Numbers are very tangible, not some woo-woo talk about philosophy, interpretation, and a higher purpose. They are technical, mechanical, something your conscious secular mind can grasp. You can easily introduce and track your disciplines regarding data sources. Read ten pages of a self-help book a day; listen to a single podcast episode while commuting; stop watching TV news altogether; watch a classic movie once per week; follow a new blog and read one post a day; join a group on social media and interact there five minutes a day. It’s all easy to do, easy not to do, and easy to track. It’s easy to build new habits around these activities.
I guarantee that if you stick to your new routine for an extended period of time, you will change. If you start a daily activity, give yourself at least 100 days to notice this change. When starting a weekly one, be prepared to continue it for the next couple of years.
The internal interpretation of facts (external data) and your experiences (external data plus your emotions) is less tangible. It is also more important. You can bombard yourself with different messages, but if you dismiss all of them with an incorrect interpretation, you won’t get any results; that’s the example of reaction to your sustained action. That way you nullify the effect of the law of small errors and consistent discipline. A mere change in what kind of information you consume may be useless if you proactively sabotage those messages.
The best indication that your interpretation is not working against you is that you regard new elements of your personal philosophy as true. Once they are true in your mind and in your soul, you don’t have to worry about consciously cultivating them.
You need to change in order to change your results. That’s why change in both the sources and quality of information you habitually absorb is necessary. That’s why your internal interpretation, your self-talk, must change. It’s not a matter of learning and applying some fancy technique that will help you lose weight, save more money, get more friends, or whatever else you are after. All the knowledge and skills you possess are dependent on your personal philosophy. Without the change in philosophy, you may experience some success with those new techniques, but then the yo-yo effect will kick in. You will be back to your starting position.
Believe in Yourself
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“If anyone else has done it, you can do it, and if someone else hasn’t done it, you can do it first.”
― Jeremy Frandsen’s grandma
The facts are that 80 percent of people are not satisfied with their lives. About 15 percent don’t accept their situation and struggle to squeeze more out of their lives. And only about 5 percent reach their dreams.
Whatever data sets you examine, this distribution is clear. I researched only the data of multi-level marketing (MLM) companies and online ventures. But the data confirmed the gut feeling we all have: success is not common. Even if you live in Beverly Hills, if you open your eyes, you will notice that, yes, there are a lot of mansions around, but there is also an army of drivers, bodyguards, gardeners, and maids. The proportions are the same.
To achieve success, you must not only do what the top 5 percent does, you must think the way they do. Adopting someone else’s beliefs is not a small feat, otherwise the world would be full of Einsteins and Bob Proctors. But if you utilize the natural process of reshaping your worldview, which takes place every minute in your head, the change in your mindset is possible and much easier to attain.
There are other factors indicated as the philosopher’s stone of success. Some say that confidence is the mysterious ingredient. Others, and not just small fish, but big figures like Thomas Edison or John D. Rockefeller, say it’s perseverance. I say it’s those traits and a bunch of others, like wisdom and flexibility. They are important but they are all secondary to your system for conduct of life. Your personal philosophy determines what level of confidence, perseverance, or flexibility is characterizing you. When you adopt the right beliefs and make them your own, you can develop the above-mentioned traits to the levels that characterize successful people.
Perseverance comes from personal philosophy. I was quite persistent before my life transition. For example, I have been doing pushups every single day for about four years. But since I introduced some changes in my philosophy I also write, do pull-ups, eat veggies and fruits, study the Bible, read books written by saints, look at my vision board, repeat my personal mission statement, practice speed reading, keep journals, pray with my kids, and do a few more things on daily basis. Once I accepted the law of small errors and consistent disciplines as true, I had no problems with perseverance.
All I needed to do was to start a new activity and track the results. As long as I kept doing this new thing, the results were unavoidable. I observed it in several different areas of my life, which led me to the belief that it’s universal for every human activity. That’s why I stuck with my writing.
I was writing for eight months and earned less than $80. Anyone with the wrong personal philosophy would have given up. His flawed philosophy would have justified quitting: “Well, this clearly doesn’t work, so you need to find another path,” or “Hard work is overhyped. Sit down and enjoy your day instead of working like crazy.” But I continued and you read my seventh book.
Everything is possible with the help of the right personal philosophy. Everything that has ever happened, happened because of someone’s philosophy—Lech Walesa’s, Albert Einstein’s, Nelson Mandela’s, Martin Luther King’s, Gustav Eiffel’s.
And it is so easy to remodel your philosophy! You just improve the natural process you are already using. It’s not complicated. All you need to do at the beginning is to open your mind a bit and read, listen to, and watch different things than you did previously. Do it consistently and the transformation will take place.
It is doable. It happens all the time. Most people manage to discard or dismiss all the ideas that challenge their status quo and stay the same…today. Tomorrow they will receive new inputs and another chance to shift their personal philosophy.
You may still be doubtful about whether you can do it. The only answer I have is that if I can do it, anyone can. I was content with my system for conduct of life. I graduated from university, my career was steadily progressing, my kids were growing healthy, life wasn’t bad. I spent more than ten years without reading a single personal development book. What for? I “knew” that it was all “rubbish,” wishful thinking, and opium for the masses. It couldn’t work in my life. I tried it and I “knew” it.
But then my life became stale. I was fired from my job and in the new one, my salary didn’t grow very fast. My wife started to dream about a house and we were in no position to buy one. My savings weren’t increasing at all. I gained some weight. Life wasn’t cozy anymore. Then I read The Slight Edge and decided to give its philosophy a try. I didn’t suddenly get woo-woo, believing in the Law of Attraction or mumbling affirmations all day long. I just changed the books I read and started to listen to personal development audio materials. For almost three months I did nothing more.
Once I wrote my personal mission statement in November 2012, things started to move faster. I created my first blog, I made new online acquaintances, I wrote my first book. Two years later here I am not quite recognizing myself. My personal philosophy has transformed dramatically. I think differently and act differently.
And there are tangible results of those philosophy changes in my life. Concrete outputs. Seven books published. Thousands of copies sold. Hundreds of mails to/from my readers. Dozens of blog posts published and the traffic to my blog has increased. People follow me! That’s incredible! I have friends who read my entries on Lift every day. Who am I to be looked up to? But it all happened.
Your personal philosophy is an integral part of you. It will be with you as long as you breathe. Don’t neglect to work on it because your life didn’t quite work out as you dreamed it would. Being low in your life is a great starting point for transformation. You don’t have much to lose. You have a l
ot to gain. You are frustrated to the point that you are willing to change and get out of your comfort pit.
One belief I got out of my transformation is that it is much better to change before you have to. Transform yourself because you want to have a better life, not because you have to escape the smoking ruins of your old one. Don’t just react; act in advance. Be prepared for whatever the future will bring. Start now. Right this minute. Before you put down this book, plan. Decide which single tiny discipline you will practice: Reading specific kinds of books? Reading a professional periodical? Following a few blogs? Subscribing to a useful YouTube channel?
Make it a consistent discipline. Practice it daily. Do it day after day, week after week, month after month. Consistency equals lasting results. Consistency builds momentum. Do something every day and you are harnessing the law of nature to work for you.
Never give up. Consider all of your small failures as feedback loops. Learn from them. Track your progress. Whatever discipline you start you need to simultaneously start the tracking process. Describe it in a measurable rate. Ten minutes or ten pages. One podcast episode, one video or fifteen minutes of them. One chapter of the Bible. Two financial articles from a business magazine. A couple of phone calls. Five minutes in an online community. Only if you track those seemingly trifling activities can you observe your lapses and their reasons. Feed your mind with facts; don’t let it fight you with imaginary pictures and judgments.
That’s it. I wish you determination, consistency, and resolve. You don’t need anything more to succeed. Go and work on your philosopher’s stone. From now on, begin turning everything you touch—relationships, health, finances, parenting, education—into gold.
Godspeed!
Bonus Section: 20 Activities to Get You Started
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Data sources:
1. Listen to one podcast episode.
2. Listen to audio book for at least ten minutes.
3. Watch one video on a specialized YouTube channel.
4. Watch one TED talk.
5. Read one chapter of the Bible (or The Holy Scripture of your religion; or read it for five minutes).
6. Read ten (or just two) pages of a good book (or read for ten minutes).
7. Read a single specialized blog post.
8. Read a single random blog post (just type an interesting topic into Google).
9. Read one article from a professional magazine.
Interpretation:
10. Join and start using Lift (interactions bonus: follow other people’s entries and comment on them).
11. Answer one insightful question a day (the best way: on paper).
12. Keep a gratitude journal.
13. Start a blog and work on it every day (not necessarily post daily, just make working on your blog a part of your routine).
14. Keep a journal.
15. Pray or meditate for five minutes.
Interactions:
16. Spend ten minutes in an online community.
17. Text a friend (or a few of them).
18. Write a blog comment.
19. Join Twitter and do one of the following: retweet a single message, follow one new person, send a message to one person.
20. Make a phone call (or two, or three).
Free Gift for You
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Thanks for reading all the way to the end. If you made it this far, you must have liked it! I really appreciate having people all over the world take interest in the thoughts, ideas, research, and words that I share in my books. I appreciate it so much that I invite you to visit www.michalzone.com, where you can register to receive all of my future releases absolutely free. You won’t receive any annoying emails or product offers or anything distasteful by being subscribed to my mailing list. This is purely an invite to receive my future book releases for free as a way of saying thanks to you for taking a sincere interest in my work.
Once again, that’s www.michalzone.com
A Small Favor
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I want to ask a favor of you. If you have found value in this book, please take a moment and share your opinion with the world. Just let me know what you learned and how it affected you in a positive way. Your reviews help me to positively change the lives of others. Thank you!
About the Author
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I’m Michal Stawicki and I live in Poland, Europe. I’ve been married for over fourteen years and am the father of two boys and one girl. I work full time in the IT industry, and recently, I’ve become an author. My passions are transparency, integrity, and progress.
In August 2012, I read a book called The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson. It took me a whole month to start implementing ideas from this book. That led me to reading numerous other books on personal development, some effective, some not so much. I took a look at myself and decided this was one person who could surely use some development.
In November of 2012, I created my personal mission statement; I consider it the real starting point of my progress. Over several months’ time, I applied numerous self-help concepts and started building inspiring results: I lost some weight, greatly increased my savings, built new skills, and got rid of bad habits while developing better ones.
I’m very pragmatic, a down-to-earth person. I favor utilitarian, bottom-line results over pure artistry. Despite the ridiculous language, however, I found there is value in the “hokey-pokey visualization” stuff and I now see it as my mission to share what I have learned.
My books are not abstract. I avoid going mystical as much as possible. I don’t believe that pure theory is what we need in order to change our lives; the Internet age has proven this quite clearly. What you will find in my books are:
- Detailed techniques and methods describing how you can improve your skills and drive results in specific areas of your life
- Real life examples
- Personal stories
So, whether you are completely new to personal development or have been crazy about the Law of Attraction for years, if you are looking for concrete strategies, you will find them in my books. My writing shows that I am a relatable, ordinary guy and not some ivory tower guru.
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[1] 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
Trickle Down Mindset Page 10