Message from my mentor on 5 Life-Changing Principles To Follow For A Better Life & business
If you’re looking to radically improve your life, you need to follow time-tested principles. While the latest ‘hacks’ or ‘secrets’ might give you a temporary boost, principles help you get long-lasting results.
Some of the principles I’ll share in this article might be confronting, but I’ve experienced them to be invaluable to my own life — which is why I didn’t sugarcoat them.
Principle #1: Raise Your Standards
Learn MoreOne of the most effective ways to improve your life is to raise your standards. When you want to upgrade your life, you need to raise the standard of your behavior, your social circle, your actions, and your self-talk.
Let me ask you something: What standard do you accept of yourself?
Do you accept laziness, procrastination, smoking, gossiping, being broke, eating bad foods, negative self-talk, surrounding yourself with toxic people?
If you want to get more out of life, you need to question your standards. Question what you accept and what you don’t accept any more — it will be a fundamental catalyst for change.
“Any time you sincerely want to make a change, the first thing you must do is to raise your standards… If you don’t set a baseline standard for what you’ll accept in life, you’ll find it’s easy to slip into behaviors and attitudes or a quality of life that’s far below what you deserve.”
— Tony Robbins
The harsh truth is, nearly everything in your life right now — both the positive and negative — is the result of your standards. It’s the result of what you tolerated.
Stop accepting procrastination. Stop accepting average. Stop accepting staying stuck in a job you hate. Stop accepting eating bad foods. Stop accepting the things that limit your success.
For this year, raise the standard of what you accept for yourself — it’s the surest way to life-improvement.
Principle #2: Stop Taking The Path of Least Resistance
The path of least resistance is hardly ever the path of the most meaningful results. Most of the worthwhile things in life — strong relationships, a healthy body, financial freedom, business success — won’t be achieved by following the path of least resistance.
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Yet, we’re wired to take the easy way out as it has an evolutionary advantage. Your brain knows that taking the path of least resistance is what keeps you safe and preserves your energy while seeking discomfort can be dangerous and energy draining.
“The mind is always looking for the path of least resistance.” — David Goggins
However, if you want to grow — physically, mentally, financially, spiritually — you need to seek the path of resistance. Growth is the result of overcoming resistance. The more you walk the path of resistance, the more you grow. The more you grow, the more you’re able to accomplish.
If you lift weights, for example, your muscles grow stronger because it learns to overcome the resistance, and it adapts to the new demands of your environment. Over time, you’re able to lift much heavier weights than you could before. This principle can be applied to any walk of life.
When you seek the path of resistance, you demand more of yourself. This fuels your growth, which enables you to accomplish more in life. The better you become, the more you can handle.
Principle #3: Be Radically Honest With Yourself
We’re all guilty of lying to ourselves — some more than others. However, the problem is that these lies and excuses stop us from taking the steps we need to take for self-improvement.
Therefore, you need to be radically honest with yourself. Take a look in the mirror and honestly admit where you’re at in life, what behavior you don’t like about yourself, what you need to change, and what’s stopping you from building a better life.
Accepting these truths is the first step towards self-improvement. Without admitting the truth, nothing will change. You keep stuck in the story you tell yourself.
If you’re broke, admit it. If you’re underperforming, admit it. If you’re stuck at a job you hate, admit it. If you’re not tapping into your full potential, admit it. If you’re a procrastinator, admit it. It’s only after admitting the truth that you can take the actions necessary to change.
Most people never tell themselves the truth, simply because it’s too harsh. The long-term consequences of avoiding the truth, however, are often much more painful.
So, stop lying to yourself and stop making these excuses for why you are where you are in life. Instead, confront yourself with the truth so you can actually do something about it. Being radically honest with yourself isn’t easy, but it’s an essential step for self-improvement.
Principle #4: Be Proactive And Take Full Ownership
If you want to improve your life and achieve your goals, you need to become proactive. Most people, however, are the complete opposite. They are passive.
Most people wait for opportunities to come to them instead of actively creating opportunities. They wait for other people to help them instead of figuring it out on their own. They wait for that ‘magic moment’ where everything will change instead of taking action every single day to make it happen.
The truth is, no one is going to fix things for you, you need to do it yourself. Opportunities don’t magically appear on your doorstep, you need to create them. Your customers won’t magically buy from you, you need to convince them. Your income isn’t going to increase out of the blue, you need to make it happen yourself.
Stop being a passive victim of your circumstances. Start grabbing life ‘by the throat’ and become the CEO of your own life. You make the decisions here. You are more in control then you realize.
Remember, it’s your responsibility to squeeze more out of your life, to improve yourself, and to create your path. Stop waiting for others to give you permission or to fix things for you. It’s all you.
Principle #5: Become Laser-Focused
If you want to achieve ambitious goals and get more out of your life, you need to become laser-focused. Both on a micro-level (task-by-task basis) and on a macro-level (your projects and goals).
The problem with most people is that they completely lack focus. On a micro-level, they get distracted by things like social media, smartphones, Netflix, YouTube, news, and all kinds of other instant-gratifications.
These distractions limit them from creating impactful work that has the potential to change their lives completely. These short-term pleasures stop them from achieving long-term success.
However, if you want to create meaningful work and achieve higher levels of success, you must block your sources of distraction. You need to work with laser-focus, so you finish your tasks both faster and of much higher quality. Engage in ‘deep work’ as often as you can, as this is what yields the most valuable results.
On a macro-level, it’s also critical to stay laser-focused. You need to avoid the ‘shiny object syndrome’ which makes you hop from idea to idea and from project to project. This way, you never finish anything of real value.
Success requires focus. You need the discipline to stick with one goal, project, or idea until it’s developed far enough to bring you real results. If you get distracted by ‘the next thing’ over and over again, you’ll fail to build or create anything substantial.
Now Do It
Knowing about these principles is not enough to change. You need to take action to see the real results. Therefore, as an action point for this article, pick one of these five principles, and write down how you’re going to incorporate it into your daily routine.
To Your Personal Growth,
CONTRIBUTED BY Jari Roomer
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