But what you may not realize is just how many people influence your life, feeding you ideas about what is “right,” “wrong,” “good,” “bad,” and practically every other subjective decision making criteria that guides your life.  Some of these ideas are good for you , while others are bad.  (See what I did there?  Hopefully you’re not taking my word for that! )

Whether someone’s influence on you is bad or good isn’t up to me to decide – you’ve got to make the call for yourself.  But chances are you’re not aware of how much external programming you’re soaking in. In fact, there are more people than you’d like to admit secretly controlling your life by influencing how you make your most important, life-guiding choices.  I say “secretly” because we generally don’t even acknowledge that it’s going on.

Let’s look at seven types of people who contribute ingredients to your daily decision making processes, and let awareness do its work in you.

#1 – Your Heroes

The Good: I’m all for having heroes – those powerful people (real or fictional) who you want to emulate so you can become the person  you want to be (if indeed, that’s who you have consciously chosen to become).  Focusing on how a hero would handle your situation can help you detach from unnecessary emotional baggage and focus on doing what needs to be done (despite how small you feel sometimes).

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been able to cut through the emotional clutter and make a good decision simply by asking myself, “How would (name) handle this?” or “What would (name) think was most important?”  Taking on some of your heroes’ attitudes and views can be a powerful way to overcome emotional resistance.

The Bad: Heroes are often one-dimensional – whether they’re real or fictional.  We tend to put people on a pedestal and think because they are amazing in one sense that all their other capacities are flawless.  But they’re people just like we are, and they have their own failings.  When you emulate heroes, you have to be very careful not to absorb the bad with the good.

Case in point: When I was a teenager I found a very strong role model who was a shining example of hard work, being positive, doing things that supported others in the community and expressing gratitude for life and family.  I made sure to emulate a great deal from him.

But on the flip side, I was acutely aware that as a result of his upbringing, his attitudes towards other races were not as they should have been.  I winced at racially tinged comments and made a mental note not to absorb this part of his personality.  I took the good, and resisted the bad.

Bottom line: You have heroes.  They influence you.  Make sure that you are consciously selective in how they influence you.

#2 – Your Nemesis

Chances are you may have a nemesis, even if you’re not a superhero with a secret identity.  Your nemesis can be someone who you want to be like (but whom you’re jealous toward) or someone you’re feeling directly pitted against (such as a neighbor or relative who constantly one-ups you).

We all like to feel like we’re above such things, but we’re not.  There’s always someone you’re just a little bit jealous of or whom you’re consistently badgered by in regards to your progress or status.  This influences your focus and choices, whether you want it to or not.

The Good: Sometimes a nemesis is good for you – constantly keeping you on your toes and staying one step ahead of you, making you hungry to be, do, and have the things they are having.  Maybe they’re closer to the weight/income/whatever you want to be and you’re jealous – so you commit to taking focused action in order to catch up.  You may be accessing a petty emotion (jealousy), but it’s driving you to do something constructive.

One positive “nemesis” to have is someone on the same side as you are – such as a teammate or co-worker, where the healthy competition creates a positive net result for your side.  Each success of theirs triggers your own sense of drive to equal or surpass them.  You may both be battling for first place, but there’s no real shame in coming in second because your side wins.

The Bad: It’s easy to play the sucker to a nemesis.  Often, you’ll generate huge amounts of stress trying to have what they have, and you can make same pretty stupid decisions in the name of keeping up with them.  You can become extremely petty, burn bridges and actually have a negative impact on the people around you in your quest to never let your nemesis get the best of you.  You become reactive (to their decisions) instead of proactive (making your own choices).

Worse yet, it’s all too common to let a fierce competitive drive push you to expend a huge amount of personal energy and focus into winning, without ever asking yourself if the prize itself is worth it. You may devote years of your life trying to climb one rung higher on a ladder that’s leaning against the wrong wall.

Bottom line: Be very careful when it comes to being jealous – or feeling a personal sense of threat – when it comes to the success of someone else.  It’s a slippery slope that can leave you chasing after a set of standards that aren’t truly your own, simply because you want to be “like them.”

#3 – Your Parents

There’s no denying that your parents are a major source of your attitudes and beliefs, even if that idea makes your skin crawl.  From a very early age, you were spoon-fed the foundations of what you were to consider right and wrong, and you either accepted it or rebelled against it (or in rare cases, actually reasoned out your own beliefs).

There’s nothing accusatory in that statement – it just is.  Our parents’ job is to mold us into people who can function independently, and we take a lot of that conditioning without questioning it.

The Good: Hopefully your parents established positive, uplifting standards in your life.  If they were absent for whatever reason, hopefully you found a positive role model.  Parents can be a powerful force in helping you mature, guiding you around some of the foolish pitfalls you might otherwise have to experience on your own.

You should definitely look at your parents (or parent figures) as guides who can teach you the wisdom they learned through painful trial and error.  Most of the time they (hopefully) will genuinely look out for you and keep your best interests at heart, and that’s worth modeling.

The Bad: Since our parents are the first authority figures we come to know, we tend to put them on a pedestal early in life, thinking they know absolutely everything about life.  That means some of our basic beliefs, opinions and life direction are stamped from their mold.  But their mold may not even be remotely right for our lives, because it carries the baggage of their individual lives (and that of their parents).

Sometimes this means you’re conditioned to believe in scarcity. Sometimes it’s cynicism, or racism, or sexism, or whatever kind of -ism dominated their formative years.  It’s hard to stomach, but in some cases we may have had parents who just plain indifferent to creating a fulfilling life or sadder yet, wanted to be better role models but just didn’t know how.  Their limiting beliefs may – when transferred to you – be what’s holding you back.

Bottom line: A lot of who you are is shaped by who your parents were, so it’s critically important that you ask yourself if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.  If it’s good and lends you strength, keep it.  If it’s bad and transmits weakness to you, break the habit.

#4 – Your Partner

Your partner is someone you spend an extraordinary amount of time with, and from an emotional standpoint is likely one of the strongest influences on your life.  And because our fear of being rejected by (or disappointing) our partners is such a powerful force, it can easily make us adjust our personal standards in ways we would never have done on our own.

The Good: In many cases, opposites attract (because hell, wouldn’t being around someone just like us make us bored – or crazy?).  This means that your partner likely has many strengths you don’t, which can be a catalyst in making us want to raise our standards to match them – especially if they are particularly demanding of them.

For example, I’ve always been a very logically-oriented, “rugged individual” kind of person, which has served me extraordinarily well in personal development, engineering and business.  On the other hand, that means I’ve spent the bulk of my life around other “rugged individuals,” so I’ve have a much harder time relating with people who operate from a more empathetic, feelings/relationship standpoint.

But that’s exactly how my wife Alison operates – she’s highly tuned to “get” what other people are feeling and thinking, and what’s on their mind emotionally.  What this means is her standards – which involve understanding what people need rather than just what they are doing – influence me to do the same.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been struggling with some parenting issue, trying for an hour to make my 5 year old “do” something he’s supposed to, and she’s swept in and taken care of the issue within 60 seconds.  I watch her connect empathetically with our kid, and it teaches me a new (and better) way of handling the situation in the future. I could give a hundred examples of how she does this, but this blog is called Rock Your Day, not My Wife Rocks, so I’ll leave it at this one.

A good partner complements you, opening your eyes to new ways of thinking, behaving and just being.  Witnessing their standards can positively mold your own.

The Bad: Because we spend so much time around our partners, and we want to be on good terms with them, we can begin to experience entrainment - we are likely fall into the same patterns they have.  If their standards are not as strong as ours, that can bring us down to their level.  (And it works both ways – you might be the negative force on them!)

This can create a strong negative pattern that’s hard to break, because once the two of you have relaxed your standards, it’s more difficult to generate the desire to snap out of it and break free.  Your new, lowered standards become “normal.”  The two of you may not even realize that you’re drifting downward.

And it may not even be intentional.  Your partner (or you, if you’re a negative influence on them) may not even be consciously choosing to lower their standards.  They may have simply become sidetracked by life, as we all are, and let one standard slide so that they could focus on what’s more important in the moment.  God knows we’ve all done the same thing.

The challenge there is once the standard is relaxed, it often doesn’t ever get strengthened again.  So you need to be vigilant and proactive in keeping the standards you want in place (or raising them back to where they were if you’ve let them slide).  It’s not easy, but it’s tragic when it doesn’t get done.

A quick note on this: I’ve heard a lot of people talk about having to distance themselves from “negative people,” and they take that to mean they ditch their partners and family members.  There’s a fine line there.  While I’m 100% behind separating yourself from someone who is dead-set on being consciously abusive to you or who is invincibly poisonous to your well-being, I think that some people use this as a crutch to justify giving up on people who are simply difficult to deal with.

Some people say that their partners are “always negative” or “a pain” or even “unwilling to change.” If you’re thinking along the same lines, I challenge you get brutally honest and ask yourself if the real problem is that they’re simply mirroring your standards?  I know that in my life, I tend to get most frustrated with people who  – wait for it – demonstrate my own weaknesses.  It’s crazy.  It’s also human nature, because I see it in others all the time.

If you have a partner who you feel has lower standards than yours, may I suggest that you entertain the possibility that you’re in the position to be a positive influence?  It’s not the easy way out, I know, but it may just be the challenge they’re secretly waiting for you to take up, but are too shy to ask.

Bottom line: Your partner and you control each other’s lives more than you probably acknowledge.  Use that power over their standards for good, and not evil (or worse yet, indifference).  And if your partner’s standards are dragging you down, don’t make ditching them your first option – instead, lock in a core group of friends who have higher standards so you can keep yours up, and raise your partner up in the process.

#5 – The Man (Or Woman) In The Mirror

This may be the hardest person to fight back against you’ll ever meet – the person who you imagine is looking at you from the other side of the mirror.  We are our own worst critics – constantly sizing ourselves up in ways that we’d never judge other people while at the same time resisting the acceptance of positive messages as “not a big deal.”  Many of us can’t stand to face the person staring at us in the bathroom mirror (and some people even remove mirrors from their house entirely because their self-loathing is so strong).

This is a tough one.  This is all about looking at our self image, our identity, the mish-mash of opinions, feelings, and baggage we carry and really asking ourselves how it all comes together.  The truly frightening thing is that for so many of us our self-image is a prison, yet it’s the single thing we have total control of in our life.

The Good: That morning mirror check can be a mini-accountability session that you experience every day, if you focus on who you want that person in the mirror to be. When you consciously decide to raise your standards – or simply stick to the ones you have – you get to look yourself straight in the eye and ask if you’re holding up your end of the bargain.

If you’re focusing on your successes – the things you’ve done right in your life, the good decisions you’ve made and the lives you’ve impacted (even if it is only one life) – then looking into the mirror will strengthen you.  It will become an exercise in celebrating your victories and steeling yourself for even greater challenges in the future.

And if you’re shuddering at that notion because you view congratulating yourself as narcissistic, or egotistical, or self-centered, get over it.  Your playing small does not serve the world.  If you build yourself up on a daily basis, you will be in a better position to be a positive influence on others.  I give this example a lot, but it’s like the safety cards on airplanes show – when you take the oxygen mask and put it over your face first, then you can help take care of other people.

This isn’t about saying, “I’m the greatest, people should be impressed by me” – it’s about saying “I have a lot going for me and I should feel really uplifted by it.”

The Bad: The mirror can be the scariest thing in the world if you’ve been conditioned to look down on yourself (whether by parental criticism, bad experience, or those damned beauty magazines).  You look in the mirror and you judge yourself – you’re not pretty/thin/attractive enough, you’re a loser/fraud/sham, you’re not anywhere close to where you wanted to be at this point in your life.  Every failure you’ve experienced (or imagined!), every harsh word or insult you’ve received, it all comes back to you in a rush of depression as you see that tired face in the mirror.

Now it may be just me, but that sounds like the height of self-centeredness.  To hold on to every negative impression about ourselves as tightly as possible and refuse to let go, because we are so convinced that we are terrible people … it’s borderline insanity, and yet it’s what every single one of us does on a daily basis, to one degree or another.

And if you think “successful” people are above that sort of thing, think again.  If anything, it’s more acute, because they’re generally exposed to even more people who judge them (sometimes fairly, sometimes just out of spite, and sometimes very publicly).  No matter what your position in life, you’re going to have ample “reasons” to beat yourself up.

But holding on to these “reasons” is not in your best self interest (or in the interest of those who you can influence positively).  It locks you into a downward spiral of resentment that some people never pull their way out of.

If that describes you, then you need to start pulling yourself out of that spiral, because no one can do it for you.  And while that may seem like an impossible task, it starts with a simple act of self-defense:

The next time you pass a mirror, look straight into it and no matter how you feel about yourself in the moment, say these words: “I refuse to give up on you.  That’s my standard.”

You probably won’t feel anything different the first time you do this – or the second, or even the tenth.  But if you stick with it, you’ll begin conditioning yourself to pull out of the emotional hole you’ve dug, and start making the changes in standards and behavior that will improve your self-image.  When you tell yourself you’re worth fighting for, eventually you will fight – and you’ll ultimately win.  Just don’t give up.  You are worth it.

Bottom line: Nobody is going to fight your inner battles for you, so you have to do it yourself.  You have the power to set a new standard where you actively build yourself up on a daily basis and stop beating yourself up – but only if you choose to.

The Choice Is Yours – Program Yourself Or Be Programmed By Others

Other people wield an enormous influence on your standards on a daily basis.  If you’re not consciously deciding to filter that influence, you’re setting yourself up to become a puppet pulled by strings you can’t even see.

Increase your awareness, and increase your personal power over your life – and when you look in the mirror, you’ll like what you see more, day after day.

There’s something more important than that – something so important it determines whether taking action is a pleasure or a chore:  It’s the set of personal standards you hold yourself to on a daily basis.

Not willpower.  Standards.

Standards determine what you’ll settle for.

Standards drive your behavior because they’re linked to what you will and will not tolerate in life.  They actually generate that discomfort threshold - that “oh, $#!t!” emotion that finally gets you moving on something.  Look at what you tolerate in life and you’ll see where your standards are.

• How messy does your car/house/office have to get before you can’t tolerate it anymore?  That’s your standard of cleanliness.

• How out-of-shape can you get before you draw the line and start doing something about it?  That’s your standard of fitness.

• How deep in debt do you have to get before you cut up your cards and take action to get out?  That’s your standard of financial solvency.

We operate like little human thermostats – we have this mental standard of “okay” that we can tolerate, and when we dip below it, we suddenly get motivated to get our ass in gear.  We feel like less of a person until we get ourselves back into that “okay” zone.

In one sense, standards are part of how we want to identify ourselves.  If we’re not living up to our own standards, we don’t feel like ourselves – and we suddenly get motivated to correct the issue.

But standards can also lock you into a personal hell.

The other side of the coin is that our standards are often based around how we want other people to identify us. And since our human desire to be accepted is so strong, we commonly set our thermostat a lot higher when other people are looking than we ever do for our own personal sense of fulfillment.

Because we’re afraid of being excluded, ridiculed, or simply thought poorly of, we jump through hoops to look good for others.  In effect, we let the fear and worry about other people’s opinions become a stronger driving force then the desire to live a life we’re happy with.

Don’t believe me?

• How many times have you let your place stay messy for long periods of time, and finally get it clean only because people were coming over?

• How many times have you let your physical fitness go for a long time … only to start taking care of yourself because of an upcoming reunion, or special event?

• How many times have you altered the appearance of your home, your wardrobe, or your accumulation of “stuff,” only because your friends, neighbors, or co-workers have done it first?

The desire to not be labeled as “different” (which most people are afraid means “deficient”) is so strong that we will move heaven and earth not to be called out by someone else.

But we won’t move heaven and earth to get our lives where we want them.  You know it’s true in your life, the same way I know it’s true in mine.  Deep down, we are more likely to let other people’s opinions - real or imagined – direct our lives than we are to take the reins for ourselves.

That, my friends, is screwed up.  And it should scare you.

There’s an old saying about the definition of debt:

“Debt is spending money you don’t have to buy things you don’t need to impress people you don’t even like in the first place.”

So it is with your standards.  You freak out about getting the place clean for company without asking yourself, “Why don’t I keep the place this clean for myself?” or “Why the hell do I even have all of this stuff, anyway?”  You diet and work out to look good at that wedding or reunion and let yourself go to pot for the rest of the year.  You avoid taking risks, being yourself and being vulnerable because you are afraid that showing your “real” side will get you looked down on.

Again, you know it’s true in your life, the same way I know it’s true in mine. Even if you’re the most independent person on Earth, somewhere in your life you’re likely letting someone else set your standard.

It’s not fun to acknowledge this.  In fact, a big part of you will be resisting thinking about this as strongly as possible (isn’t there a link I can click to get away from this as quickly as I can?).

It’s uncomfortable because it’s true.  And as a truth, you can either pretend it’s not an issue, or you can face it and admit that as a society, we’re carefully conditioned to fear being ourselves and to take the “safe” path at all costs.

But the safe path isn’t safe at all.  Since your peace of mind – if you ever have any – is tied up in impressing others, it’s on the shakiest ground possible.  What happens when the wind changes and your best isn’t good enough in society’s eyes?  How high will you jump to get back into their good graces?  Is that how you want to live your life?

What to do when you’re ready to face the facts

If a life of slavery to society’s fickle standards isn’t very appealing to you right now, congratulations – you’re setting your own standard right now and deciding that you don’t want other people’s opinions to force you into a box any longer.

Now it’s time to re-evaluate some of the other standards in your life.  Why do you work the job you do?  Why do you wear the clothes you do?  What criteria do you use to select your friends?  Why do you look at yourself in the mirror and say _______ (insert good or bad word here)?

is it because you’ve bought into society’s definition of how you should work, look, live and operate?

Or is it because you consciously looked at your life and said “this is what I truly find fulfilling?”

For everything in your life, it’s either one or the other. Either you’re letting the world tell you what you need to be/do/have to be happy and worthwhile, or you’re setting your own standards.

Wouldn’t you rather be free to chart your own course?

The high non-existent cost of high standards

For a lot of people, all this standards-setting talk will be scary, and rightfully so.  After all, if you do what’s best for you, even if it doesn’t fit someone’s cookie-cutter idea of what life should be like, won’t you lose some friends and make some relatives mad?

Absolutely.  Because other people are just as afraid of being looked down on as you are, they’re going to panic and tell you that you should fall in line, like they are, and take the safe route.

• When you decide to take care of your body, eat right and work out, they’ll push you to pig out like they do – and then resent you when you start trimming down as they fatten up.

• When you decide to brown-bag lunch and save your money instead of joining them at the food court, they’ll label you as a financial loser.

• When you decide to stop joining in on the regular gossip sessions because you know that’s not the kind of BS you want in your life, they’ll think you’re “too good for them.”

• When you decide to push back on late work hours because you want more time with your family, they’ll say you’re not a “team player.”

• When you decide to pour your time into improving your life rather than heading out for drinks on Fridays or spending the weekend at the big game, you’ll become one of “those people.”

So, yeah, some people will shun you. That seems like a pretty high cost – and I won’t argue that it won’t be.  But think about it this way – if these people are going to reject you because you’re taking care of yourself physically, mentally and emotionally … then do you really want them to be major players in your life anyway? Are they really caring about what’s best for you, or are they selfishly trying to hold you down so they don’t have to face the same uncomfortable choices for themselves?

Yeah, you’ll lose some people along the way to raising your standards.  But you never really had them anyway.

The light at the end of the tunnel

Now, don’t think I’m saying you should abandon people. If friends and family put pressure on you because you’re not falling into line with their standards, don’t cut them off.  But do let them know firmly – and in no uncertain terms - that you’re a big kid now, and you can make your own decisions.  And that you can live with the consequences.

If they can’t deal with being around someone who is trying to improve their quality of life, than it’s not your problem. Yes, it will hurt.  Yes, it will open some wounds.  But reaching the end of your life with the realization that you let yourself spend your time on Earth as a puppet will hurt even more.

But it’s not all bad.  In fact, two very fulfilling things will happen as you move forward in your quest to raise your standards:

• First, you will attract people who will accept you for who you are and be genuinely supportive of your decisions to raise the bar in your own life.  You will create your own circle of people who will actually let you be yourself (which is a rare thing in this world).

• Second, you might pull some of your friends and family along in your wake, and inspire them to set their own standards as well.  When they see you becoming happier and more fulfilled in your own life, they may gain the courage to do the same.

Raising your standards is not easy.  It’s frightening.  It’s challenging.  It’s not something you may want to do alone.  But it is something you need to be aware of, because if you’re not consciously determining where you want your standards to be – in all things – you’re letting the world reach in and muck around with your thermostat as often as it wants.

And when it’s all said and done, that’s not where you want to be.

Every day, ask yourself this:

Am I living this way because it’s what I want, or because society is telling me it’s what I should want?

And be prepared to act on the answer.

That is all.

Dave

Meanwhile, here’s part 4 coming at you – where we talk about how one way you avoid taking action is that we’re hiding behind the inaction of our peers.

This is one that nobody likes to admit to – especially me – and even this morning, I’m kicking my own ass about it.  Hopefully I’ll kick yours today, too, and we’ll be even.

Let’s talk about this painful subject and start dealing with it.

C’mon, Rationalize With Me … Everybody’s Doin’ It

We rationalize when we actively come up with reasons why it’s okay to do things we know we shouldn’t be doing (or that are counterproductive to our bigger goals), just so we can feel more comfortable with our current situation.

• “I’m so busy with my job, I can’t start working out now.  You know how it is.”
• “I’m so strapped for cash I can’t start saving money.  Isn’t everyone?”
• “I hate my job, but in this economy … what are you going to do?”

In each of these examples, we’re leaning on the inaction of our peer group to support our decision not to kick our own ass into gear.  We know that nobody is taking action, so we don’t take action either, because we don’t even have to make an excuse for it.  All we have to do is say “you know how it is,” and many of our peers nod in agreement.

And this behavior doesn’t indicate a lazy person … just a form of selected laziness. The same people who are so driven they can work like hell and achieve “big things” let their bodies and relationships go because they are surrounded by other people who are doing the same thing.  No one calls them out on it, because they don’t want to be called out themselves.

Overweight people tend to hang out with overweight people.  Slackers tend to sit around with other slackers.  Smokers drag with other smokers.  Procrastinators chill with other procrastinators.  Excuse-makers hang with other excuse-makers.  Urgency addicts buzz around with other urgency addicts.

My peer group is doing this.  Your peer group is doing this.  We’re strong in some of the same areas, weak in some of other areas, but we’re all justifying inaction together. And if we don’t change our behavior, it’s unlikely we’ll ever move past it, and we’ll damn ourselves to a life of regrets.

Breaking The Cycle – Here’s What You Need To Do, Right Now

Most people don’t push past their inaction because they think it will take too much willpower or require too much internal strength to grow … so they just keep on keepin’ on.  But there’s an easier way to move forward without having to endure the pain you’re dreading:

Connect with one person who won’t tolerate that behavior – today, and every day.

When you find yourself someone who is taking action in the area you’re struggling with and connect with them, you’ll feel a magnetic pull towards action as you bring them in as part of your peer group.  I’ve talked earlier about people being either grounders or magnets for you, and it’s as true now as it was then.

This is most effective when you’re connecting with someone who has been exactly where you are now and has risen above it (for example, you’ll get better encouragement from a formerly overweight person who worked the weight off than someone who has always been skinny).

Just connect with someone.  Today.  Become part of their peer group, let them become part of yours, and feel that magnetic pull start to stir up the part of you that wants to do more, be more, and have more … and see how your desire to follow through increases.

You can start by following me on Twitter … me an my peer group kick some pretty good ass on a daily basis (and often kick each other’s).  Join us.

That is all.

Now I need to go take my own advice and reconnect with FormerFatGuy on Twitter, because I’ve got some weight to lose.

Dave

Meanwhile, here’s part 3 coming at you – where we talk about how one way you avoid taking action is by lying to yourself about the real cost of inaction.

Because when it comes down to it, we lie to ourselves a lot, except we don’t call it lying.  We call it rationalization or worse, “thinking realistically.“  Realistically, it’s lying.  it’s misrepresenting the truth – because the truth is pretty ugly.

The truth might be that if you don’t lose those extra 50 pounds, you’re likely to be dead at age 50 instead of 70 or 80.

The truth might be that your kids are growing up without you, because you’re not spending enough time with them – and you’re almost out of time to fix it.

The truth might be that you’re only a layoff away from discovering that your current skillset just won’t serve you in a job search – and that the company’s stability is shaky at best.

The truth might be that you’re building your business the wrong way, with strategies that keep you on the treadmill rather than put you on a ladder.

So Why The Hell Aren’t We Doing Something About It?

Facing up to ugly truths is scary.  Damned scary.  That’s reason enough to run and hide from it.

But oh, wait, we don’t “run.”  We don’t “hide.”  I mean we’re smarter than that.  We just do other things.

We check our email, or our blog stats, or our twitter account, or our RSS feed.  Again.

We watch LOST, or worse yet, flip the channel looking for something interesting.  Again.

We go to Digg, or StumbleUpon, or Reddit, or wherever the hell we go to click on things that don’t matter.

We go to the fridge, even though we certainly didn’t go light on our last meal and shouldn’t need a food fix.

We do a hundred million things to distract ourselves from facing the true cost of inaction - the true cost of facing all these personal demons that scare the hell out of us (almost as badly as it scares us to think that people might *gasp* find out we have human weaknesses).

We pretend that we’ll get to it “someday” when “things settle down” or “we have more time / energy / money” and yet we are still watching f***ing LOST and we still have the energy to play XBOX and we are still buying $5 coffees and expensive fluff we just don’t need.  (Self, I’m talking to you.)

But we pretend we’re not doing all that, because it’s easier to blame “not enough X” and do whatever it takes to shift our focus away from just how much it’s costing us not to fix our stuff.

And then we’re all surprised when we have health problems.  Or when the kids have nothing to do with us.  or when our spouse leaves us.  Or when we just can’t seem to find a job in this “terrible economy.”

But by God, we won’t miss our chance to find out if pretend people on TV get off the damned island.  Sitting on our asses is easy.

Screw that.

It’s Time To Face Up to The True Cost Of Inaction

Those things you don’t like to think about?  Think about them.

Not “if” they might happen, but “when.”  Because they will, if you don’t turn the tide.

They will happen, if you don’t start taking action today to make sure they don’t happen.

If things haven’t been getting measurably better for you over the last 12 months, and you don’t change your habits and actions, you can guess where you’ll be 12 months from now.

Jack and Kate might be off the island, but you’ll still be trapped.

Here’s What You Need To Do, Right Now

I wish I had pat advice I can give you about how to make it all better in 7 easy steps.  But I don’t.  because facing your “stuff” is hard.  It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do.

Turning off the TV and spending 60 minutes facing your anxieties instead?  Unbelievably uncomfortable.

But losing out on life – perhaps literally – because you didn’t take action?  Utterly unacceptable.

So here’s what you should do to start.  Stop pretending your fears aren’t there and learn how to understand them, so you can figure out what to do next instead of going into hiding.

If this scares the hell out of you, do what I do.  Read Havi’s stuff at The Fluent Self:

• Talking truth to fear
• You don’t have to face your fear
• It’s not freaking easy, okay?
• Everything else she writes

Don’t pretend that you’re not going to have to face the consequences of the things you’re avoiding … because you won’t get a second chance.

That is all.

Now I need to go take my own advice.  And think a while.

Dave

The reason you’re “stuck” when it comes to getting off your ass and doing whatever it is you’re avoiding?

You’re pretending that there’s a barrier there instead of making a decision. Yeah.

In Which You Tend To Trail Off Rather Than Taking A Stand

So I was listening to one of my favorite social media rockstars, Laura Roeder this morning and her smack-upside-the-head video blog post “Your ONLY Two Choices” and it was right in line with what I’m about to talk about here. Laura talks about how people in business waffle between two options when they haven’t taken action:

1. “I don’t have the money to hire someone to do X,” and
2. “I don’t know how to do X.”

The problem here isn’t that 1 and 2 aren’t valid points – it’s that people let themselves get stuck there.  You do it.  I do it.

Let’s quit settling for this crap, ok?

If you’ve been avoiding taking action on something, maybe it’s because you’ve set up this same situation in your head.  You’re saying that this is a barrier and that is a barrier and you leave it at that … when what you really need to be doing is saying “screw it, I’m going to do something about it.”

Stop, right now, and think.

Think of something you’re avoiding because you either don’t know how to move forward, or you do know – but you’re just not sure you have the resources to do it.  Instead of stopping there, ask yourself this simple question:

What am I going to do to move forward on this right frickin’ now?

Seriously. You don’t have the money?  What are you going to change about how your money is spent to stop using that as an excuse?  Or how are you going to to earn more money so you can use it?

You don’t have the time?  What are you going to change about how you’re spending your time?  (Hint from @garyvee: “STOP WATCHING F******G LOST!”)  Or what are you going to decide to push off to later so you can get to more important stuff now?

The point of this post isn’t to motivate you (there are plenty of other posts for that).

The point of this post is to tell you to stop trailing off in those mental conversations and acting like your obstacles matter.  They don’t.

They don’t.

Are they real?  Hell yeah.  I won’t deny that.

Are they scary?  Hell yeah.  I quake in fear, daily.

Are they reason to sit on your thumbs instead of swallowing hard, bracing yourself, and actually making a decision to act, right now?

You know they’re not.

You know they’re not.

Here’s What You Need To Do, Right Now

• Promise yourself that the next time you think of one of these “fork in the road” moments, instead of saying “Yeah, I need to figure something out,” FRIGGING DO SOMETHING ALREADY.

• Promise yourself that the next time you say to yourself “I don’t have the resources to do X,” demand that you find a way to move forward.

• Promise yourself that the next time you say to yourself, “I don’t know how to do X,” call bullshit on yourself and take one single step towards learning how.

That is all.

Now I need to go take my own advice.

(&^%#$%# Rock Your Day posts …)

Today we’re going to talk about service as a coping mechanism - or, in simpler words, dealing with your stuff by helping people get through their stuff.  It’s a simple strategy, but it’s wildly effective for those who have been through incredibly painful ordeals.

If Pain Seems Meaningful, You Can Take An Infinite Amount Of It

In 1980, Candy Lightner’s teenage daughter was killed by a drunk driver (a four-time-convicted DWI driver, no less), and he actually avoided a prison sentence entirely by serving time in a halfway house and work camp. A situation like that is the kind of thing that shatters a parent forever.  I can’t imagine the fury and helplessness that she must have felt not getting justice for her daughter’s death.

Except Candy was a survivor.  She didn’t settle for helplessness.  She couldn’t bring her daughter back, and she couldn’t get revenge (what’s the point in that, anyway?).  But she did do something much, much more powerful.  She decided to connect with other people who had experienced her same tragedy and band together to make a difference.  Candy Lightner was the founder of MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving).

For 25 years, she relived the story of her tragedy over, and over, and over again so she could make a difference.  Making a difference = purpose to the pain.

But you don’t have to petition state legislatures to start dealing with your pains (though if that does the trick, go for it).  The point is, by focusing on using your pain to ease the pain of others, you learn to cope incredibly quickly.

Helping Others Takes The Focus Off Of Pain And Helps You Move Forward

One of the tricky things about massive emotional pain is that it paralyzes you.  You think you’ll never get over it, that the world is coming to an end, and that you’re going under, with no chance of coming up for air.  But that bleak worldview happens because we lose our objectivity and we get sucked into self-pity and hopelessness.

But when we reach out to help other people – especially people who have similar pain – an important thing happens.  We start looking at the pain objectively, because it’s a lot easier to talk someone else through their pain than it is to come to terms with our own.  And by helping someone else feel like they can cope, we realize we can, too.

If you’ve lost someone, you can relate to someone who’s lost someone of their own.  If you take the time to talk to that person, help them through it emotionally, you’ll be helped as well.  We have a natural desire to encourage other people, to help them feel better, and when we do that, we lighten our own load a bit.  By seeing others realize they can carry on, we realize we can too.

If You’re Feeling Paralyzed And Depressed, Find Someone To Help In The Next Two Hours

No matter how bad you’re feeling, there’s a bit of good news – the Internet has made being a survivor easier than ever.  There are chat rooms and forums and blogs and social media spaces for practically any pain you could have experienced in your life.  If you’re feeling at the end of your rope, search for those gathering places and say one encouraging thing to someone every day.  In 30 days I guarantee you that you’ll experience a lift.

(looks at watch) Looks like I’m out of time for today.  Next post in this series will continue with another aspect of the survivor mindset.  I hope you’ll join me by subscribing to this blog and better yet, linking to or Stumbling this post.

See you next post,

Dave

Today we’re going to talk about choosing the right role models - basically the people you are going to want “on your team” to help you move past the circumstances you’re in and start moving towards more favorable circumstances that will get you closer to your goals.  This is a critical component of surviving painful times, because you’re not simply judged by the company you keep – you become the company you keep.

You Live According To The Expectations Of Your Peer Group

At some basic, psychological level, we all tend to gravitate towards the expectations of our peer group, because we want to be accepted by them.  We change our behaviors, our outlook on life, and our values in order to fit in with the people we like and the people we want to be like.  Even if we describe ourselves a “leaders” or “loose cannons,” there are still people we want to give us approval, and we take some level of action to live in that zone that we know will give us that approval.

When I say that, I’m not saying that we’re weak sheep (although there will always be people who follow their crowd blindly, just to be accepted).  Sometimes we alter who we are to fit our peer group for good reason – because we are inspired by our peers, and truly desire to become more like them. We hang out with them knowing that they will pull us in the direction that we want to go.  This is a powerful psychology that I discussed before in my post about choosing to associate with magnetic people who will “pull” you towards your desired goals.

Since we are so heavily influenced by people we like and people we want to like us, survivors use this to their advantage by seeking out and finding people who are good at surviving.

Survivor Mindset #2 – Choose Role Models Who Can Teach You To Cope And Thrive

There’s a reason why programs like Weight Watchers and Alcoholics Anonymous can be so successful for people who are struggling to change a destructive habit: When you surround yourself with people who are experiencing success overcoming their challenges, it reinforces the idea that surviving – and thriving – is a possibility for you as well.  You identify with these people because of your shared problem, but you also begin to identify with a shared sense of strength as well.

On the other hand, this can work in the negative direction.  Surround yourself with people who have weak coping abilities or an overly negative outlook on life and you’ll feel your hope-o-meter moving towards zero.  This is a dangerous place to be.  Survivors seek out other survivors and make them role models – and whether they associate with them one-on-one or just witness their actions, they use that as fuel to keep going and to not give up.  If you’re struggling with something, look at your peers – do they inspire you to rise above your challenges, or do they reaffirm the idea that “things are never going to get better?”

I’m not telling you to ditch your friends.  Just become more aware of how they are affecting you (both positively and negatively).  The more you associate with people who choose to deal with adversity in a positive way, the more those role models will help you do the same.

Survivors Band Together And Tend To Reward Each Other

Hang out with a core group of survivors and you’ll build a solid support structure that will not only help you cope with life, but also can help you start building more favorable circumstances.  Fellow survivors who are farther along the process than you are tend to look back at people who are walking the path, as they did, and will open doors for them. Because they identify with your struggle, they feel a desire to help.

I experienced this constantly as a young teenager, struggling to get myself in a position where I could get into college, since my funds were extremely limited.  Fortunately, I had focused on getting to know successful adults who were survivors – who had struggled through poverty and adversity during their childhood – and as we “clicked,” they helped me find opportunities for scholarships.

Survivors build networks of people they respect, and focus on providing value to those people – whether it’s a tangible value, such as doing something to help those people, or an intangible act such as simply looking up to them and being a friend. Those networks can open up opportunities for you that serve both parties – you, because you have had your circumstances shifted to more favorable ones, and for the other person, who can enjoy the satisfaction of helping someone whose need they can relate to (which is often a coping mechanism in itself).

I know this may sound very analytical, but it’s the approach I had to take at an early age to connect with people who would be able to help me get out dangerous situations.  Find people who have coping strategies worth looking up to, provide value to them as you emulate their outlook on life, and some amazing things happen.

(looks at watch) Looks like I’m out of time for today.  Next post will continue with another aspect of the survivor mindset, where I’ll talk about coping by helping other people.  I hope you’ll join me by subscribing to this blog and better yet, linking to or Stumbling this post.

See you next post,

Dave

Yet in spite of that, we both turned out okay.  Naturally, we have the same basketcase of issues that any other person has (we’re just as screwed up as the rest of humanity), but we didn’t break when all this bad stuff was going down.  We didn’t fold.  We didn’t bow out.  We didn’t implode.  We didn’t turn to pills, or the bottle, or to the barrel of a gun to take away the pain.  Instead, we turned our focus outward to create a life of challenge, a life of service (as best we can), and hopefully, a life that would inspire other people to see hope when facing their own darkest hours.

Again, we have our issues, and we have the same number of “days that suck” as anyone else, but we survived – and more than that, we’re thriving, despite all our baggage and hangups.

How Do Some People Survive Brutal Circumstances Without Imploding?

But I got to thinking … how the hell do some of us pull that off, when other people throw in the towel and say “screw it?”  I mean, it’s not because we’re exceptional people who have some coping gene.  So I spent some time thinking about the things I’ve seen in myself and in other people who escape some level of personal hell with their souls intact, and I’m going to share my mental notes about what kind of mindsets give “survivors” the psychological advantages they need to make it through to the other side.

Survivor Mindset #1 – Believe That The Game Can Be Won.

I’m not saying “life is a game” (that would be kind of flippant), but there are a lot of things about life that are like a game.  There are some general rules.  It pays to be on the right team – or to start your own one.  There are ways to get bonuses, upgrades, and lucky breaks … and most of all, the better you understand the rules, the more you can stack the deck in your favor.

If I haven’t killed you with bad metaphor overdose yet, you’ll see my point: People who treat life as a game discover they have the option to play to win rather than just take the cards that life hands them. While some things happen as a result of random chance, there’s a lot that can be done to increase the odds that favorable things will come their way.  Samuel Goldwyn once said “The harder I work, the luckier I get,” and that’s what playing to win is all about.

Horrible things can happen to people, and after the dust settles it may seem like they have lost all of their resources, all of their options, and all of their opportunities.  But survivors see it differently.  If they have “nothing,” they can find a way to gradually build up from that position rather than calling it quits.

Survivors Look For Patterns They Can Use To Their Advantage

Survivors look for patterns, for processes, for some kind of formula that explains how life works so that they can decide on a strategy to improve their position.  One of the most powerful patterns is what some people call “The Law of Reciprocity,” or basically “what goes around comes around.”

When I was 9, and my family basically imploded, reciprocity was a pattern I discovered and used to start stacking the deck in my favor.  I was low on resources, so I focused on helping people in every way that I could, without asking for anything in return.  Over the next ten years, this strategy created an enormous reservoir of reciprocity in my life, which gave me countless opportunities to get things that I needed when I needed them.  From high school teachers lending me their cars to anonymous donors helping me pay for college, what “went around” certainly came back around.

For me, this was simply the way I chose to view life.  I believed that “givers get,” and that if I gave enough, things would ultimately work out for me.  I used giving and contributing as my way to stack the deck in my favor so that I could survive.  Other people look for patterns that exist in areas of competition, or achievement, or talent … these patterns are everywhere.

Begin Creating Your Circumstances By Seeing Life As A Game

If you’re having trouble surviving the challenges of life, and you feel like you have nowhere to go, maybe you should try thinking in “game” terms.  There are more options to increase your ability to influence the game than you realize.  In chess, different pieces have different advantages and disadvantages – it’s the same way with people, and it’s the same way with yourself.

When you feel helpless, you’re like a pawn – unable to do anything but move forward, capturing only the opportunities that come by coincidence.  But as you look for the patterns that make up human psychology and turn your focus to understanding the rules of life, you open yourself up to different roles.  Suddenly, you may find yourself like the bishops, able to move diagonally at will and to move farther in those directions.  Other times you may pick up a knight-like ability, and find yourself looking at obstacles that would have stopped you as a pawn and jumping over them entirely.

The bottom line, it all begins with believing there is a way for you to have more, and that you can have more by using strategies that still allow you to respect yourself in the morning.  Survivors realize that the game is all about increasing your power – not your power over other people, but instead your power to understand the big picture and the opportunities that exist when you can start thinking a few moves ahead.

(looks at watch) Looks like I’m out of time for today.  Next post will continue with another aspect of the survivor mindset, where I’ll talk about choosing the right role models.  I hope you’ll join me by subscribing to this blog and better yet, linking to or Stumbling this post.

See you next post,

Dave

On any given day you wake up, rub the sleep from your eyes, and make a decision to do one of two things:

• You decide to live passively, doing the things that keep you exactly in the same place you are now, reinforce a victim mentality, and leave you wishing for more, or,

• You decide to live purposefully, taking multiple actions during the day that make you a stronger person, advance your goals, and make you happier.

Every day, you choose one of these options, whether you do it consciously or unconsciously (in which case you’ve chosen the first option by default).  You don’t get “not to choose” – you’re part of the game whether you like it or not.

The only question is, whose rules have you decided to play by?  Rules someone else is making you follow, simply because you think there aren’t any options, or that you don’t have the power to do more, be more, and experience more? Or have you decided that you’re going to make your own rules, live life on your own terms, and create the circumstances that you want in your life?

That’s the question you need to ask yourself right now.  How are you going to live out the rest of your day?

• Passively, crying “I’m a victim,” and staying right where you are?  Or

• Purposefully, declaring “I’m worth more than this,” and taking action today to move even one step forward, no matter the odds?

What are you going to do today? I hope you’ve decided.  Otherwise, you get the default choice of letting life, the world in general, and people who don’t have your best interests at heart decide just how much life you’re allowed to have today (and it’s unlikely to be a generous portion).

What are you going to do today? If you haven’t made a decision for today, you need to do it now.

Living Passively Leads To Depression

We’ve all experienced what it’s like to live passively, to tread water and feel like there’s no clawing our way out of the hole we’re in.  Maybe you’re feeling that way right now, and it makes you feel weak or stupid or somehow “less than.”  It’s important to be aware of how living passively feeds those feelings of inadequacy, and how it’s actually making you depressed.

If you honestly feel that life isn’t going to get any better and that you have no real power to change your situation, it’s perfectly natural to feel depressed. It’s the logical progression.  It’s not something to feel stupid about any more than you should feel emotionally responsible for the house getting cold in winter if the fireplace is neglected.  If there’s no fuel being added to the fire, those warm embers will turn to cold ash.

You’re not stupid or weak because the fire’s going out.  It’s just happening, because on some level, you’re allowing it to happen either from inaction or taking actions that aren’t the right ones to get that fire going.  You may be putting in 100% of your best effort hauling the heavy, wet logs you have around you into the fire, but that damp tinder isn’t going to burn.  You’re not stupid or weak, you’re just in a spot where what you’re doing isn’t working.

Maybe that’s how you’re feeling.  Let’s talk about adding the right kind of fuel to that fire.

Living Purposefully Leads To Relief

Living purposefully is like adding fresh, dry wood onto the fire and watching it burn.  It takes some work, but you get to enjoy the results of that flame, warming your sense of self and having your eyes reflect each satisfying spark.

When you live purposefully, you decide to rise above what life seems to be giving you and you decide you’re going to take more out of it, either from stepping out and simply experiencing more or by beginning to build the circumstances you want.  And both of those actions begin feeding your sense of personal power, of self-worth, and of hope for the future. Even if you’re only taking the smallest of actions to change things, if you’re taking them on a daily basis it’s like adding kindling to the fire and keeping it active.

Taking action creates a massive power shift where control shifts to your hands, and when you’re in control, you feel better about your situation.  You feel that blessed relief you’ve been looking for.  You know what you want in life, what you want to be all about, and you have a clear finish line to start working from.  Having a purpose – a true, motivating, energizing purpose – is a game-changing advantage which opens the door to the richly satisfying life you’re really after.

So the question is, what do you have worth living for? What is it that you’ve consciously decided will drive you on a daily basis to shake off the shackles, fight against the habits that hold you back and demand more out of this life you’ve been given?

I don’t expect you to answer that now.  Most of us don’t think about purpose much – or maybe we do, but we think about what we wish our purpose was, “if only things were different.” Instead, we should be focusing on how we’re not willing to settle for less than living that purpose, that meaningful life, no matter how much internal or external resistance we’re facing.

What To Do When You Decide To Stop Settling

When you’ve made the decision to live a life that’s more than what you’re experiencing now, you’ve got an uphill climb ahead of you – but the view from up there is nothing short of amazing.  I’m going to lay out some ideas that will help make that climb easier and help make sure you’re going in the right direction, but you’ve got to pay attention if you want to come along for the ride.

Your first step is coming in the next post, where you’ll hear about a 15-minute exercise that can help you get incredible clarity about what will make you happy and lead to a more satisfying life.  There will be a worksheet you can download and a full set of instructions, and it will be free.  But you’ve got to pay attention so that this doesn’t fall to the wayside or get put on the back burner.

And the way to pay attention is to subscribe to my newsletter, which will be making the shift this week from a time-management/success tips newsletter to a full-out, kick your ass on a weekly basis newsletter that doesn’t pull a single punch.  If you’re already subscribed, no worries – you’re all set.  If you’re not, now’s the time to subscribe.

I hope you’re ready to stop settling.  I’ve been focused on this all year and the results have been incredible.  I’ve still got quite a climb ahead of me, but the going’s always easier when you have some friends along.  Join me and the 1,000+ people subscribed to my newsletter and let’s get started on creating the circumstances you really want.

Thanks for reading, and here’s to making the decision to stop settling for less, and to start changing your life.

Dave