Yup. Easy Steps. Life doesn’t have to be challenging.
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There are words that just simply capture our attention.
For some words, it’s their shock value. For others, it’s more of a sense of curiosity that they create in us. For still others, it’s a kind of magical allure that causes us to be drawn to them like moths to a flame.
I think that one of those words is the word easy.
It attracts us, draws us in and appeals to that thing in us that is often seeking the fastest solutions.
Even though we can find ourselves attracted to it, somewhere in our subconscious, we often translate easy to mean not worth the effort with very little meaningful return.
What we do every day, our daily habits and our daily agenda, are what make the difference.
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If you have ever been a student of personal growth, then you know that it’s not the easy stuff that usually makes the biggest difference in our daily lives.
So when I thought about the things that it takes to dramatically increase our performance in life, I was careful in choosing the word easy to describe them.
But here’s the caveat.
These five things really are easy to know, easy to understand and easy to agree with, but that’s kind of where the easy ends.
When we begin to take action to actually make them habits in our daily lives, that’s where easy takes a vacation.
It’s a huge mistake to believe that there are any shortcuts to becoming a better you.
Some self-help gurus would have us believe that bad habits and self-doubts are just a positive affirmation away from being annihilated, but I just haven’t found that to be true, at least for me.
The personal growth and positive changes that have been long lasting and literally life changing for me came from intentional focus and hard work on applying these “easy steps” in my life.
What we do every day, our daily habits and our daily agenda, are what make the difference.
Some men seem to just accept their life instead of leading their lives.
They have bought into the old adage that you must “play the cards you’ve been dealt.”
But the outcome would be quite different by choosing to ignore that adage and decide to reach across the table and take the deck from the dealer and deal your own hand.
So, now that you know the real truth behind the “easy”, here are 5 steps that make such a huge difference in my life every day.
1. Decide to have a good ATTITUDE
The truth I had to face is that I get to choose my own attitude. It’s not forced upon me and it’s not someone else’s fault.
My attitude is a combination of my thoughts, my feelings, and my actions.
If I were to draw a circle around that last sentence, I could call that my circle of responsibility.
I’m responsible for those three things every day.
When a person has a bad attitude, they don’t have a circle of responsibility around these three things.
When you don’t have a circle of responsibility around them, you have surrendered your responsibility to someone else…BLAME.
If someone can make you glad, sad or mad…you’ve been had!
I am 100% responsible for me.
Although attitude is critical in my everyday success, it isn’t everything. Ability and skill matter, but when those things are taken care of, attitude is the difference maker.
2. Be intentional on setting daily PRIORITIES
Books and articles and tons of training have been set around the title of time management. But time management is really an oxymoron.
You can’t manage time, you can only manage yourself and your priorities.
I can gauge my priorities by taking a look at what is on my calendar and in my checkbook or debit card statement.
I can say that I have “becoming a better me” as a priority, but I can’t defend that statement unless I can show that I am actually dedicating time and resources to it.
It’s so easy to fool yourself about what is really a priority.
Make your spoken priorities take the “proof” test and you will quickly know how they all rank.
3. Become intentional about quality THINKING time
One of my favorite books is an old classic by James Allen, As A Man Thinketh.
Simply said, we become what we think about and what we think about becomes bigger.
That’s a pretty powerful statement.
So if that’s the case, I can use this information to be steadfastly intentional in dedicating time each day or week to thinking about what I want to become and am becoming.
It’s sort of an inventory of me.
I am taking an inventory of how the thoughts I am thinking are serving my highest good and moving me closer to where I desire to be in my life.
Where my focus goes, my energy flows.
I must accept that the results I am producing are a direct representation of the thoughts that I am thinking.
4. Cultivating quality RELATIONSHIPS
A mentor of mine recently made a statement that had me wincing and wishing that someone had told me this many years ago.
“Your successes or failures in life can be directly tied to the relationships that you had in your life at the time.”
Yay and Ouch.
So not only is it true that my successes have all been tied to the support, encouragement and wisdom of the quality relationships that I had in my life at the time, but likewise, my greatest failures are tied to relationships too.
These relationships are the ones that I spent little to no time considering their value before I opened myself up to them. They are the low quality and even destructive relationships that I allowed to be in my life, influence my decisions and impact me personally and that eventually created failures for me.
But going back to all of the previous steps, I had to acknowledge my circle of responsibly for my actions and relationship choices, maintain a healthy attitude about them and make having only quality relationships a priority.
5. Investing in my own GROWTH
It’s a truism that no one grows by accident.
Personal growth is always intentional.
Just as my attitude, my priorities and my quality relationships have to be intentional, so must my investment in my own personal growth.
I’ve had to invest dollars, time and energy into growing my mind and becoming a better version of me, even when it seemed like I was the only one doing it.
The good news is that when you choose to grow yourself, you are never really alone!
There are thousands of other people who every day have made these same intentional choices to move forward into growth.
The important key for each of us is to find these people and make them a part of our world!
It’s no fun feeling like you are going it alone and the truth is, we aren’t alone at all.
There’s no doubt that making these 5 easy steps a daily part of your life will dramatically increase your performance in life.
It’s been proven many times over.
But remember that even though these steps are easy to know, easy to understand and easy to agree with, the real work begins when each of us makes our own personal commitment to implement them every day.
And one final word of encouragement!
When you aren’t as successful as you’d like to be, its ok!
If you are consistent, before you know it, easy to know becomes easy to do!
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This post is republished on Medium.
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