “I don’t have time”; “I’m not good enough, smart enough, educated enough, etc.”; “I am not organized”; “I can’t”…”.
So how do you reduce the power fear has over you, so you have the courage to live into your dreams despite negative thoughts? Just by realizing that coming up against your Terror Barrier will not literally kill you, just your dreams, your goals and your ability to excel may be enough to propel you into action. Also, by observing your thoughts as if you were an outside observer, allows you to recognize that you have a choice to act or not.
Fear is not real, but danger is. If you are looking over a railing into a deep canyon, you may feel fear, but you are not in danger. We tend to get confused over what is causing us fear and what is true danger and we are held back from acting because we let our fear control us. The only way to get over fear is by facing it. Afraid of heights? Stand in a safe place and look down until you feel the fear abate. Afraid to speak in public? I joined a networking group where once a week I had to talk for 1 minute. The first time I did it my knees were literally shaking. After a while I became completely comfortable with public speaking. If fear is holding you back, you need to choose what is more important to you: holding on to your fear or accomplishing your goal. By not letting fear gain power over your rational mind will allow you to take the steps needed to move forward and you will begin to develop feelings of pride and accomplishment.
Visualize yourself being successful and see yourself winning. Remember, perception is reality and by altering your perception your mind is freed up to see alternatives.
To quote Eleanor Roosevelt: “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
Elevate your thinking
You need to elevate your thinking to be successful at anything, not just travel. Many of us have hidden, limiting beliefs that are usually completely invisible to us, that keep us from getting to where we want to go. 99% of success takes place in your head so it is important that you master what you think. I believe that if you want to elevate your thinking learn from the best. Some of the people I have learned from and admire are:
Tony Robbins has coached presidents, royalty, sports stars and people like you and me. You can attend one of his live seminars, an audio program or one of his books. He is an amazing teacher and will leave you forever changed. I took his Unleash the Power Within course which is a live 3 ½ day event designed to help you unlock and unleash the forces inside that can help you break through any limit and create the quality of life you desire. In this course I learned how to surpass my own limitations when I walked over hot coals. After doing that anything seems to be in the realm of possibility!
Landmark Education
Landmark offers courses that will help you understand yourself and others better and make peace with your past. They use transformational technology that allows you to change rapidly so you can think and act beyond your existing limits. Offering training in personal and professional growth, training and development company focusing on people achieving success, fulfillment and greatness. http://www.landmarkworldwide.com/
T. Harv Eker - The Millionaire Mind Intensive is a great free course created by T Harv Eker http://millionairemindintensive.com/thanks/#register You can sign up for other courses that you pay for lead by experts. While I highly recommend their courses and have taken several, you will get tremendous benefit if you only take the free Millionaire Mind Intensive. Here are three quotes by T. Harv Eker a self-made millionaire several times over:
- If you are willing to do only what's easy, life will be hard. ...
- “Successful people are afraid, successful people have doubts, and successful people have worries. ...
- “If you want to move to a new level in your life, you must break through your comfort zone and practice doing things that are not comfortable.”
One of the most discussed topics in the Millionaire Mind Intensive are non-supportive beliefs around money. Money is a highly charged issue for most people, and we tend to believe that our beliefs around money are correct and we never take a moment to question them or understand where they came from. If you believe that money is the root of all evil or it is not right to be rich when there are people who are poor your subconscious will see to it that you never have money. The good news is that beliefs are just beliefs and are not inherently right or wrong. Meaning you can change them if they are not helping you. Look at this list of beliefs and see if any of them resonate with you. Then ask yourself if the belief serves you or should it be replaced by one that is more empowering.
In summary:
- Observe your thoughts and self- talk to be sure they serve your best interests
- Model famous people and get good at solving problems
- Have a solid plan and keep re-evaluating it
- Listen to feedback from people who are appropriate
- Improvise and try again
- Understand the difference between danger and fear and learn how to take reasonable risks
- Elevate your thinking by studying programs that help you to expand your thinking
