Notes To Myself
According to the Social Security Administration, if you take any 100 people at the start of their working careers and follow them for the next 40 years until they reach retirement age, here’s what you’ll find: only 1 will be wealthy; 4 will be financially secure; 5 will continue working, not because they want to but because they have to; 36 will be dead; and 54 will be broke and dependent on friends, family, relatives.
We don’t want our lives to be a struggle. I want a life of freedom, where I get to wake up and do what I want, when I want, with whomever I want. I want to get out of bed every day and truly love my life. I want to love my work, and I want to love the people I get to share my life and work with. That’s my definition of success. That kind of life doesn’t just happen. It must be designed. If you want to live an extraordinary life as defined and designed by you, then you must identify the fundamental causes of mediocrity so you can prevent them from robbing you of the life you want.
If you were to ask the average person in this country—40-50 years old, settling for less than they want, and struggling to be happy, pay their bills, etc.—if you were to ask them if this was their plan, their vision for their life, what do you think they would say? Do you think they envisioned their life being a struggle? Of course not! And that, my friend, is the scary part.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. The greatest gift we can give to the people we love is to live to our full potential.
I am doing the best that I can in this moment, and at the same time, I can and will do better. Your entire life changes the day that you decide you will no longer accept mediocrity for yourself. When you realize that today is the most important day of your life. When you decide that now matters more than any other time because it is who you are becoming each day based on the decisions that you are making and the actions that you are taking that is determining who you are going to be for the rest of your life.
The possibility of mediocrity exists for everyone, because being mediocre simply means choosing—whether consciously or unconsciously—to be the same as you’ve always been. Mediocrity has nothing to do with how you compare to other people; it’s simply a result of not making the commitment to continuously learn, grow, and improve yourself. Whereas being extraordinary—which leads to extraordinary levels of success—is a result of choosing to learn, grow, and be just a little bit better each day than you’ve been in the past.
“How you do anything is how you do everything.”
Every time you choose to do the easy thing, instead of the right thing, you are shaping your identity, becoming the type of person who does what’s easy, rather than what’s right. On the other hand, when you do choose to do the right thing and follow through with your commitments— especially when you don’t feel like it—you are developing the extraordinary discipline (which most people never develop) necessary for creating extraordinary results in your life. As my good friend, Peter Voogd, often teaches his clients: “Discipline creates lifestyle.”
Always remember that who you’re becoming is far more important than what you’re doing, and yet it is what you’re doing that is determining who you’re becoming.
My journaling method ranges from being a very specific, structured process—listing what I’m grateful for, acknowledging my accomplishments, clarifying what areas I want to improve on, and planning which specific actions I’m committed to taking to improve—to being pretty traditional, just a dated entry with a synopsis of my day. (JOURNALING PAGE129)
Remember, the moment you accept total responsibility for everything in your life is the moment you claim the power to change anything in your life.
Phases of Habits pg152
Every day, think as you wake up, ‘Today I am fortunate to have woken up, I am alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others. I am going to benefit others as much as I can.’
—DALAI LAMA
“Don’t wait to be great.”
“If you want your life to be different, you have to be willing to do something different, first.”
All right, now stop reading and start creating. Never settle. Create the life you deserve to live, and help others to do the same.
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