Is self-improvement important to you?

Well. I wrote this blog post all about it a while back.

This is one of my more popular posts and it’s all about one little mindset trick that has helped me accomplish everything in my career.

See, it’s all about who you’ve been and who you think you’ll be later in life...

Life’s tough sometimes.

There’s a lot of crap out there we have to struggle through.

But you already know this, right? We all understand that things won’t always be smooth sailing and that we need to prepare for difficulties.

So we condition ourselves to expect disappointment, we know that, at any time, we could run into money problems or family problems. There are freak accidents and natural disasters that everyone, at some point in their lives, will need to struggle through.

But one of the most crippling, most difficult obstacles I have observed in life, for myself as well as my friends and many others, is something few ever see coming. It’s something most of us never think to prepare for.

I call it losing your drive.

It goes by many names: disappointment, depression, chronic sadness. But I think “losing your drive” is a better way to describe this damaging mindset.

You see, however you understand the emotion, it always comes form the same place. A feeling of failure, missed opportunity, lost potential, declining success; in other words, it’s the long downhill trek suffered by someone who feels his or her entire life has peaked long, long ago.

It’s tragic.

But not because it is so sad or miserable, (which it is) but because it is completely unnecessary.

I am here to tell you, right here, right now, that no one, whether they be success or failure, need ever feel as if they have already peaked or that the future has nothing in store for them.

Because, you see, if you want your life to be better, if you want to be a better person with more success, more happiness, more money than you have ever had, there’s only one thing you need to do: make it happen.

It’s as simple as that. You want more money? Go and get some. You tired of living the life of a person you never wanted to become? Then get out there and change your life.

Simple? Yes, it is quite simple, really.

Easy? Hell no.

Some have it better than others, but there is NOTHING easy about completely turning your life around.

But that doesn’t mean it is impossible!

Don’t ever tell yourself change is impossible— those types of thoughts are the only thing in this world that could ever truly make improving your life impossible.

What should you do, then? What can you do to make sure change and improvement is always an attainable possibility? Well, I’ve got three lifestyle tips right here that can help you do just that.

1) Surround Yourself With the Right People

It’s amazing how powerfully we can be influenced or changed by those who most often surround us. As we experience and share life with our family and close friends, we are shaped by their thoughts, opinions, personalities and choices. You may think you are immune to influence, but for better or worse, those around you will change you.

So make sure you are changed by the right people.

It’s the age-old lesson our parents used to remind us of when we were still in school. “Don’t get mixed up with the wrong crowd,” they always said, right?

Well, the same applies today. But instead of sneaking out at night for a bit of underage drinking, bad influencers in your adult life can convince you to stop trying, to give up on having a better life or improving yourself.

When you spend all your time with people who never want to do anything, become anyone, or improve their lives, what do you think happens to you? You never do anything, you never become anyone, and you never improve yourself.

Without an encouraging example of success or achievement, it is shockingly easy to fall into the disastrous habit of contentment.

If people around you never do anything with their own lives, or worse, they tell you that you can never do anything with yours, your feelings of failure and depression will be overwhelming.

But when you are engulfed by success, when you are surrounded by achievers, workers, entrepreneurs that spend every day moving upward, growing and improving, you’ll start to feel the itch yourself. If you continue doing nothing while surrounded by successes, you won’t be able to stand yourself!

Sure, this too can bring on a bit of depression. You might be embarrassed or ashamed when you see others doing well but haven’t done anything yourself. 

But that kind of poking and prodding, that painful motivation is exactly what you need to kick-start your life and launch into growth.

Have you ever been inside a Nex Level Fitness facility during an intense workout? You’ll see about twenty people around the room all working hard at their stations. Five will be killing it on the TRX, five will be pounding the floor with burpees that never stop, five will be slamming their battle ropes from the ceiling to the floor, a room of 35 people on bikes just sweating and going hard— it’s an awesome site.

But if you’re just standing there, doing nothing amidst a group of hard hitting, fat burning ass-kickers making a real difference in their own lives, how do you think you are going to feel? PATHETIC! You’ll drop to the floor and start pumping out pushups just so you don’t feel like a complete waste of oxygen.

And that is exactly my point.

Surround yourself with individuals who attack life like a class member attacks squats, and there’s no way you could lose your will to make changes and improve. Find friends who are encouraging, who tell you that your goals are possible and your achievements are close at hand, and together you’ll do just fine.

2) Take action every day.

There can’t be any improvement if there isn’t any improvement, right? Sounds pretty simple, I think, and it is. But one of the main reasons people fall into the self-limiting belief that they can never change, or that their best years are behind them, is the daunting look of their goals. If you want to become a successful businessman, lose 100 lbs. or go back to school, and you are starting from nothing, it can be so intimidating that you never even get started.

That’s why I encourage you to take action every day. Not because you’re lazy if you don’t but because every-day action is small action.

If you look at a five year, ten year, twenty year journey, with its many obstacles, you’re going to get nervous, even scared. But making sure you work hard today? Reading a helpful blog or learning from a new book, these are accomplishments you can achieve right now. And when you get enough of those smaller, everyday accomplishments under your belt, the massive long-term goals won’t seem so impossible.

But the little steps aren’t just going to give you the confidence you will need, they are exactly how you are going to tackle those huge goals: one step at a time. If you’re biggest and best idea is going to take years of work to become reality, then you had better start breaking up that work into every-day action, right? How else can you make it happen?

3) Never Peak

I know there’s a difference between telling you to do something and telling you how to do something, but the best way to never peak is, honestly, to never peak.

To understand what I mean, you need to start thinking about this circumstance as more of a mindset than a situation. Situations, realities, we rarely have much control over these. But mindset? We definitely have the power to change how we think and how we feel.

So start thinking about peaking as something you feel rather than something you are.

Said differently, the only way you will ever peak is if you tell yourself you have peaked.

If you live your life looking forward to your next goal, recognizing life’s difficulties but believing in your ability to grow and improve, you will never feel like you have peaked and, indeed, you will never peak.

You will do this by surrounding yourself with the right people and by taking action every day, but you will also maintain this attitude by reminding yourself that the hopes and goals you have set are achievable.

So choose to never peak because if you do, you’ll be miserable. You’ll feel disappointed, you’ll be depressed, and you’ll live life regretting who you’ve become.

And I don’t want that life for you!

But the good news is that you don’t have to live that way. There’s no reason why you can’t make the changes necessary to keep your drive and never peak.

So do it.

Ok, now do you see what I’m talking about? It’s all in your head, you’ve got to stop telling yourself that you can’t get any better. Because if that’s what you believe then that’s what will happen.

But the moment you realize that you’ve only got bigger and better things ahead of you, you’ll start working your way toward bigger and better successes. Make sense?

I know this seems like a lot to take in but I have full confidence in you! If this stay at home mom with no college or business experience can do it, so can you!