The real answers – you know the ones that lead to personal success and happiness – are always simple.

However there is always something about us that loves to absorb as much info or to focus on the most elaborate techniques.

We all remember those Bruce Lee movies, and we have all been there where we were ready to turn our life over to the study of Jeet Kune Do so that we could achieve the same mastery as Bruce Lee.

There is no doubt to make real change in your life you need to put in the ‘work’, however the ‘work’ is not done in a day.  It is done over time.

In the past 2 years or so I have really sought out people that I can learn from.

When I truly found someone who Had what I Wanted I realized they had a consistency.

These were people that weren’t just good at what I was looking for, these were guy that had a humbling effect on me when I met up with them.

Those people always gave advice that was so simple it almost didn’t make sense.

This could be people in terms of Happiness, Spirituality, Sex, Business, Friendship, Relationships, Music…whatever…it was always simple.

Even though I teach guys about women

Most of the emails have to do with life.

People ask me about how they want a better lifestyle, how they want to feel more confident, do what they want, find purpose, how to convey their identity … far more than any ‘Game’ or ‘Sticking Point’ Question.

I –personally- lose focus all the time.  Almost on a daily basis I need to take time out of my day to refocus on what my Primary Purpose is.  In addition to this, I have to realize that any of my Ideals, Goals or Purposes need to not just be a belief but and action.

Below I want to share a list of things that help me keep focus that I have borrowed from the many Experts that I have met with and learned from. I am going to give a few real life examples from some of these guys to see how applicable these things can be, and how much personal change is possible.

5 Ingredients of Lasting Personal Change –

1- Upon Awakening –

When you wake up you need to spend a moment to take in the day.  This has many applications, but the 1 thing that you can remember here is that you think of what is ahead in the day.

You see religious people do this as Prayer (I am not religious), but also you see people who have had traumatic experiences like abuse or drug addiction do this in the form of simple making sure the first thing they do in the morning it have a sense of gratitude and make their bed.

The key is that, this is not a concept, it is an action.

One of the best Examples of this is my Friend Vince who lives on Maui.  He is quite possibly the business guy I respect most.  Vince lives a pretty simple life, he owns a store, he works at a hospital, and he owns a whole bunch of houses.

There are a ton of wealthy people who live on Maui, but very few have went from being a squatter, sleeping on their record collection to being a millionaire.   Few also hold down a normal job as well.

Every morning Vince made it a point to wake up early and spend time with his son. Often times he would go to the Café with him at 6am, before his son went to school.

He would hardly talk to anyone else, but he made sure the time was spent whatever challenges he was to face in the day.

I also would have to bring up my friend Paul.  Paul is a corporate giant.  Probably one of the most successful guys I know in terms of business.  I know a lot of wealthy people, but Paul is pretty much beyond what most people can imagine.

When Paul was in his early 30s he did alright.  Then he lost pretty much everything.

This isn’t the best feeling by any means.   As we all know, when this happens you feel lost and worthless.  It is like life was all a waste.

He then started Zen Meditation every morning.   He joined a group that did this.  Over the years he built himself back up to a pretty Massive Level.  When he was telling me about the changes he made in his life he told me Joining that Morning Zen Group was the single most important thing that made him get to where he is at.

2- Daily Application –

When you are focusing on something it is best to do something applicable with it on a daily basis.   For myself and most people I talk to it is common to try and get as much information as possible and do it all at once and then try and do it.  We try and accomplish our lifetime goals in a day.  This sort of gusto is not sustainable on a daily basis.

This is one of the hardest things to accomplish.

It is better to work at 1 simple thing on a daily basis, than doing 100 times as much in one day and not doing anything else that week.

From my ‘observational’ experience I put my money on the guy doing a simple thing daily.

From my ‘personal’ experience my instinct always trying to be that guy who does everything at once.

You can see this be applied over and over again, in any discipline – music, martial arts and so on.

My buddy Justin is someone who really showed me how important this was in personal change.  In my own quest for personal change one thing Justin told me was that if I were to focus on 1 thing a day where I was brutally honest with someone then that was good enough.  He was very clear that if I were to try and do an overload of ‘good deeds’ or something else like that, it would be actually working against me, and I would have less impact on positively changing the things directly relevant to me.

3- Fellowship –

You need to be around like-minded people.

I used to not think this way at all.  I felt socializing took too much time away from my focus.

In someway you need to be a part of a community.  We are socially influenced people no matter how introverted you are, you still reach out to online communities and need to be around like minded people.  I feel that face-to-face communication is best, but that might not be in your immediate reach.

If you want to learn more about happiness you need to be around people who are pro-actively doing that.

If you want to learn more about business, then you need to be around people that are proactively doing this.

This will rub off on you, also if it is a good group, they will help you out!

You have heard this all before – but my Aunt Carolyn would always tell me this, among many other things.   In fact she would always call me (and still does) ‘the Dark One’.

She would tell me – “you need to be more Balanced.  Being Balanced doesn’t mean doing 1 good thing and then 1 bad thing…you need to hangout with people who don’t have to do either of those things to be happy.

Another example of this is that I have always hated Internet Marketers, and they always approach me, probably cause I suck at it.

It wasn’t until I started to meet the Internet Marketers in Austin who were actually 1)Successful and 2)Genuine guys that I have entertained the concepts of Internet Marketing.

What you see from this group of guys is people really learning form each other, there are no secrets and there is a massively healthy mentality.   Funny enough they are much more successful than any of the Internet Marketers that I had met before.

4- Be Human –

This is perhaps something so fundamental and necessary yet none of us look at it.

At one moment during the day it is absolutely necessary to realize you are human.  There needs to be a sense of humility, you need to realize that you have something in common with someone else.

Every person I have met, hands down has an aspect of this.

There are guys I know who are cut throat businessmen, I mean they can be brutal to people, so much to the point it makes me uncomfortable – however, there is a side to them that always gets exercised almost everyday – and that is this ‘human’ quality.

There is always a moment where I see them separate themselves from their ego and identity and are able to look at someone, anyone in the eye and relate on a human level.

You could call it empathy, compassion, or just being normal.

People who achieve success and don’t’ have this quality end up staying stagnant, and their success becomes a curse at the same time, fueling something that further separates them from who they really are.

I am going to illustrate this by bringing up my friend Fred.  About 13 Years ago Fred’s mother of his kids was doing a drug deal and got murdered.  Fred was trying to stop doing drugs as well.

Fred never really had anything in his life established,, he had no purpose, no direction and a lot of bad habits.

Fortunately he started making some huge changes in his life.

He said that he had to start seeing things on a ‘human’ perspective everyday.  It didn’t matter what was going on in his life he had to be able to clearly see the person in front of him without judgment at least once a day.

A few years ago, Fred was in fantastic shape.  He ran 12 miles a week, did all this crazy Physical exercise and went in for a simple surgery.

There was a mistake in the surgery, and he ended up having a stroke, leaving Fred not able to do many of the things that made his life.

He said once he stopped trying to sue everyone he was happy again and the stroke was one of the best things that happened to him, because it calmed him down.

I call Fred the Wheelchair Yoda, cause he pretty much is.

Fred is probably one of the happier people I know.  It is pretty amazing.   When I asked Fred what was the most important thing in his crazy journey he said that 1) He learned how to Meditate and 2) He always was willing to be Human.

5- Gratitude the Action –

Of all these people I have met there is usually some nightly ritual that they incorporate with their lives.    It wasn’t just having a sense of Gratitude, but it was an action based around it.

For some guys this can be making a list at night of things that are positive in their lives.

For others this might be them doing some meditation-

One of the best examples this I heard from a guy Named Mike Dillard who is a pretty successful Marketer saying that he built his million dollar business on a note pad.

Before he went to sleep he took a page out of Rockefeller Habits ( a book many people have recommended to me)–

He made a list of the 5 things he needed to do at night for the next day.

They were not 10 things they were 5 things that he made it a point to do.

He had that if he did not get them done then he would not sleep…so they better be 5 things that he can reasonably do…

If you look through these things…maybe you do some of them, you will find they are fairly simple.

As I said I have met a lot of good people, but every single person I would consider a Great Person does some adaptation of all 5 of these things.

Their ‘Change’ doesn’t necessarily happen overnight, but over time.

If you want more good stuff like this make sure you GET ON THE LIST

 

Thanks

Steve