We Are A Reflection Of The People We Surround Ourselves With

It's truly amazing how the people you surround yourself with can have an impact on you and your life.

It's not just positive people - but people who make you stretch yourself. It's about being around people you respect. People who challenge you. People who make you question yourself (in a positive way). And people who make you feel good about what you are doing.

It's much easier sometimes to hang around with people who make you feel big, but sometimes it's important to find those who can help you grow to be even bigger.

Napoleon Hill talks about mastermind groups - surrounding yourself with people who are already achieving what you want. That is so true.

If you want to grow your business, mingle and associate with successful business owners and learn from them.

If you want a happy marriage, hang out with happy couples, especially older ones that can mentor you.

If you want more wealth and success, hang out with wealthy and successful people that can guide you through the process you need to follow to achieve personal success.

If you want to be poor, unhappy, and angry about what life is stealing from you every day, surround yourself with people who act that way or are that way, and you will quickly find yourself right there with them.

Stop And Look Around

Now that you understand what impact the people around you have on your life and where you are going, stop and look around. Look at who you have in your life and ask yourself, "Are the people in my life helping me get to where I want to go . . . or are they holding me back?"

Are my friends, family and co-workers in the place that I'm trying to get to, or not?

Are there people out there that you could surround yourself with that will get you closer to what you want?

Stop and think about it. And begin to take action to help yourself get what you want. . . by surrounding yourself with the people that are either already there or can help you get there.

What Are You Doing To Help Yourself?

Changing the way you view yourself and your current situation is one of the best ways to change your life. It is the first step to developing new behaviors. And it helps you recognize the progress you've made in your life as well as assisting in finding new solutions to your existing struggles.

But how do you do that? How do you change the way you see your situation and yourself, if all you know is what you have always done?

That's a tough question - that most people struggle with. In many cases it is the answer you can't find on your won - you need outside help (a life or business coach or someone acting in that role). But, in the absence of an outside agent helping you see your life differently, here are some tips / techniques that you can use yourself:

- Stop accepting the problem as the end. Listen to yourself talk sometime about your problems, even if it means recording yourself and playing it back. Are you always talking about problems and stopping right there? If you are an "excuse maker", that is probably the case. So rather than stopping at the problem, take yourself one step further and offer a solution. It doesn't have to be the perfect solution, it just has to get you closer to better situation than you had / have already.

- Find what's working, focus on it and do more of it. Ask yourself "What's working in my life?" or "What worked for me today?" and really focus on that. Most people see so much "wrong" in their lives that they forget to look at what's right. When you can see what's right, you can begin to understand the power you have over your own life. And the more you understand that power, the more you can duplicate it in the future.

- Be grateful for what you have. Gratitude is a grounding process. The more you are thankful, the more you begin to look at life as full of abundance, rather than scarcity. Take a few moments every day to focus on what you are thankful for in your life and you will begin to see your life in a completely different way.

- Stop doing what isn't working for you. This may sound like common sense, but as has been said many times by many people, "Common Sense is NOT Common Practice." Just because something doesn't work for you doesn't mean that you are going to automatically stop doing it. The reason most people don't apply this rule is because they've tried to stop, but nothing seems to work to change it. But honestly, they haven't tried everything - just what they know.

The internet is an amazing thing - forums on just about every subject / problem out there. Google your struggle and find a new solution. Try it and give it your best to change what's not working for you. If that process doesn't work for you either, then try another and another. Make it is that "not working for you" is not an option.

- Take small steps every day, rather than large steps once a week / month, to achieve what you want. Real, lasting change requires sustainability. Sustainability requires that you be able to live with the changes. The truth is the bigger the changes you try to accomplish, the stronger the pull back to your old habits. This is one of the reasons dieting is so hard - the more dramatically you try to lose weight, changing your lifestyle, the stronger the pull of your old lifestyle is and the more likely you will yo-yo back to where you started.

So if you want to change anything for the rest of your life, do it in small, measurable, planned increments and do it for the long term . . . not the short term.

Go Forth And Conquer By Systematizing These Ideas

None of these tips are magical - they require hard work and daily diligence - the one thing that we all tend to struggle with. If you truly want to help yourself, you won't stop by just trying these few tips I written above once or twice - instead you will take the necessary steps to take these steps from once a week occurrences or "only when I feel bad" solutions, to every day solutions that you apply not only when things are good, but also when they are NOT.

That means putting into place some form of daily accountability that will help you stay on track even when you don't feel like it anymore. It means doing more than just getting excited today. It's about getting excited today and every day forward - not just about generating results, but also in the daily process.

Don't Forget Where You Came From

I'd like to say that the reason I joined the Navy was some profound dedication to duty and commitment to principles that our founding fathers presented. But, I can't tell a lie - it wasn't that profound. And truthfully, it was a lot simpler, more immature, and more selfish than that.

I joined the Navy, because 5 months after I had dropped out of college with a lack of motivation and funds, I realized I was getting no where FAST! Literally, I had a bad week: I hated my job, my then girlfriend broke up with me, my car broke, and I couldn't see living at home any more. And low and behold, as I drove home one day, there it was, the Navy Recruiters Office.

Were there other options? Absolutely, but the easiest was the military. Besides, I thought it would be an adventure - because that's what the ads said at the time,

"It's not just a Job, it's an Adventure."

Unfortunately, the Navy then, as it does now, usually has a delay before you start - giving you time to second guess your decision. And had I not gotten some advice from a friend, I would have done just that - second guess my decision.

What was that advice? It was simple and straight-forward, "Don't forget how you feel right now. You are going to need it to keep you moving forward - use it to drive you forward every day to keep you going."

Now I'm not an advocate of running from where you are with no direction - I think you usually end up in much worse places than when you started. But, I do believe with a clear understanding of where you came from combined with a vision of what you want to be can be a powerful force to propel you through the most difficult changes you face in your life.

With that advice, I did something I had never done before, I sat down and wrote a letter to myself - the future self that I knew would try to forget how I felt write now. I wrote about my dreams for the future as well as my frustrations with the present. In essence, I wrote a simple personal vision statement - to drive me forward in my times of despair that everyone warned me about in the early stages of Boot Camp and life in the military.

Writing down how you feel right now, has too major advantages:

1. It requires you to sit down and put into words exactly how you are feeling - forcing you to face your true feelings and the reality of "who you are" right now.

2. It gives you a tool, a journal of your past, so that you may see how far you have come in your daily growth - where you came from and verify that you are on track to reach your future dreams. Without which you can forget who and what you were - as so many do.

As part of my coaching practice, my clients write an email to me daily. What some may have come to realize, while others haven't yet, is that they have begun to keep a journal of their lives - how they look at what they do and what they are trying to do differently everyday to become a better person and a better business owner.

As an outside observer, I get the pleasure of seeing their growth, but more times than not, they can't see it. The slow process of daily growth is so transparent to their psyche that they often don't recognize the major changes that took place until they step back and review who they were. They literally can't see the before and after.

A journal combined with positive reflection on the past helps you
see that and empowers you to move forward - to keep the press on.

Needless to say, if you don't already do it, I would find some way to journal. Whether it be as simple as writing a sentence about how you feel or pages and pages that capture everything you did and felt that day. What you will find is that when you go back and look at your own words, and see the personal growth (or not) that has taken place, you will be amazed - in either a positive manner or not. You can literally use your journal as a barometer to help you figure out whether your current course of actions is taking you closer to your goals or not - you can answer the questions, Is what I'm doing working for me or not?

However, beware. I must warn you. Looking back, when used as a tool to judge your growth is a double edged sword if you are not careful - as is any form of reflection. If you can do so objectively and not take personally what has or hasn't happened and leverage for growth in the future, it can be an amazing tool. But if you look back and get caught up in self-pity over all the struggles you've had and opportunities lost, then it will only perpetuate that same result.

The key is to focus what you learn from the past on how you are going to make the future better - not how you have been and always will be a victim of circumstances.