Step 9: Self-Leverage
Listen to this short, 5-minute audio
from RedpoleQ on using your past to motivate yourself
to go after the future you want.
A game plan is great. In fact it’s essential to steady progress. Every American Football coach has a playbook they design for each game that tells them what play they should be running based on every possible situation they’re team could be in.
That’s essential for good execution. But even more essential is the will.
I was in Vancouver with one of my clients. He couldn’t figure out how to get himself to go out and meet women. He had a game plan, but he didn’t have the will to use it. So I took him to a strip club. After looking at a few girls he started thinking, “Wow! I want one,” and now he’s ready to kick off his night out.
That’s the real difference between the successful an the rest. The successful in any endeavor find a way to generate the will to do whatever it takes to reach their goals.
Self-leverage is the ability to generate that will.
Here’s something I learned a long time ago that really helped me work through my tough times:
1.Your thoughts determine your feelings.
2.Your feelings determine your actions/behavior.
3.And your actions/behavior determine your results.
Most people try to start with their actions. And when they want to take an action, they say to themselves(and anyone unlucky enough to be around them), “I don’t FEEL like it,” or any number of other excuses that all mean that same thing.
But then you have to ask yourself this ALL important question: “What would make me feel like it?”
And BAM! Now you’re working on your thoughts. You’re beginning to give yourself new thought patterns that will serve you in moving towards your desired actions.
A classic example:
You’re waiting for your girlfriend one evening because you want to take her out for a surprise night out. She’s late. Very late. You start wondering if maybe she stopped for a coffee after work. But that shouldn’t take this long.
You try calling and texting her but she doesn’t pick up and you get nothing back. You remember that she mentioned something about a quirky guy from work the past few weeks. And then it dawns on you that maybe there’s more going on with that guy from work than you realized.
How are you feeling about your girlfriend now? When she shows up, what will your body language be like—your facial expression? What do you want to say to her?
STOP!
You’re waiting for your girlfriend one evening because you want to take her out for a surprise night out. She’s late. Very late. You start wondering if maybe she stopped for a coffee after work. But that shouldn’t take this long.
You try calling and texting her but she doesn’t pick up and you get nothing back. You remember that she mentioned something about a quirky guy from work the past few weeks. And then it dawns on you that maybe something bad could’ve happened to her. Maybe she needs your help, right now.
How are you feeling about your girlfriend now? When she shows up, what will your body language be like—your facial expression? What do you want to say to her?
Same situation totally different behaviors. The power of the human mind is fantastic. Your job is to lean how to harness that power by controlling and directing your thoughts.
Easier said than done, right? Wrong.
How often do you feel like going to work? Yeah, exactly. But you go and go often. Somehow you overpower your feelings of, not wanting to go. Maybe you do it by thinking about, how you can’t wait to see that one co-worker who always wears the short skirt, the beach house you saw on the internet or the rock climbing excursion you want to take—those are moving toward strategies.
Or maybe you think about how angry your boss will be, the mountain of work that will await you if you skip out a day or how you need to pay your rent—all moving away.
That was pretty easy wasn’t it? Now you have to figure out some things that will motivate you for getting out of the house and talking to some women. It has to be so compelling that it overrides how you feel and turns on emotional states that get you moving.
They don’t have to be good emotional states. There’s the stick AND there’s the carrot. Get both if you can, but one will get you started.
So right now, take out a piece of paper. At the top, put write down an action you do that you actually hate doing, like going to work or school, or studying, or doing a report for your boss, or calling someone you don’t want to talk to. Once you’ve written it down, think about what it is that makes you do it.
Is it carrots, or sticks, or both? Draw a line down the middle of the paper and put carrots on the left and sticks on the right.
Now that you’ve done this, think of something that you could do to help you improve with women(hell, take something from this report!) and write it down.
Divide the paper and put potential carrots on the left and potential sticks on the right. Think of as many as you can. Some won’t be all that effective, but others will really hit. If you feel something in your body, you know you’ve got something that hit.
Cross out the ones that don’t hit, keep the ones that do and read over them whenever you are resisting doing that action.
And the whole reason to do this exercise and what you’re really going to be driving yourself towards by doing it is…
