WEEK 144: GET OUT OF THE NEGATIVE CYCLE

The only person you should be better than is who you were yesterday.    Anonymous

REFLECTIONS (learnings and actions): Going to be vulnerable here and tell you I was caught in a cycle of negativity this past week.

One negative thought lead me to another and events from my past sprang up like they happened yesterday to highlight my downfalls (perceived).

I felt like Rocky in one of his movies where it was his round to take a heavy beating from his opponent.

In the past, being caught in one of these cycles would throttle me in this downward spiral of negativity, where my filters would only see just that. An hour, an afternoon, dare I say a day.

BUT...

It only lasted for a few minutes this time.

Well how did I do that?

I will tell you.

Now here is the thing, a mentor once told me the greatest super power you can have is the ability to control your thinking (at the time I was little skeptical).

Where as, now I totally agree. 

I have said in the past your lifeline to weathering a challenging event or time period on your journey to achieving success (challenging moments are givens by the way) is gratitude. 

It is the one thing which will keep you focused and connected to your WHY, when everything around you seems to be crumbling. Your technology does not work. You get called a fraud. You get mail saying you need to pay a large unexpected bill. You are not seeing the results you want. Yada, yada, yada.

Here is the thing, this past week I forgot about gratitude and here is why.

I was on various social media platforms and saw a friend do x, another do y...

That coupled with a few other things caused me to say "why am I not getting the results I want?"

Boom, that was the first step down the downward rabbit hole called comparison.

It is the killer of gratitude, the one thing which will keep you grounded and bring you back from the land of possible burnout (not a place you want to be in life or business).

Today you are bombarded with fantastical results of others; lost 20 lbs, earned 120k per month, acquired 5 clients this past week...

And I have found you can either use it two ways. 

One, you can compare your results with theirs and sever your lifeline to gratitude.

or two, you can say thank you and be grateful.

Yes, you can see these events as validation others can do this, thus so can you. 

They just know, believe, and are doing something you are not. All things you can find out to change very easily. 

To compare or not, the choice is yours. 

See you on the other side...J

Top three activities that move me forward?

1. Living in paradigm of flow.

2. Being in zen. It gives me the greatest resource...energy.

3. Not comparing, being grateful!

Biggest lessons/learnings and corrections?

Comparison is the killer of gratitude, your lifeline to your why when things are the most challenging. 

What are you grateful for?

Being able to control my thinking. It is a super power and I am grateful for learning the strategies to do this on a consistent basis. 

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PLANNING (Implementation Intention):  You will follow through 2X to 3X more likely to complete your weekly task than you normally would just by filling in the following statement.

I plan to complete the weekly task [day] at [time] in [location]. 

A reminder you might have to use multiple Implementation Intentions in order to follow through.

EXECUTION (strategies used):  From week to week, I use a combination of many strategies. There are always some which are used more than others depending on what comes up, but I wanted to offer a link to all them at once. 

My advice is to identify the I CAN'T statement you tell yourself during the most. Then find a strategy below the statement which resonates with you, and then start using it. 

Enjoy!

STRATEGY LIST