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The most important thing you can do in your entire life when it comes to success, especially with a new project, a new business, a new situation, or whatever it is, is get in the game.

“I need to make more connections first.” Is that the game? No. That’s preparing for the game. “I need to save up more capital first.” Is that the game?

Listen, you can practice, you can warm up, you can prepare, you can get the baseball uniform, you can watch baseball, you can watch baseball videos, you can get the bat, and you can get the ball.

You can do all those things, but it’s not until you’re standing in the arena at home plate with someone throwing you the ball, and you taking a swing with the bat, that you’re actually in the game.

When you’re up to bat, what happens the first time? You swing and you may miss. The second time you might miss as well, the third time you miss, the fourth time you miss, the fifth time you miss, but the sixth time you touch the ball, and it goes foul.

The seventh time you miss, the eighth time you miss, and the ninth time you touch the ball a little bit. The 10th time you miss, the 11th time you miss, and the 12th time you ground out to shortstop.

The 18th time you hit it into the outfield. “Oh my God did you see that?! That went way out there! The outfielder caught it, but this time I wasn’t afraid of the ball!”

The 19th time you miss, the 20th time you hit a single. The 21st time you smash a double. The 22nd time…home run! The 23rd time you miss. The 27th time: triple down the left-field line! The 28th time you hit the ball…home run!

By failing 60-70% of the time, you learn to become a pretty darn good hitter!

You can learn so much more and so much better and so much faster by being in the game rather than thinking about it and preparing for it over 1,000 fricking years!

In the game you can make corrections while you’re in the game. You can’t make corrections while you’re preparing because you don’t know shit about what’s happening in the real world.

Neither do I, and neither does anybody when they’re not at the plate swinging at a real freaking ball. Swinging at real prospective customers; swinging at real scripts, swinging at real emails and swinging at really trying.

Put it out there. Let’s see what works; let’s see what doesn’t work.

At one point in time I had seven jobs in less than six months, and they were all in the restaurant business because I wanted to open a restaurant.

I was sure I wanted to open a restaurant, so I was smart enough that first I was a broiler cook, then I was a waiter, and then I was a wine steward. Then I was a general manager, and then I was a pastry chef, etc. After six months in seven different jobs all preparing me to open a restaurant, I was in the process of learning how to do it. I was in the restaurant doing things, trying things.

Do you know what I found out? I would never be in the restaurant business! Turns out it’s not for me. Thank God I did that!

It doesn’t mean necessarily that you’re going to be putting out a whole bunch of money to begin playing. That doesn’t mean anything.

When I opened one of the world’s first fitness stores, I had no money. I had $2,000 that I borrowed on my Visa card and used it to pay for the first and last month of rent. I took a cardboard sign that said “Fitness Equipment Coming Soon Here” or whatever it was, and then people would come in the store for a free demonstration.

I got one piece of equipment fronted to me, and I sold off of that. I took deposits and I told everyone to come back the next week on Saturday so everyone would show up at the same time, which resulted in having a big line of people out my store.

This is how we do it. Get in the game. Stop thinking so much, and you’ll learn as you go. Just don’t start with a lot of money because you don’t want to lose it before you’ve tested things out, yes?

Give us a story or share a thought…we want to hear from you!

One of the biggest challenges for people is not making up their minds on what they’re going to do. About what? Basically everything…pursuing their passion, what they really want out of a relationship, starting a business, and the list goes on.

Some people will make a decision and then a month later they haven’t really gotten anything started. They’ll make excuses that feel completely legit at the time like, ‘I need to save up more capital first’ or ‘I need to make more connections’ blah blah blah. Talk about commitment issues!

Just kiddin’, it’s not that at all (read last week’s blog to learn more about why you may breaking your commitments). Not making up our minds on what we want to do is nothing but fear. It’s the voice of doubt out of nowhere.

You were so excited. You had plans. You journaled it. You were sure about it. You said, “This feels right. The universe finally gave me the answer. This is what I’m supposed to do.” An hour later you say, “I don’t know.”

This is the game we play with ourselves. Even if God sent an angel with a sign that says “I am an angel from God, listen to me,” there’s gonna come another voice that asks, “Was that the real angel? What if that was a fake angel? I think it looked like a fake angel. I’m not really ready for this!” You have the clearest intuition; the clearest message and you will still doubt it.

The angel isn’t necessarily correct and the doubt isn’t correct. If you pay attention to the voice of doubt, is that empowering or not empowering? Is that expansive thinking or fear based thinking?

You’re going to need to choose now what you want to believe. Which one do you want to put your attention on? The “intuition” of your expanded self–the voice of expansion and growth–or the voice of your inner-brake?

You’re going to now put your attention on what you believe is going to work better for you. It’s not because it’s true, it’s just more empowering. It’s more actionable. It’s more expansion for you.

Better things can happen or have a chance of happening if you put your foot on the accelerator and go for it.

What moves us into action? “I made up my mind. I’m making a decision.” By the way, the word decision comes from the word decidra, the Latin word which means “to kill off.”

What you do when you make a decision is you kill off the other alternatives, and what’s wrong with that?

You’re just going to go! You’re going to start the car, you’re going to put your foot on the accelerator, and you’re always going to choose to move the car along.

You don’t have to move quickly. Get onto a little pathway out your driveway first, then onto a small street, then on a bigger street, then onto a highway and then onto a super highway. That takes some time, but you start.

You start by going with what will empower you.

Now, what if I said to you, “Enough preparation. We start tomorrow.”

Is your heart pounding? Good! That means we’re onto something here. But now you might be asking, “What do you mean start tomorrow? I’m not ready.”

The made up mind, though, kicks right back, “Well we’re going to do this!”

What information did you say you had? You know how to help people? You know something most people don’t and need to know?

So tomorrow morning you start with one person. If you see they have that need, start helping them. Do you charge them? Heck no, you don’t charge them, not at least on Day 1. You don’t charge anybody until you feel comfortable and know for sure you have good value. Then you can say, “In fact, I’d like to follow up with you because I actually do this. I’m a coach, but I’m not charging you right now. Here’s my email if you’ll let me know how it turned out.” Encourage them to generate referrals for a discount.

Guess what? You’ve just started a business. All because you just made a decision to cut through fear and just go.

What is this going to look like for you? What could you do tomorrow to hit your accelerator? Give us your thoughts, share your experiences. We’d love to hear from you!

If you’ve ever broken a commitment to yourself at some point in time, beating yourself up for it does not help.

Your ego self, your conditioned self, your false self, believe it or not does not want you to be happy.

I know, that sucks, right? I’m sorry to have to be the one to throw these reminders out there, but that’s how important this is. The Ego’s not the happiness director. It wants you to be in fear. If it controls you then you’ll be okay, according to it.

If there’s something wrong with you, you have to do something about it, which means you have to get into your logic and reason, and discuss it. You develop a negativity of what’s wrong with you, why it’s wrong with you, and where this negativity came from. The ego mind loves that discussion. It could be entertained for days for some people, weeks for other people, and for some people their whole life.

There’s nothing wrong with you. The only thing that’s wrong with you is your ego telling you there’s something wrong with you.

It’s a trick by that sneaky ego that is being played on the Higher Self, the real you. It’s a trick that tells you, “I’m going to make a commitment; this time I will,” but your ego mind is laughing and saying, “Ha, you’re not going to keep this commitment.”

If you’ve made commitments 10 times and you haven’t kept them, the problem is not you. The problem is the part of you who wants to make the commitment. Why would you make a commitment you know you’re not going to keep? Why? It’s so you can beat yourself up.

You see, the ego voice is giving you rationale to beat yourself up. The goal is negativity about yourself. The goal is to downplay yourself, downgrade yourself, degrade yourself and diss yourself.

Can you see that whole vicious circle that’s going on?

So instead of spinning our wheels, let’s play a trick on the ego. How about this: there are no commitments…we’re going to do what works! We’re going to give ourselves a win and that’s going to take the ego out of it. We’re going to change the game.

To be clear, I’m not talking about those obvious commitments, like if you have young children or something like that. I’m talking about those commitments to ourselves! Losing weight, waking up an hour earlier every morning, spending less time watching shows or online to write or think out your ideas…those kinds of commitments to yourself.

If that hasn’t been working so far, first of all, forgive yourself. You didn’t know any better. You didn’t know that the ego mind was playing a trick on you, and playing a trick is its way of making you feel bad about yourself. But now you know.

Secondly, make whatever you’re doing as easy and simple as possible (for now at least). Forget about the commitments. If you can’t keep to a commitment, don’t keep on making stupid commitments if they don’t work for you.

Have an intention. Have an experiment. If you want something to start changing, start changing your habits one at a time. Make a very, very small commitment.

For instance, if I wanted to wake up earlier, instead of trying to wake up at 7:00 a.m. instead of 8:00 a.m., I’m going to see what happens if I set my alarm for 7:55 a.m. and put it on the other side of the room. That’s my goal.

My intention is not to wake up at 7:00 a.m. because that’s too hard. I’m going to wake up at 7:55 a.m. I think I could do that.

Don’t do stuff like this: “Tomorrow I’m going to work out for 60 minutes no matter what, first thing in the morning.”

If you haven’t worked out for the last two weeks, or you’re not in the habit of working out, the dumbest thing in the world you could do is to make a commitment to work out for an hour tomorrow. There’s only one question you should be asking yourself: how easy could I make this to where it’s stupid easy? Anybody can do that. And that’s the key to building your habits.

What do you think about this experiment? We want to hear from you!

The only beings on Earth that utilize the currency we call money is other people, yes? Any money you get has to come from other people. It does not come from your business; not your job, not the universe, not the sky, trees, cows or plants—unless you happen to sell those. You get the point though. Other people have to give you their money in order for you to make money.

The only question is: why would other people give you their money?
The answer is because you’re helping them solve some sort of problem, whether you’re employed or self-employed.

But here’s the next question: If you had a choice of two people to give your money to in order to solve a problem, which would you rather give it to: the person who can solve the problem and be totally pleasant, and friendly, and kind, and considerate, or the other person who can solve the problem but is the opposite of all of that?

The nice person! This may sound trite, but you wouldn’t believe how many people I come across who have this idea that in order to make it in business, you have to be an A-hole of sorts in order to not get trampled over or something.

Who the hell is saying that if you’re nice then you don’t do well? That’s crazy!

You do way better being kind, generous, caring and considerate because people want to give you their money, or people want to work for you, or you want to work for them if that’s the case. You don’t want to work for a jerk and you don’t want to give your money to a jerk.

Now I’ll be clear about one thing …a lot of rich people are assholes. But you know what? A lot of poor people are assholes, too! What the hell does that have to do with money?

The nicer you are, the more kind you are, the more generous you are, the more giving you are, the more concerned you are, and the more compassionate you are, the richer you’re going to freaking get, because people want to give you their money to nice people!

It honestly bugs the crap out of me; there are a few rich people that are jerks and now everybody who’s rich is a jerk.

Will you be a jerk?

“When you get a certain amount, money corrupts people.” Really?

At what number will you be corrupt? When will you go from a nice person in your heart to an a-hole? A million dollars? “Oh yes, now I’m a jerk.”

If you find yourself being a jerk, what do you do? Take a fricking breath, go to a retreat, go in the woods, go to nature, get back to your center and be nice again.

If you think that nice people don’t get rich, why don’t you be nice and get rich so you can show people how to do it?

It doesn’t mean you let people walk all over you. That’s silly. That’s disempowering. You be who you are, you don’t let people walk all over you, but you can be nice about it, too.

We’re alchemists, which means by our own thoughts we determine what is what; if it’s good, bad, right, wrong, up, down, because everything is relative in the world of duality and paradox we live in.

Nothing is anything until you make it something. You’re the one with the magic wand. You’re the one who’s giving meaning to everything. If you think you have to be a prick in order to be rich—and being rich happens to be more important to you—then of course you’ll be a rich prick even if you really don’t want to be.

If you think you have to be a prick in order to be rich, and being nice is more important to you than being rich, then guess what? You’ll be nice, but you’ll probably be broke too, all based on a false idea that success and niceness are mutually exclusive.

They’re both important. Stop separating them; they’re one in the same. Then more problems you solve for more people in the kindest, most caring, compassionate, considerate, and humorous way (don’t forget people like being around fun) you can muster, the more materially successful and emotionally and spiritually fulfilled you will become.

What do you think? What are some sneaky self-defeating ideas you have heard about the relationship between money and personal character? Have you held yourself back with these ideas? How did you overcome that?

Give us a story or share a thought, we want to hear from you!

People get overwhelmed with stuff that gets in the way of experiencing happy, fulfilled lives.

There’s our work life, family life, mental/emotional/health/sex life; friendships and relationships with colleagues, not to mention the most dominant stressor of all, our financial lives.

It’s easy to wonder if you’re giving your best to any of it. This could be simple fear of failure; or the idea that focusing heavily on one area means other areas have to suffer.

I think it’s the cultural curse of perfectionism. If you think perfection is the essence of life—that you have to be a level ten-out-of-ten in all categories of life all the time—that’s actually not being a perfectionist. That’s being a frickin’ robot. That’s a machine. We’re not machines, okay?

Perfectionism comes from the belief of “not good enough”. Nothing’s good enough, or some things are good enough and other things aren’t, and of course there are degrees. We all have a perfectionist in us of some sort, the critic who complains about something, some of us more than others.

That’s not to say we don’t call out or do something constructive when something could indeed use some improvement, whatever it is we’re talking about: a boss or co-worker’s inappropriate behavior; a health or eating habit that you know is not good for you; your income so you’re not living check-to-check, you name it.

Sometimes, not good enough means it can be improved, and depending on what we’re talking about, should be improved.

But that’s not the point. The point is the feeling of not good enough, especially if you’re applying that term to yourself; a very, very deep feeling of undeserving. There are many, many profound reasons for why almost everyone on this planet feels this way and one of them is because we’re virtually trained to feel that way in this culture.

If it wasn’t a teacher or parent who maybe even unintentionally criticized us or an accomplishment we were proud of, it’s a boss or partner who maybe says something off-handed that triggers an old criticism that hurt us, bringing that early, deeply-embedded feeling of “not good enough” into a moment that has nothing to do with the present moment.

We don’t live in the past; we bring that early crap with us, and so many people don’t have a clue that this is happening. So many people go through their lives feeling, at a deep core, that they’re not good enough. And despite attempts to make things better, nothing seems to work.

When you’re not enough, you’re not good enough. If you’re not good enough then nothing’s good enough, and then the whole world is not good enough.

Think of how many times you’ve heard people say, “Sorry for being so particular (In other words frickin’ annoying!), I’m just a perfectionist.” Like, being a perfectionist is what makes them so successful, because they have such a go-for-it spirit that they won’t settle for less.

There’s nothing noble about being a perfectionist. As a matter of fact, the very term is a contradiction because the very nature of being a perfectionist is that you’re always looking for what’s wrong. So really you’re an imperfectionist.

Since we all have that critic, that “imperfectionist” within us, what do we do about it?

It’s simple: Be present!

Why? Think about it, and this is so obvious and maybe you’ve heard this a thousand times before, but it is one of the simplest analogies. It’s not a frickin’ coincidence that what we call the present is also associated with the idea of a gift!

There is no better gift than what is, right now, as it is. As soon as you start thinking about things and people in the present being something else, you are 90-something percent likely to take yourself out of happiness and connection with people and life itself.

Again, that isn’t to say we ignore things we damn well better not ignore and make better.

You observe, take note, file it, and get back to what’s happening right in front of you right now without judgment.

When you’re present, you’re automatically connected to spirit. And what could be more perfect than that?

So practice living in the present. Practice connecting in every way you can. If you go to church, do that. If you meditate, do that. If you go into the woods and go into nature, do that. If you play with your dog to connect to spirit, do that.

You become more and more aware by staying more and more connected to ever-unfolding present moments.

That’s where you have the freedom to be as imperfect as you’d like to be and it’s perfectly okay.

Share your thoughts, insights, or ideas…we want to hear from you!