Happy New Year!!! Here are 12 lessons learned from 2021. I wish you all the success you earn in 2022!
Be Yourself – Stop putting on the façade. The world needs more real and authentic people. You need to develop the courage to speak your truth and take more risks. It starts with putting yourself in challenging situations. You will get used to them. Throw yourself into the fire! You will be amazed at what happens. Many people’s social media lives are so far from the truth of their real life. It is sad to see. People are lying to themselves about the truth. What I put on social media is me. 100 percent me. No facades. No BS. That is my authentic self. I improve myself every day but it is still 100 percent me out there! Take one step at a time and put yourself out there every day. Eventually you will see it!
Get Shit Done– Don’t wait long on others or even procrastinate yourself. If you are waiting on people, continue to follow up. If you know they are not going to get it done, then you need to shift and find someone else or get it done yourself. Other people are not always coming to your rescue or going to help. You have to control getting the things done. The successful people are the ones that go get things done no matter what is happening. They always find a way. The hard stuff is what people avoid. You will make tons of excuses as to why you haven’t improved yourself and justify it. You must put in the hard work. There are parts of your job/career that you will never enjoy. The days you do not want to get out of bed are the days that you need to the most. The people that get the hard things done are the ones succeeding. You must put in the work. No shortcuts! All shortcuts will eventually come back to bite you. You can only scotch tape a problem for so long. Just go out and take one thing and get it done. Then go after the next thing. Build that momentum.
Copy Others – When you see someone successful, learn from them and copy what they are doing. Let me explain. For this year, I focused on tuning at the noise of other people. I found someone succeeding wildly at that. I watched what he did. I read his techniques and then copied them into my wheelhouse. Some stuff works, some stuff does not. Evolve it into your domain. There are many people succeeding at things. Google or YouTube it. It’s there for the taking. There is nothing wrong with copying. There really isn’t much new stuff out there either. Much of what we learn is recycled. Its not new. Find mentors or successful people who you admire and study the hell out of them and how they do things. Put that to use and tweak it in your own life.
Find A Mentor Several Steps Ahead Of You – In the same spirit of copying, find someone who is three to four steps ahead of you and where you want to be. Finding someone several steps ahead of you will help you learn and achieve your goals faster. You are not trying to take shortcuts but learning from someone who has been there and done that. Reach out to them and see if they are willing to talk and be a mentor. In some cases, you might have to pay. Don’t be cheap. Take them out to lunch or dinner and PAY!!! Don’t be cheap. Google or YouTube someone. It doesn’t have to be a big name person either. Everyone is so infatuated with the big names like Gary Vaynerchuk, Grant Cardone, etc. Find someone local or regional. You will be surprised at what you find.
Schedule Everything – This is where I have improved but need more improvement in. In today’s age, you really need to schedule everything. Use Google calendar or Outlook. Its easy and works well. Or if you are old school like me, I still use a planner book combined with an online schedule. Its all right in front of me. Be in the driver’s seat of your schedule. So many of you are zombies and going from task to task or event to event, and you feel like crap all the time. When people want to meet with me about a produce or service, I give them options. And, if I get into the meeting and it is not serving me or I don’t feel it, I cut the meeting off. I know that sounds harsh, but I would rather be honest and not waste time. We all have the same hours in a day, and the successful people are in command of their schedule. Even when problems or a crisis hits, they are ready. It takes effort to type and write down your schedule and I hate writing it all down. It serves me well though because I know what is always going on. Once you are in command of your days, you will see a big difference. You will have more energy, more confidence, and when it comes time to deal with problems, you will be ready.
I Must Do Versus I Have To – I catch myself periodically saying “I have to do this or that.” You don’t have to do anything. When you MUST do something, the game changes. Must makes you get things done. It’s all in your language pattern. Think about this for a minute. If you run a business, what is better to say, I have to succeed for my clients or I must succeed for them. I must succeed is much more confident. Have to, should of, could of, would of is not in my vocabulary. It takes practice with changing your language pattern. A great deal of practice. It took me a few years and I am still learning to catch myself with using not confident language. When you can master that, it’s a whole different world.
FOCUS – Stop Focusing Energy On Other’s Garbage – I cannot tell you how many times I look at social media even up to today, and see more and more of people’s opinions on the pandemic, vaxers versus non vaxers, mask wearers versus non mask wearers. Trump versus Biden. Democrats versus Republicans. We all know our political system is completely broken. Yet we choose to complain all day long about this or that. Look, I am going to love people no matter what and no matter what their beliefs are. If you try and take me down, then its game on! There is a difference there. You must stop focusing on all the negative crap people are putting out there. Social media is showing you this crap because you comment on it, you share it, and you want to see it, whether you like it or not. For once, shut your mouth! You don’t always have to comment and go at it with someone for hours. Take that three hours of commenting on a post and learn a new trait. The reason you do all of that is deep down, you have so many insecurities about yourself. Trust me, I was there. I used to comment and go at it with people online a great deal. I stopped. When I did that, I had more time, I felt better, and things really changed for the better for me. You will never succeed when you spend so much of your time on the negativity and garbage out there.
Success Does Not Come Easy – When you see the hype lifestyles out there, it looks awesome doesn’t it? What you don’t see is the countless hours and hours spent of someone putting the hard work in. Instead of paying attention to all the fancy cars, watches, houses someone has, look further, and see what it took for someone to get there. I’m not saying that the fancy stuff is the mark for success, but people are so captivated by the lifestyle that you forget what it took to get there. Many people want to get to that level so quick, they do shady stuff or take the shortcut, or try to buy the success. I see people buying programs out there and complaining that its not working. The scary thing is when I asked a guy what he did, he had minimal effort. You can’t achieve your dreams without suffering, struggling, failing, and falling on your face. You get back up and go at it again. When you feel you are ready to give up, that is when you must push harder. That is the test of who wants it versus who is just wanting to get by and struggle in life.
Clarity/Exactness – You must get 100 percent clear on what you want to do and who you are. I feel like the word clarity is being overused today, so I like the word Exactness better!!! If you are 99.99% there, it doesn’t matter. You need to be 100 percent exact. Not perfect, exact. I was working with someone a few weeks ago and they told me they wanted to get healthy in 2022. I asked them what specifically does that mean? They could not answer me. They were stuck. You need to drill down and find out what you want. If healthy is feeling better or having more energy, then you need to get to that level. Many people have no clue what they want their life to look like. Sure, life throws curveballs and things change but many people are just bouncing around right now. You need to write down what you want and be exact with it. If you want to lose 21 pounds, then put that down as a goal. If you want to make $138,900 this year, write it down like that. Reverse engineer the goal and create the action items you need to get there.
Be Obsessed! – In your career, you must be obsessed with your line of work. I call it a healthy obsession. It goes beyond liking, loving, and being passionate about what you do. Many people love what they do and that is unfortunately not enough. I love basketball but it is not my obsession. That is where so many people get hung up and why so many of you are unhappy right now. You enjoy or love what you do but it’s not your obsession. Being obsessed gets you out of bed every day when the weather is bad, or you don’t feel like doing things. Even when you are down or you have had a bad stretch of things not going your way, you will always get back up. Michael Jordan is the perfect example of this. He was obsessed about being the best basketball player he could be. Of course, his career and life prove that. You must get that way. I am obsessed with helping people in financing their home with a mortgage loan. I am obsessed with coaching people and giving them the tools for them to get out of depression or to change their course in life. If you can honestly say you are not obsessed with what you are doing right now, then you need to change it. You will never truly be fulfilled and always wondering why instead of living your best life.
100 Percent Accountability – Right now, so many of you are blaming everybody and everything for where your life is at. Excuse making seems like it’s a full time job. You blame the weather, the economy, the stock market, the CEO’s, the politics, Trump, Biden, heck…I even heard someone say the other day that God gave them a bad card in life to suffer. WTF! Some of you are so resentful right now that you bask in the pity party. It is your choice to be and act that way. We all have problems; we all have issues. Some of us have more difficult issues than others. I caught myself making a ton of excuses. I learned to change my language and be more accountable. We are human, and its easy to blame someone other than to look in the mirror and own it. We can justify why we are where we are. Once you get 100 percent accountable and own up and say I am where I am because of my choices, you can start changing things. You must solve that mentality first before you can truly move forward. I have seen and learned from people who have lived in hell holes and even been abused so bad you can’t even grasp it. Yet, they are out there winning. They are out there helping others. Why? Because they became 100 percent accountable and did not make excuses.
Don’t Care What Others Think! – If there is one takeaway for you, this is it! This year especially, I learned to what I use as my phrase, “I don’t give a F what people think!” It is more colorful when I say it to myself. Now, I love feedback from people, especially mentors and peers. What I am referring to is the family, friends, and followers you have. As I have put myself out there fully, especially on social media, the negative nellies are out in full force. At first, it sucked. I felt like I was doing something wrong and even questioned myself. I changed my mindset to not care and go further to see what would happen. When I did that, it was painful, I lost some friends, and stopped talking to some people. After a while it became normal. I feel happier. I sleep better. I am hitting and crushing goals. You are always going to be judged by people. The talk behind your back is always always going to be there. Get used to it. It is a part of life. The sooner you can understand that people are always going to judge and talk shit about you, you will feel so much better and free! We all must chart our own course, and to do that, you must stop worrying about what others think and say of you. Period!
