WHY IT'S IMPORTANT TO SURROUND YOURSELF WITH WINNERS

One of my favorite quotes by the great Les Brown is, “If you hang out with nine losers, you’re about to become number ten.” Brilliant. Jim Rohn states, “You’re the average of the five people you come into contact with the most.” My mother always told me, “Birds of a feather flock together.”

When I was hanging out with drug addicts, I became a drug addict. When I was hanging out with losers, I was a loser. When I associated with scumbags, I acted like a scumbag. Simple as that. I can look at every single phase of my life, and I clearly became just like the company I kept.

I quit hanging out with, I’d say, 95 percent of the people I knew before getting out of prison the final time. Once I surrounded myself with motivated, loving, driven, ambitious, and successful people, that was exactly what I became. When you start hanging out with successful people, you start to pick up their daily habits that got them where they are now and are taking them even further on the road to success.

It is critical that you get rid of any poisonous people in your life if you want to be happy. If they don’t have your best interest at heart, if they tell you that you can’t do something, if they laugh at you for having dreams and going after them, if they say things to put you down, then they are not your friends. You need to remove them from your circle if you want to have true success and happiness in your life. It’s just like guarding your mind. It’s hard to stay positive and focused on your dreams and goals when you choose to hang out with people who tell you “you can’t” all the time, are constantly laughing at you for going after your dreams, or influence you to participate in something that goes against your dreams and beliefs.

A real friend is always going to have your back and will always encourage you to go after your dreams. A real friend doesn’t tell you what you want to hear. A real friend tells you what you need to hear.

Energy is contagious, good or bad. Have you ever heard someone say, “I got a bad vibe from him,” or “I felt so much energy just being around that group”? That’s because we feed off the energy in our surroundings.

So if you are around people who whine, make excuses, have a bad outlook on life, and are not striving to become better, that energy is going to rub off on you. They put a damper on your day just by spending time with you. However, if you are around a group of extremely excited individuals who are passionate about their dreams, it is almost impossible not to feed off their energy.

When you surround yourself with other individuals who have the same or similar dreams as you and are equally or even more passionate and enthusiastic about their dreams and life, something magical happens. When you have people in your life who encourage you every day to go after your dreams and tell you when they think you are not giving it 100 percent of your effort, it makes the process of attaining your dreams possible and inspires you to persevere. We all need encouragement to take on big goals, and we definitely all need someone to hold us accountable by letting us know when we are getting off-track from our goals.

If you want to live a happy and successful life, start eliminating negative people from your life completely and start surrounding yourself with people whom you want to be like. Watch how much of a difference it will make in your life when you surround yourself with winners.

SIMILAR ARTICLES:

7 STEPS TO HELP YOU TAKE MASSIVE ACTION

HOW TO DEVELOP PERSISTENCE

HOW TO REPLACE BAD HABITS WITH GOOD HABITS

WHAT ARE HABITS?

Humans are creatures of habit. A habit is a routine of behavior that is repeated regularly and tends to occur subconsciously. Charles Duhigg, reporter for the New York Times and author of The Power Of Habit, said, “About 40 percent to 45 percent of what we do every day sort of feels like a decision, but it’s actually habit.” Even the smartest, most creative, most ruggedly individualistic of Homo sapiens are on autopilot much of the time, eating, working, and communicating with others through habit.

There are some good evolutionary reasons for this: habits save us time and mental energy in negotiating the world and free our minds to invent things like fire and computers. They also limit the size of our brains (and therefore our heads), making it easier for human mothers to survive giving birth. But our hardwired ability to form habits makes us vulnerable, quickly picking up self-destructive patterns, too.

The process by which new behaviors become automatic is called habit formation. Old habits are hard to break, and new habits are hard to form because the behavioral patterns we repeat are imprinted in our neural pathways. But it is possible to form new habits through repetition.

I don’t care who you are or what you have accomplished. We all have bad habits to some degree or another. Nobody is perfect. What we need to focus on, then, is analyzing ourselves daily to find bad habits and replace them with good habits.

HOW TO MAKE THE CHANGE

Many techniques exist for removing established habits like withdrawal of reinforcement by identifying and removing factors that trigger and reinforce the habit. Recognizing and eliminating bad habits as soon as possible is advised. Habit elimination becomes more difficult with age because repetitions reinforce habits cumulatively over a lifetime.

According to Charles Duhigg, there is a loop that includes a cue, a routine, and a reward for every habit. An example of a habit loop is this: when a TV program ends (cue), you go to the refrigerator (routine) and eat a snack (reward). The key to changing habits is to identify your cue and modify your routine and reward.

For whatever you consider a bad habit, there is a good habit that can replace it. I used to watch TV. I don’t like that it consumes a lot of my time, resulting in me being unproductive, and I definitely don’t like the way it makes me feel. After watching programs such as the news, SportsCenter, or even commercials, I would have worry, fear, anger, or even feelings of hate flowing through me, and those are feelings I want to avoid at all costs. This also goes with protecting your mind from anything harmful. I started replacing TV with books that enlighten my mind, body, and soul, thanks to my mentor Marlene who wouldn’t stop encouraging me to read, do some physical activity like exercising, or conversing with other people. Now I don’t watch TV except when the Los Angeles Rams are playing.

Identify the habits you want to change, then identify the cue and modify the routine and reward. And if you fail on your initial attempts, don’t give up. Figure out what went wrong and plan strategies to overcome that obstacle the next time. Keep your positive attitude and keep trying. You will get it eventually.

THE POWER OF THE EARLY MORNING RITUAL & WHAT TO DO

If you're anything like me then you are by far not a morning person naturally, and that's okay. If you are naturally a morning person, congratulations, I salute you.

I'm going to share with you the power of the early morning ritual, and what things should be included in it.

WHY IS IT POWERFUL

The morning ritual is powerful in many ways. Before you can do great things for you, your family, your friends, and society as a whole you have to take care of yourself first.

A Morning Ritual Establishes A Rhythm and Sets the Tone For the Day:

 How you wake up and what you feel will carry on with you as the day progresses. It then makes sense to only participate in activities that bring us good vibes in the morning. Have you ever heard someone ask you, "did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed?" Just on little incident in the morning can carry bad vibes with you for the rest of the day and put you into a funk.

Increased Creativity:

Taking time to tune into yourself before you get caught up in your everyday busy life will give you more clarity and help spark new ideas. I got the majority of my best ideas in the morning and before I retire at night. Treating your mind, body, and soul to a morning ritual allows you to think and take action at prime levels. 

Increased Productivity:

You'll find that you feel better, you're more focussed resulting in quicker and smarter decisions, you have more energy, and you handle stress more efficiently just to name a few benefits in your productivity. When you feel good going into taking care of your daily task, you will notice that you just do them better.

Increased Self-Awareness & Peace of Mind:

Taking just a few moments in the morning to clear your mind with meditation leads to an overall peace of mind. You'll learn things about your body that you didn't pay attention to before and you'll feel better afterwards. 

WHAT TO DO

Now I would like to share with you exactly what I do every morning and my schedule. You don't have to have the same schedule, fine one that works for you, the main idea is to implement these activities into your schedule.

1. Express Gratitude - As soon as my conscious mind awakens I immediately start thinking of everything I am grateful for at that very moment. This puts me in a great mindset and really sets the tone for the rest of the day.

2. Meditate - This gives my mind 10 minutes to not worry about what needs to be done that day and to be in the now. I look at it like a massage for the mind. Afterwards I feel rested, relaxed, and more in tune with my body.

3. Read - About 95% of our daily actions is run on autopilot. Our subconscious mind is running the show. By feeding your subconscious first thing in the morning with positive personal development literature, you are setting yourself up for a great day and a fantastic life. There are also proven scientific health benefits from reading as discussed in Reader's Digest: Benefits of Reading

4. Exercise - One of my favorite feelings is after I get done crushing a workout. There's nothing quite like endorphins swimming in you and sweat pouring out of you.

5. Review Your Goals & Schedule - This is how I wrap up my morning ritual. Right after I get my mind, body, and soul primed for the day I like to review what I need to take care of that day, then I get to work.

MY SCHEDULE:

4:30 am - Wake Up & Express Gratitude

4:45 am - Meditate

5:00 am - Eat Eggs

5:15 am - Read

6/6:30    - Get Kids Ready For The Day

7:00 am - Eat Pre Workout Meal

7:15 am - Read Again

8:00 am - Exercise

10 am    - Review Goals & Schedule

Remember, that is just an example. Design your own schedule to fit your own needs, I would just encourage you to incorporate the 5 activities that I listed above. Also, I get up early because I have a wife and kids and it can get very busy in the morning to say the least. This is a time for you to have some alone time, so if you have family or roommates, make sure to wake up early enough without being interrupted.

HOW TO SET GOALS AND WHY IT'S IMPORTANT

Only 3% of adults have clear, written, specific, measurable, time-bounded goals, and by every statistic, they accomplish ten times as much as people with no goals at all.

If you want to accomplish anything significant, the first step is to write it down. When you write it down, it is no longer just a thought, it has become real and you now have a clear target. If you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time.

I'm going to share with you my exact method of setting goals. I've adopted a lot of strategies from Grant Cardone's book The 10X Rule and integrated some of my own. Let's get right to it.

10X Your Goals

I really don't understand why anyone would tell another person to set realistic goals. Realistic to me is average. Who wants to be average? I look around everywhere I go and see average all the time, and I don't want anything to do with average. And most of the time, neither do any of these people who are getting these results.

Anyone who has ever went on to accomplish anything great did not have realistic goals. They more than likely had goals so big and gigantic that other people thought they were crazy and delusional before they accomplished them. Take a look at Steve Jobs, Henry Ford, the Wright brothers, or Thomas Edison. Do you think they set average goals?

Take your goal and times it by 10, then take what you think it will take to reach your new target and times that by 10. Why is this so effective?

10Xing your goals will give you the drive to maintain persistence when you run into obstacles and resistance just like you will face with any goal. If you set average goals the payout is more than likely not enough to keep you motivated when faced with these challenges.

Another reason why this method is so effective is that whether you set average goals or massive one's, you are very likely to come up just short on them often. Let's say your goal was to make $100,000 dollars this year. 10X that goal and what you think you have to do to accomplish it, and now your target is $1,000,000 dollars this year. Which one of these goals would you rather come up short on?

Start With The End Result

Something I have found to be extremely productive in setting goals is to start with the end result and then work backwards. What do I mean by this?

On a piece of paper I write down all of my dreams that I want to make a reality (10Xed of course). Then I write out all of my 10 year goals based off of my dreams. After that I write out my 5 year goals based off of my 10 year goals. Then I write down my 1 year goals based off of the 5. I then write down my 6 month goals based off of my 1 year goals. Then I write down my monthly goals based off of my 6 month goals. After that I write down my weekly goals based off of my monthly goals. Finally I write down my daily goals that are based off of my weekly goals.

I highly recommend using a Passion Planner which utilizes a time blocking method along with many other features to help you crush your goals.

When you break your goals down with this method you have clarity of where you are going and what needs to be done. You also are not feeling overwhelmed by a gigantic goal that is going to take a lot of time and energy to complete because you have now broken it down into baby steps in your daily goals.

Proclaim Your Goals As Already Accomplished

Instead of writing down, "I want to lose 20 pounds." or "I will lose 20 pounds." try this, "I have lost 20 pounds."

When you write it down this way you are sending that message to your subconscious mind so that it can act on those commands. About 95% of what we do is subconscious. If you are sending this message to your subconscious mind and you believe it backed by persistent action, then it will begin to act accordingly to the commands that you are sending it. You will begin to act in line with your goals and start attracting the resources necessary to achieve them. The key is to believe these affirmations, review them multiple times daily, and to take action on them.

Set Completion Dates

Every time you 10X a goal, have written it down starting with the end result, and proclaimed as already accomplished, finish it with the date that you will have it achieved by.

Deadlines force you to think about what it will take to complete your goal, they will help you prioritize what you'll work on (and for how long), and they push you by creating a sense of urgency to complete your goals.

You may even want to have an accountability partner to help you stay on track with your deadlines for your goals. This is a great external motivator in achieving your goals.

By implementing these methods when setting your goals you will have a focussed, purposeful energy and you will accomplish more of your dreams. The key is to write your goals down using these methods, believe that you can do it, and take action on them daily.

Related Articles

7 STEPS TO HELP YOU TAKE MASSIVE ACTION

WHY IT'S IMPORTANT TO STEP OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE

HOW TO DEVELOP PERSISTENCE