I read Richard Branson’s book, and watched “The Secret”, why am I not rich yet?
Many people read a book by Richard Branson or Bill Gates and wonder six months later why they aren’t rich. You may even have read six or seven books, watched “The Secret” on DVD, bought a few homestudy programs or attended a weekend wealth-building seminar. But nothing changed, right?
This is not the blog post I was looking for…
It’s funny: I had a great idea for a blog post, something which usually happens only once a month or so, and when I typed in the address of my blog, I accidentally hit “Google search” instead of “.com”
Instead of going directly to my blog site and typing up my initial brilliant idea, Google opened up some ancient history…
Nope, not that ancient…
That’s me and my Mumma at the beach when I was around one year old. They didn’t even have Google back then. They had terry-towelling hats, high-waisted pants and Jackie-O sunglasses… It was obviously the year of the hyphen:)
What Google opened up during my accidental search was some blog posts and entries from 2006 and 20009. It was interesting to see what was posted back then, especially from a 2016 perspective.
If you looked back on your life from 7-10 years ago, how much change would you see? Were you fitter or fatter? Did you have more money or less? More friends or less? More free time or less? Do you have the same job or business you did back then? Has your life been consistent? More to the point: has your life been consistently good or consistently “not so much”?
Check your consistency here, for free
I Googled myself accidentally, but it’s easy enough to do it deliberately. You can put your own “Firstname Lastname” in quotation marks and Google that, or you can put your “Mobile Phone Number” in quotation marks and Google that, or you can put “YourEmail@Address” in quotation marks and Google that as well.
I caught up with two friends yesterday, and asked one of them why he had been messaging me on Facebook but not replying to my texts. Turns out he changed his mobile number a year ago and I had been texting to an unresponsive random stranger. My other friend has had the same mobile number since I met him in 2005, and I have had the same phone number since around 1996.
(I don’t know “Normy” and never even saw his 2006 testimonial until today (ten years later). It’s interesting that I am still following the same passions, have the same website, same email, and I am still advising clients on the same things a decade later.)
Hey, it’s OK if you are a gypsy, a drug dealer, or in the Witness Protection Program, and you need to change your phone number and email every six weeks. That’s OK. Just know that one of the big keys to success in any area is CONSISTENCY.
Assuming you are not “on the run”, could you handle some more progress?
Many people read a book by Richard Branson or Bill Gates and wonder six months later why they aren’t rich. You may even have read six or seven books, watched “The Secret” on DVD, bought a few homestudy programs or attended a weekend wealth-building seminar. But nothing changed, right?
Forget everything you think that you know about money and success.
Just imagine you’re on the fitness trail. You can buy an Oprah Winfrey recipe book, or an Arnold Schwarzenegger workout and exercise book, and you can read them easily enough. Much gratitude to schools for teaching literacy; what they failed to teach was consistency.
If you read the Oprah diet book and cook one meal, you will not fix your fat problem. If you cook every meal in the book for a month, and then stop, you will not see much progress, if you see any.
If you read Arnie’s book and do one or two exercises, you will merely get sore muscles. If you do every exercise in the book for a month, and then stop, you will probably not see much improvement in your physique or your fitness.
(These pictures were taken around 8 years apart. It’s the same hat! Hahahaha)
A good Personal Trainer (PT) will tell you that if you consistently follow a diet AND exercise program, then you may start to see changes in your body in around 6-8 weeks. The PT may tell you that it will be another 10-14 weeks of consistent work before your friends start to notice that something has changed.
Even if it has been built over 3-6 months, without continuing consistent action and focus, your change may not even last a year, and you will be back where you started if you don’t break your old chains of habit.
Exhibit A in this example could be Oprah herself. She lost a heap of weight, wrote a diet book, got fit, wrote an exercise book, and then went and put all the weight back on again. It seems that one year of exercise and eating well could not overcome a lifetime habit of poor choices. (Perhaps she could have tried hypnotherapy, for a more permanent mindset change?)
Oprah has not succeeded in consistently eating well & exercising well, and that’s OK. It may not be that big of a priority to her. Her big priority seems to be building a broadcast media empire, and she has consistently worked at that, week in, week out, for many many years.
If you are overweight, underfit, uninspired, working away at a job which you don’t enjoy, or have a business which you are no longer passionate about… If you are maintaining a mediocre relationship or have average health and you’re waiting for the “ONE DAY” when you will do something about it… then today is your day.
Today is YOUR DAY
(Blog post from 2009: still loving investments in Asia)
Most people do not have consistency to go to the gym every day. That’s why there is an entire industry of personal trainers, who will make sure you show up, keep you accountable for your goals and track and adjust your progress as necessary.
Nobody ever got fit by joining the gym in January (how’s your new year’s resolutions going?). You have to join, and you have to go, and you have to go consistently.
Wealth, like fitness, is an initially inside job that exhibits later on the outside. You start off with exercising the mind to only make healthy or wealthy choices. You “Flick Your Rich Switch”. You strengthen your brain by thinking often about your goals and your choices. Then you follow those choices consistently on a daily basis, with the required action. Then you do it again and again and again, every day, for months or years. And then you succeed.
Oprah did not become a household name and the Queen of the media by doing ten news stories, or a hundred; she did thousands. Arnie did not become a household name and the King of bodybuilding by lifting a barbell a dozen times, or a thousand times; he did the same thing every day for tens of thousands of days.
(The beach where I completed 1500+ hours of meditation, and attracted the attention of many fellow meditators, and a documentary film crew. Every single day, rain, hail or shine for four years. That’s what I mean by consistency.)
The reason why you don’t have what you want, is because you’re not doing the things which you need to do, ON A DAILY BASIS, over the longer term, in order to achieve those goals.
This is why serious athletes have a coach whom they meet with and speak to at least on a weekly basis. This is why Hollywood celebrities who trade off their beautiful bodies or faces have a nutritionist and a personal trainer, not just an unused recipe book and a dusty home gym set.
This is why you need a life coach, business coach, a wealth coach or other professional: you need someone to keep you accountable. You need someone to get you up and get you moving when you are too tired, or too lazy, or too stuck in your old habits. You need someone who speaks with you regularly, gives you tasks to complete, follows you up, monitors your progress and keeps you on track.
You can find specialised coaches for many different areas of your life, or you can choose a holistic coach who covers a few areas. Initial discovery consultations are free of charge for most coaches on http://www.ChooseMyCoach.com, so you can get to know who will be a good match for your personality before you agree to a regular ongoing program.
(“Ongoing program”: see how I slipped that in? Not a 3-day workshop. Not a 10-week homestudy course. An open-ended, whatever-it-takes, however-long-to-achieve, ongoing program that does not quit until you’re done.)
If you want to make changes and achieve things in future, that you have not been able to achieve in the past, then you will need to establish consistency, and you will need to enlist the assistance of a new coach or team member, to help to keep you accountable.
Get these two things, and instead of being a part of the crowd who is reading another book next year and wondering why nothing has changed, you will be standing up proudly, on the podium of your achievement, like the winning professional athlete who trained, consistently, with the help of a championship coach.
[All images are of me, or my family, or created by me. ]