How to Make Lasting Changes?

Ho to Make Lasting Changes?


Since 2006, I’ve been pursuing personal growth with a passion. I’ve attended seminars, listened to audio programs, and read hundreds of books in this field. I’ve easily spent many thousands of rupees and invested thousands of hours on such pursuits. And one thing I can tell you from all of this effort is that personal growth is very hard.

Many books, audio programs, and self-help gurus promote the quick fix mentality. Read this book and all your time management problems will vanish. Attend this seminar and you’ll be the next self-made millionaire. Attend this week end workshop and your life will change. This kind of marketing is unfortunate because most people who buy these products will achieve only modest results with them. Then disappointment and disillusionment set in. Some people feel they must be defective if they can’t meet such unrealistic expectations. Maybe I have a genetic predisposition to being lazy. Others conclude the whole personal development field itself is just a sham. [Insert guru name here] is only in it for the money — none of his/her ideas really work.

I’ll say it again. Personal growth is very hard. If you think you can read one book or article on time management and instantly erase procrastination and disorder from your life forever, that’s an extremely unrealistic expectation. While a single book can potentially lead you to a big change, most won’t. When you experience a big change in your life, it’s probably the result of a long chain of events, of which reading a particular book was only a small but perhaps critical part.

It’s rare that reading a single book will produce a Lasting Change. Lasting Change require a large amount of consistent input and energy. When you decide to quit your job or break off your relationship or move to a new city, it may be the result of months or years of dissatisfaction. It may also occur after lots of time spent thinking positively about what life will be like after the shift. Both positive and negative factors can help generate a quantum leap.

Most of the time when people pursue personal growth, they simply don’t invest enough time and energy in a consistent direction to achieve a Lasting Change. Maybe you’ve read a book on getting organized, and while you were reading it, the positive energy you experienced moved you closer to making a Change. You felt fairly certain at the time that this was going to work. But then you finished the book (or got sidetracked and didn’t finish it), and the impact of the book gradually faded. You never reached the quantum leap that allowed you to break through to a new level of order in your life. Over a period of days or weeks, your old pattern reasserted itself. Sound familiar?
But it wasn’t the book or the ideas themselves that failed you. The problem was that you didn’t invest enough sustained energy in the same direction to achieve the quantum leap. You never reached the point of no return. Reading a single book was only a small, short-term nudge, albeit in the right direction.
In order for a rocket launched from earth to reach outer space, the rocket must exert a sufficient amount of sustained force to overcome the earth’s gravity. If the rocket’s engines cut out prematurely, the rocket will crash back to earth. Just as it can take a massive amount of sustained force to put a rocket into orbit, recognize that there are certain areas of your life where you may need a large force to knock you into a higher state. Small efforts over a long period of time may do absolutely nothing for you. You can read one time management book a year and be no better at your managing your time.
So what does work? How do you achieve a Lasting Change? You need to exert some effort in a particular direction where you want to grow, and you need to consistently sustain it until you achieve a quantum leap. If you stop short, you’ll likely fall right back to where you started. So first of all, if you’re going to target a new quantum leap, you need to commit to sustaining that effort until you hit the leap.

This is why I say personal growth is very hard. Effecting a quantum leap is tough work. It requires a strong force of sustained effort, and you can’t let up until you hit the leap. If you get sidetracked for too long, you have to start over again.

Yes it’s a lot of hard work to achieve a quantum leap in any of these areas, but I think the alternative of stagnation is worse. You can pursue the quick fix methodology and fall flat on your face over and over. Or you can accept that the change you want is going to be hard and that it may take years to achieve, but it will be worth it. And best of all, once you’ve gone through a few quantum leaps, you may learn to enjoy the process of building up to the next one. It’s deeply satisfying to look back on your previous state of being and see how much you’ve grown.

What is your career?

What is your career? Forget about how you define this to others for now, and just think for a bit about how you define your career to yourself. What does it mean to you to have a career? Is it just your job? Is it something you do to make a living? Is it what you do for money? Is it your work?

Most people would define a career as more than a job. Above and beyond a job, a career is a long-term pattern of work, usually across multiple jobs. A career implies professional development to build skill over a period of time, where one moves from novice to expert within a particular field. And lastly, I would argue that a career must be consciously chosen; even if others exert influence over you, you must still ultimately choose to become a doctor or a lawyer or an accountant. If you didn’t make a conscious choice at some point, I would then say you have a job but not a career.

One of the difficulties I see a lot of people experiencing lately is that they spend the bulk of their days working at a job that isn’t part of a consciously chosen career. Once you graduate from college and enter the work force, you don’t suddenly gain the knowledge of what kind of career to build. Most likely you just focus on getting a job as your first step after college. And you probably have to make this choice in your early 20s. After a decade or two, you’ve established a pattern of work and built up some expertise. But at what point did you stop and say, what is my career going to be?

Sometimes when you ask people what their career is (instead of asking what their job is), the question makes them uncomfortable. Why? Because they think of a career as something intentionally chosen, purposeful, and meaningful, and they don’t see those qualities in their job. Another possibility is that they feel deep down that their real career lies elsewhere.

Just because you’ve been working in a field for many years doesn’t mean you have to turn that pattern of work into your career. The past is the past. You can continue to run the same pattern and follow that same path into the future, but at any time you’re also free to make a total break with the past and turn yourself onto an entirely new career path in the future. Ask yourself if you were starting over from scratch today, fresh out of college, would you still choose the same line of work? If the answer is no, then you only have a job right now, not a career. Your career lies elsewhere.

I went through this process myself last year when I asked myself, “What is my career?” I’ve been software testing since 2004. And that was exactly what I wanted to do when I was 22 years old. Software Testing was the career I had consciously chosen; It took a lot of work to get successful in it. But at age 29, I had to stop and say that I no longer wanted Software Testing to be my career. I still enjoy it, and I may continue doing a little on the side as a hobby for many years, but I no longer think of it as my career.

And yet, when I looked around for what else I might define as my new career, I was in a quandary. I saw all the assets I’d built in my Software Testing career… and a long list of goals yet to be accomplished. Of course, the real problem was that I was looking to the past and projecting it onto the future. So all I could see on the road ahead was a continuation of the road behind. My solution was to use zero-based thinking… imagining I was starting from scratch again, forgetting the past for a moment, seeing the present moment as something fresh and new that didn’t already have a directional vector assigned to it — it could point in any new direction I gave it.

At the same time I started thinking like this, I also decided to broaden my definition of career. In software testing business, I had been operating with a very 3rd-dimensional view of a career. It was about success, achievement, accomplishment, making a good living, sales, serving customers, etc. At different times my career was that I was a Software Testing, a Software Testing, or a QA engineer. Those were the labels I used.

But whereas these kinds of objectives were very motivating to me when I was in my 20s, years later I found them to be far less motivating. Achieving more and succeeding more just wasn’t enough of a motivator by itself. And I’ve seen others fall into the same situation too — the things that motivated them greatly at one point no longer seem all that motivating years later. The motivational strategies that work in your 20s don’t necessarily keep working in your 30s.

The solution I found was to look behind the labels and discover the core of my career. When I looked behind the labels of Software Tester, I saw that the core of my career was entertaining people. That was the real purpose behind what I was doing. And that’s when it made sense to me that this was a very motivating purpose for me in my 20s, but that in my 30s it lost its edge because I had grown to the point in my own life where I felt that entertaining people was no longer the BEST way for me to contribute.

Think about this for a moment. What is the core of your career? What do you contribute? What is the big picture of what you do? If you work for a large company, then how do your actions contribute to some larger purpose? Be honest with yourself. And don’t ignore the role your company plays in your career; your career depends heavily on what you’re contributing down the line. If you truly assign a noble purpose to what you do, that’s great. For example, if you work at a grocery store, you might be inspired by the fact that you help feed people. But don’t force it if you don’t actually believe it. If you feel your contribution is weak or even negative, then admit that to yourself, even if you don’t immediately plan to do anything about it.

Go behind the labels. Don’t stop at definining your career as computer programmer or lawyer or doctor. What are you contributing as a computer programmer? How does your career make a difference in other people’s lives? Is it nothing more than a way for you to make money? As a lawyer do you resolve disputes and spread peace, or do you milk conflict for money? As a doctor do you heal people, or are you just a legal drug pusher? What is the essence of your career right now?

Now when you have your answer, you next have to ask yourself, is this you? Is this truly a career that reflects the best of who you are as a person?

For example, if you see the real purpose behind your current line of work as making a handful of investors wealthier… nothing more noble than that… then is that an accurate reflection of your best contribution? Is that you?

If you already have a career that accurately reflects the best of who you are, that’s wonderful. But if you don’t, then realize that you’re free to change it. If your career as a regional distributor for a major soda manufacturer basically boils down to pushing sugar water to make people fatter, you don’t have to keep it that way.

I think if you realize that your current work doesn’t fit who you are, then you have to make a choice. You have to decide if you deserve having a career that truly suits you. If you don’t feel you deserve it, then you will settle for defining your career in such narrow terms as job, money, paycheck, promotion, boss, coworkers, etc. No one is forcing you to accept that as your definition of career.

On the other hand, you can choose to embrace another definition of career that uses terms like purpose, calling, contribution, meaning, abundance, happiness, fulfillment, etc. This requires a top-down approach. You first think hard about what your purpose here is… what kind of contribution do you want to make with your life? Once you figure that out, then you work down to the level of how to manifest that in terms of the work you do.

And for many people, the seeming impossibility of that manifesting part is paralyzing. This is especially true for men, who usually take their responsibility as breadwinners very seriously. You see yourself logically having two choices: I could stay in my current job, which pays the bills and earns me a good living, or I could go jump into something that fits me better, but I just can’t see how to make money at it. I have a mortgage to pay and a family who depends on me; I can’t do that to them.

The problem though is thinking that these are the only alternatives… thinking that you have to make a choice between money and happiness. That assumption is what causes the paralysis against action. You can also envision the third alternative of having money and happiness together. In fact, that’s actually the most likely outcome. If you don’t currently have a career that is deeply fulfilling to you in the sense that you know you’re contributing in a way that matters, then deep down, you will sabotage yourself from going too far with it. You will always know that you’re on the wrong path for you, and this is going to slap a demotivating slump over everything you try to do in that line of work. You’ll do your job, but you’ll never feel that you’re really living up to your potential. You’ll always have problems with procrastination and weak motivation, and they’ll never be resolved no matter how many time management strategies you attempt. Your job will never feel like a truly satisfying career — it just can’t grow into that because you’ve planted your career tree in bad soil. You’ll always be stuck with a bonsai.

But when you get your career aligned from top to bottom, such that what you’re ultimately contributing is an expression of the best of yourself, the money will come too. You’ll be enjoying what you do so much, and you’ll find your work so fulfilling, that turning it into an income stream won’t be that hard. You’ll find a way to do it. Making money is not at odds with your greater purpose; they can lie on the same path. The more money you make, the greater your ability to contribute.

But most importantly you’ll feel you really deserve all the money you earn. When your career is aligned with the best of who you are, you won’t secretly feel that your continued career success means going farther down the wrong path. You won’t hold back anymore. You’ll want to take your career as far as you can because it’s an expression of who you are. And this will make you far more receptive to all the opportunities that are all around you, financial or otherwise.

But how do you make this transition? Is a leap of faith required? Not really. I don’t think of it as a leap of faith. It’s more of a leap of courage, and it’s a logical kind of courage, not an emotional one. It comes down to making a decision about how important your own happiness and fulfillment are to you. Really, how important is it for you to have meaningful, fulfilling work? Is it OK for you to continue working at a job that doesn’t allow you to contribute the very best of who you are? If you find yourself in such a situation, then your answer is yes — you’ve made it OK for you to tolerate this situation.

But you see… self-actualizing people who successfully make this leap will at some point conclude that it’s definitely not OK. In fact, it’s intolerable. They wake up and say, “Wait a minute here. This is absolutely, totally unacceptable for me to be spending the bulk of my time at a job that isn’t a deeply fulfilling career. I can’t keep doing this. This ends now.”

These people “wake up” by realizing that what’s most important about a career is the high-level view that includes happiness, fulfillment, and living on purpose. Things like money, success, and achievement are a very distant second. But when you work from within the first category, the second category takes care of itself.

Before you’ve had this awakening, you most likely don’t see how that last sentence is possible. And that’s because you don’t understand that it is nothing more than a choice. You have probably chosen to put money above fulfillment in your current line of work. That choice means that you won’t have fulfillment. But it’s not that you can’t have fulfillment — you can choose to change your priorities and act on them at any time. The real choice you made was not to be fulfilled in your current line of work. You bought into the illusion that money is at odds with fulfillment, and that money is the more important of the two, so that is all you see. No matter what job you take, you find this assumption proves true for you.

But once you go through the “waking up” experience and firmly decide to put fulfillment first, you suddenly realize that being fulfilled AND having plenty of money is also a choice that’s available to you. There are countless ways for you to do both; you simply have to permit yourself to see them. You realize that you were the one who chose EITHER-OR instead of AND, while all the time you were totally free to choose AND whenever you wanted.

You set the standards for your career choices. Most likely your current standard ranks fulfillment and meaningful contribution very low in comparison to working on interesting tasks and making sufficient money. But those standards are yours to set. At any point you’re free to say, “Having a deeply meaningful and fulfilling career is an absolute MUST for me. Working for money alone is simply not an option.” And once you make this conscious choice, you WILL begin seeing the opportunities that fit this new standard. But you’ll never even recognize those opportunities as long as it remains OK for you to spend all your work time being unfulfilled.

I want to drive home this point. Having a fulfilling career that earns you plenty of money doesn’t require a leap of faith. It only requires a choice. You just have to wake up one day and tell yourself that you deserve both, and that you won’t settle for anything less. It’s not about finding the right job. A career isn’t something you find; it doesn’t require someone to give you something. You aren’t at the mercy of circumstances. A career is something you create, something you build. It means that the work you do each day is aligned with what you feel to be your purpose. Once you start doing this kind of work, even if for no pay initially, your self-esteem will grow to the point where you’ll become so resourceful and open to new opportunities that you’ll have no trouble making plenty of money from it. However, when you do so, the money won’t be that important. It will just be a resource for you to do more of what you love.

Your life is too precious to waste working only for money or for a purpose that doesn’t inspire you. No one can hold you back from making this decision but you. Especially don’t hide behind your family’s needs. If your family truly loves you, then they need you to be fulfilled and living on purpose far more than anything else. And if you love them, then isn’t your greatest role to serve as a model to them of how to be happy? What would you want for your own children for their careers? And do you want the same for yourself?

What is the purpose of life?

The Purpose of Life

The purpose of life is happiness i.e. to increase your alignment with wisdom, unconditional love, and power.

You are here to:

1. Discover and accept ever deeper truths.
2. Learn to love more deeply and unconditionally.
3. Develop and express your creativity.

#1 leads to wisdom.

#2 leads to joy.

#3 leads to strength.

The point of life is to learn to be wise, joyful, and strong — all at the same time and without compromising or sacrificing any of these. In order to improve one, you must improve all three.

If these pursuits aren’t your life’s highest priority, you’ve missed the point of life entirely. You’ll have a better sense of that when you die, at which point you will lose:

1. Your physical body
2. All your stuff (money, home, possessions)
3. Your positions and titles
4. Your physical relationships

The pursuit of truth, love, and power while you’re here will make your physical existence much more meaningful and fulfilling as you experience it. Physical life becomes significantly easier when you root yourself to the permanent instead of chasing the temporary. Truth, love, and power are permanent because they’re universal concepts. Wherever there is consciousness, these concepts have meaning.

Whenever you turn your back on truth, love, or power, you distance yourself from experiencing wisdom, joy, and strength. This means you’ll experience confusion, unhappiness, and weakness instead. Whatever problems you currently face can be resolved by realigning yourself with truth, love, and power.

Books

Principles, Effectiveness

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People ,and  The 8^th habit by Stephen Covey (Principles)
• First Things First by Stephen Covey (Time management)
• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin (personal effectiveness)
• Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham (finding your strengths)
• Personal development for smart people by Steve Pavlina (Principles)
• The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living by Dalai Lama (Universal Truths)

Success, Behavior, Victory

• Unlimited Power and Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins (achievement and NLP)
• The Now Habit by Neil Fiore (overcoming procrastination)
• Laws of success by Napoleon Hill's
• The Success Principles by Jack Canfield

Consciousness, Awareness, Spirituality

• Power vs. Force by David Hawkins (levels of consciousness)
• Ask and It Is Given and The Amazing Power of Deliberate Intent by Esther Hicks (LOA)
• The Power of Now and A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle (consciousness and awareness)
• The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra (Spirituality and intelligence)
• Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman (inner peace)

Meaning, Purpose, Fulfillment

• Life on Purpose by Dr. Brad Swift (Purpose)
• The Power of Intention, and Inspiration by Wayne Dyer (spiritual problem solving, finding your purpose)
• Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl (finding meaning in the Holocaust)

Philosophy, Wisdom

• The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran (wisdom)
• As a Man Thinketh by James Allen (power of thought)
• Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill (wisdom)
• Conversations with God Book 1 by Neale Donald Walsch (Philosophy)

Wealth, Business

• The Millionaire Course by Marc Allen
• Secrets Of The Millionaire Mind By T Harv Eker.
• Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki (wealth advice)

Relationships

• Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus by John Gray (male-female communication)
• Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay by Mira Kirshenbaum (male-female relationship issues)
• Should I Stay or Go? by Lee Raffel (male-female relationships)

Inner vs. Outer Resources

Few men during their lifetime come anywhere near exhausting the resources dwelling within them. There are deep wells of strength that are never used.

  When you think of someone who’s extremely resourceful, what images come to mind? Do you think of someone who’s wealthy, well-connected, and in control of significant assets? Or do you imagine someone who’s creative, intelligent, and determined?

When I think of resourcefulness, I picture someone seasoned adventurer Bear Grylls face to face with the grueling task of navigating remote locations, sharing invaluable survival. Instead of taking advantage of modern camping gear, he brings a pocketknife and a video camera and films himself living off the land. His primary resources are internal, not external.

Inner vs. Outer Resources

Consider these two lists (not exhaustive, just for the sake of illustration):
Inner Resources

• Creativity
• Self-Discipline
• Confidence
• Intelligence
• Determination
• Courage
• Knowledge
• Skills
• Attitude
• Passion
• Awareness

Outer Resources

• Money
• Assets
• People
• Technology
• Food
• Land
• Electricity

Which is more important to you? Which do you spend the most time developing?
For example, if you work at a job because you need the money, but the work doesn’t challenge or inspire you, then you’re devoting a lot of time to acquiring outer resources while investing little in your inner resources. On the other hand, if you’re going to school to acquire knowledge and skills, you’re building your inner resources while investing little in your external resources.
Here are some key differences between inner and outer resources:

• Depletion. Inner resources aren’t depleted when spent. In fact, the more you exercise them, the stronger they become. Outer resources are usually diminished from use, or there’s an additional resource drain to use them. For example, to use technology, you need electricity, which you can pay for with money, and the value of the technology depreciates while you use it, eventually becoming obsolete.
• Conversion. It’s easier to use inner resources to create outer resources than vice versa. If you’re very disciplined, you can earn plenty of money, but if you’re rich, you can’t readily buy a more disciplined mind.
• Security. Inner resources are more secure than outer resources. It’s more likely you’ll lose your money than your knowledge. Outer resources are subject to greater risk of loss.
• Transferability. Outer resources can be transferred from one person to another. Inner resources are tied to the individual.

Freedom

Because of their strong advantages, I think it’s more important to build inner resources than outer resources, especially during your 20s. If you find yourself at age 30 to be someone who’s driven, disciplined, ambitious, and skillful but completely broke, you’ll be in far better shape to lead a fulfilling life than someone who’s wealthy but lazy and unfocused.

When you build your inner resources, even at the expense of your outer resources, you’ll enjoy more freedom in the long run. But if you do the opposite and focus on building outer resources first, you’ll create a cage for yourself, becoming dependent on unstable assets.

If forced to make a choice, I’d rather give up all my outer resources than my inner ones. Take away my money and possessions. Nuke my website. Eliminate my business contacts and friends. Destroy my reputation. Put me in a situation where I must work two jobs just to make ends meet, so I have little free time. But allow me to retain my intelligence, self-discipline, passion, and other inner resources, and I’ll do just fine. I know the inner resources will enable me to eventually recreate anything I might desire on the outside.
In today’s uncertain economy, people are trying to figure out where to hold their resources/wealth. Should you invest in oil, gold, foreign currency, etc? Honestly the best place to invest is yourself. Turn your external assets into internal knowledge and skills. If you want to invest in some external entity, consider investing in one that helps people invest in themselves. When external resources get scarce, it’s time to pump more energy into the internal side, such as by investing in education and training for yourself and others. That will produce far more benefit than owning shiny metal.

Resource Acquisition

The human mind is our fundamental resource.
- John F. Kennedy

The most reliable way to acquire outer resources is via your inner resources. By creating value for others through focused, disciplined effort, you gain access to the fruits of their labors as well, usually through the medium of money. The added benefit is that when you exercise your inner resources, they grow stronger, thereby allowing you to acquire outer resources more efficiently as well.

Outer resources are merely a means to an end. The point of acquiring inner and outer resources is to apply them to an interesting purpose. Otherwise you fall back on the default purpose of survival, which by itself isn’t very motivating. For most people it isn’t terribly difficult to prevent themselves from dying.

Some people get so caught up in resource acquisition, especially on the external side, that they never set any serious goals other than to acquire more resources. This effectively translates into working for survival. Utterly pointless.

Cultivating a healthy flow of resources may be an important goal in your life, but it can’t be the most important goal.

Another problem is that people fall back on the goal of resource acquisition as a way of procrastinating on their true purpose. They say, “I need to do X, Y, and Z first, so I’ll have the money and freedom to do what I really should be doing.” That’s a hollow excuse.

You can build the inner and outer resources you need while working directly on your most inspiring goals. Skip the side projects where money is your primary aim unless you’re absolutely desperate for cash and really do need to focus on survival. Otherwise you’re just distracting yourself from what really matters. Don’t let the fear of big goals push you back into survival mode.

If there’s some grand mission you’d finally tackle if only you had a few crore rupees, you should be pursuing that mission now. Not having a crore rupees is just an excuse. Chances are that someone else is doing something similar while completely broke. If you were more resourceful, could you get started right now? Certainly you could.

Stick with the path that has a heart, even if it scares you. You’ll acquire the resources you need along the way, whether they be internal or external. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that resource acquisition is the point of life.

First habit

 “Be Proactive” is habit #1 from Steve Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Being proactive means taking conscious control over your life, setting goals and working to achieve them. Instead of reacting to events and waiting for opportunities, you go out and create your own events and opportunities.

Being proactive means that instead of merely reacting to events as they happen, you consciously engineer your own events.

Most people think reactively. And reacting to certain events is all well and good. But it becomes a problem when that’s all there is to a person’s life — nothing more than instinctively reacting to stimuli.

Steve Covey points out that there’s a gap between stimulus and response, and within that gap lies the potential for us to choose our response. Four special human endowments give us this power:

1. Self-awareness – the understanding that you do have a choice between stimulus and response. If someone insults you, you can choose not to become angry. If you are offered a donut, you can choose not to eat it.
2. Conscience – the ability to consult your inner compass to decide what is right for you. You can make decisions based on unchanging principles, regardless of what is socially favored at the moment.
3. Creative Imagination – the ability to visualize alternative responses. By using your imagination, you can mentally generate and evaluate different options.
4. Independent Will – You have the freedom to choose your own unique response. You aren’t forced to conform to what others expect from you.

A lack of proactivity can often be traced to a weakness in one of these four human endowments. Maybe you’re spending too much time in a state of low consciousness and never reaching the level of awareness necessary to make proactive life decisions. Perhaps your conscience has become muddled by societal conditioning, so you aren’t even sure what you want from life; when something doesn’t feel right to you, you look to others to decide how you should feel about it. Maybe you aren’t taking the time to visualize alternatives. Or perhaps your independent will is being restricted by the pressure to conform to others’ expectations.

It can be argued that on some level, we’re always reacting to events, either external or internal. The difference between proactivity and reactivity can then be viewed in terms of what degree of “mental processing” occurs during the gap between stimulus and response. A proactive person will apply the four human endowments to choose a response (or to choose no response at all). But even more than that, a proactive person will invest the time to make conscious life choices and follow through on them.

Reactive people tend to be out of touch with their core values. Instead of running their lives based on unchanging core principles, they pick up temporary values from others around them. If no special opportunities come their way, they’ll stay at the same job year after year as long as it’s semi-satisfying. If most of their friends exercise, they probably will too; otherwise, they probably won’t. They go with the flow of the people and circumstances that surround them, but they don’t direct the flow. Their lives are largely out of their direct conscious control; they tend to only exert their human endowments when they absolutely must, such as if they get laid off unexpectedly (and even then it’s often to a minimal degree). But when things are pretty good, life is mostly on autopilot.

Proactive people, on the other hand, are aware of their core values. They consciously make key decisions based on those values. They create their own opportunities and direct the flow of their own lives. Even when things are pretty good, they’re still making conscious choices. Sometimes that means maintaining the status quo, while other times it means changing directions. Sometimes their values will align well with what’s socially popular; other times they won’t. Proactive people will take actions that often seem mysterious to reactive people. They may suddenly quit their job to start a new business, even though everything seemed to be going well for them. They’ll often start new projects or activities “out of the blue” when it seems like there’s no externally motivated reason to do so. A proactive person will still pay attention to external events, but they’ll pilot themselves to their desired destination regardless of those events.

If a reactive person were to captain a ship, the ship would flow with the currents. This person would be preoccupied with studying the currents, trying to predict where the ship will end up as a function of the currents. If the currents are good, this person is happy. If the currents are poor, this person feels stressed. On occasion this person might attempt to set a destination, and if the currents are good, the ship will arrive. But if the currents are poor, this person will bemoan them and give up the destination for an easier one.

If a proactive person were to captain a ship, however, the ship would go wherever the captain wanted it to go. This captain would still note the currents, but they’d merely be used for navigational purposes. Sometimes the ship would flow with the currents; other times it would steam against them. It matters little whether the currents are good or not; this captain will reach the intended destination regardless of the currents. The currents can only control the time of arrival and the exact path from starting point to final destination. But the currents have no power to dictate the final destination; that is entirely the captain’s choice.

Some examples of reactive [proactive] language:

• Where is the industry going? [Where shall I go next, and how will I get there?]
• I don’t have time to exercise. [How shall I make time to exercise?]
• How much money can I expect to make if I do X? [How much money do I want to make, and what will I do to earn it?]
• I’ll try it and see what happens. [I'll do it.]
• I’m too tired. [What can I do to increase my energy?]
• I’ve never been very good at math. [How can I improve my math skills and enjoy the process?]
• Nothing really inspires me. [What would I tackle if I knew I couldn't fail?]
• What is the meaning of life? [What is the meaning I wish to give to my life?]

Taking the pulse of others is a big concern for reactive people. They usually want to work at a “stable” job in a “good” industry, and they see themselves at the mercy of market conditions. If they manage to start a new business, it’s because they know lots of others who are already doing so, and they want to join the pack. They want to know what products and services seem to be doing well, so they can do something similar. If they fail, it’s because the industry isn’t doing well, or there’s too much competition, or because of some oft-cited external luck factor.

Do you think that anything that happens “out there” will determine how successful you’ll be in your endeavors? Not if you’re proactive. If you’re proactive, external events can only affect your time of arrival and the exact path you take to your goal. But they cannot dictate your goal for you. Proactive people still get knocked around by the currents at times, but they’ll just keep readjusting their course to retarget their goals, goals which are ultimately attainable by their own efforts.

Of course everyone has a mixture of both proactivity and reactivity. Pure examples of the two extremes are rare. You may find that you’re extremely proactive in one area, while letting other parts of your life slip into unconscious autopilot. So take the time to use your human endowments of self-awareness, conscience, creative imagination, and independent will to shine a light on those neglected areas of your life and consciously choose to get things moving. If you don’t like where the currents are taking you, then change course. Don’t wait for an opportunity to arrive; engineer your own. The reactive people in your life will often throw a fit when you do this, so let them, and exercise your independent will anyway. Even when everyone around you seems to be reactive, you can still be proactive. Initially that will probably feel like swimming against the currents, but if the currents of your life are leading in the wrong direction anyway, that’s a good thing.

Although “going with the flow” is often considered a wise admonition, the level of wisdom in this advice depends on where that flow is going. For example: in the USA going with the flow of current state of health means becoming overweight or obese, living a sedentary exercise-free lifestyle, and then dying of either heart disease or cancer. Going with the flow financially means gradually sinking into debt and then dying broke. Going with the flow of marriages means getting divorced (67% of Americans who were married in 1990 can ultimately expect to divorce, sources = Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence). Going with the flow of our educational practices means never reading another nonfiction book after high school.

If you wish to live an extraordinary life, you often have to go against the flow that everyone else seems to be following. You can choose not to be one of the “XXX billions served.” In a way you’re switching over to being guiding by the flow of your own self-awareness and consciousness. You tune into your inner flow instead of being dragged along by the flow of external stimuli. Sure you may win the lottery or receive a big inheritance, but most likey you won’t just flow into wealth… or health… or fulfillment. You have to consciously choose these things and then follow up with committed action.

Where is the flow of your life taking you? If you continue flowing along with the currents of your life as they are now, where will you end up? And what will you never experience because those currents just don’t stop at certain destinations? How can you exercise your proactivity and your human endowments to direct the course of your life (regardless of the currents), so that you intentionally create the kind of life you want instead of just drifting along?

Proactivity has many names. Tony Robbins refers to it as using your Personal Power. Brian Tracy states, “Those who don’t set goals for themselves are forever doomed to work to achieve the goals of others.” Denis Waitley juxtaposes winners make it happen vs. losers let it happen. Dr. Wayne Dyer refers to the proactive as no-limit people. David Allen uses the terms ready for anything and having a mind like water. The exact terms aren’t important. What matters is making the decision to start consciously directing your own life instead of being pushed along by external currents.

The Strangest Secret

 I’ve been an avid learner of personal development info. I literally have it for breakfast, since I often listen to audio programs while eating. One book I recently picked up from the local library is Earl Nightingale’s The Strangest Secret. The Strangest Secret is from 1988, but I found that most of the ideas are timeless and still apply today. The “secret” is simply six words: We become what we think about.

This certainly isn’t a new idea. In fact, Earl clearly admits that he learned it from Napoleon Hill’s classic Think and Grow Rich. And it isn’t a unique idea either. There are plenty of other religious books that have expanded on the concept. Nevertheless, the idea is a profound one.

Few people would argue that our thoughts control our actions and that our actions (largely) control our results. If you think about going shopping and decide to follow through on that thought, your body follows suit, and pretty soon you acquire the results of going shopping. It all begins with a thought. But what people often fail to realize is that we have the power to consciously choose our thoughts. Instead of just letting our brains randomly cycle through the same thoughts over and over, we can start choosing to spend time thinking about different things. And if we do that consistently, we’ll shift our actions in new directions and thereby acquire new results.

Thoughts are like seeds. If you want different results in life, you have to figure out which thoughts are capable of growing those results and which aren’t. Then you have to consciously fill your mind with the correct thoughts and weed out the incorrect thoughts.

For example, if you want to start your own business, I can tell you which thoughts are the right seeds and which are the wrong ones. Among the wrong seeds, you’ll find the following thoughts:

• Starting my own business is very risky. I have a family to support.
• There’s a good chance I’ll go broke.
• I don’t have enough money yet.
• I have no idea how to start my own business.
• I’ve got a safe, secure job. Why would I want to mess that up?
• I’m not ready to start my own business just yet. Maybe next year.

Note that I’m not saying that these thoughts are objectively wrong… just that they’re the wrong seeds for the potential result of starting your own business. In other words, the result of starting your own business isn’t going to grow in the soil of the thoughts above. But these are the right seeds if you don’t want to start your own business; these seeds will grow the tree of being a lifelong employee. So chances are that if you harbor thoughts similar to those above, you find yourself an employee right now. Nothing at all wrong with that if it’s what you want. On the other hand, if you’re an employee right now and would like to start your own business, but your predominant thoughts about the idea are similar to those above, then you have a problem. Those mental seeds simply won’t grow a business. If you retain those thoughts, you’ll never run your own business, just as if you plant tomato seeds, you’ll never grow a watermelon.

So what kinds of thoughts are the right seeds for starting your own business? Here are some of them:

• Sure it’s a risk, but I believe in myself, and whatever obstacles come my way, I’ll overcome them.
• I’d rather spend my life working hard to build my own business than to build someone else’s. If I’m going to build a business no matter what, it might as well be my own.
• The freedom of being my own boss is extremely attractive to me. Imagine being able to decide how to spend my time every minute of every day.
• I can only get so far income-wise as an employee. If I want to hit it rich, I need to go into business for myself.

Now even though thoughts like those above might be the right seeds for starting your own business, that doesn’t mean that planting the right seeds is sufficient to grow the whole plant. Just as plants need water and sunshine, it takes a lot of hard work to build a business. But the right thoughts are the first step. I’m just using the starting of a new business as one example. I could have just as easily used quitting smoking, losing weight, getting married, etc.

The main point I’m trying to make is that if you find yourself in a situation where you want new results in your life (i.e. something other than what you’re currently experiencing), then the first step is to examine your dominant thoughts to see if they’re the right seeds to grow the results you want. The odds are probably better than 95% that if you’re not making progress, then you’re probably thinking the wrong thoughts and need to replace them with new ones. For example, you won’t become a nonsmoker by thinking thoughts like, “Quitting smoking is hard.”

A key concept to understand here is that shifting your thoughts is a conscious and deliberate activity. You don’t just say to yourself, “Ok, I’ll think about starting my own business. Sounds good. Next….” You have to be a lot more proactive than that. You have to set aside an hour or so to be totally alone, sit down with pen and paper, figure out the correct thoughts/seeds you need to be thinking, and then consciously ram those new thoughts into your head, over and over again until they become dominant over the old thoughts. And if you’re trying to make a big shift in your results, then this is something you’ll need to do every single day.

You might find the above exercise really difficult at first. When you start thinking new thoughts, the most common initial reaction is that you’ll feel a great deal of doubt about them. So if you start thinking about running your own business, your initial images probably won’t seem too attractive. Then you find yourself thinking about quitting your job, the negative reaction you’ll get from coworkers, the office politics you have to deal with on a daily basis, and you suddenly realize you’re back to thinking the wrong thoughts again. That’s normal. But use your imagination to push past the doubt and keep working on it. See that new reality working out beautifully, even if you have no idea how it could possibly work in the real world. It’s going to be sloppy in the beginning, but it will get easier over time. After about 2-3 weeks of this, you’ll start to actually believe in those new thoughts. And that’s when you’ll feel the urge to start taking action. But in the beginning, you’ll still be too full of doubt to act. That’s fine — it’s important to reach the point of belief first. So just be patient with yourself, and let your imagination guide you. As Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”