I once saw a cartoon meme that really caught my attention. A Father was chatting to his son. He was explaining the difference between being interested in success at school versus being committed to success at school.

“Take your breakfast as an example, my boy,” the Father said. “On your plate you’ve got 2 eggs and some bacon. The Chicken had an interest in your breakfast, but the Pig, ….well, the pig was committed.”

When it comes to your success, whether it be in business, your diet, your fitness regime or your relationships, are you the Chicken or are you the Pig?

Are you interested in your success, or are you committed?

If you’re merely interested in something, you will do what’s convenient. You’ll do what is easy, and comfortable and you will fool yourself into believing that this is going to be enough. You will do the bare minimum in terms of learning new skills, you will do just enough to convince yourself you’ve had a busy day, and you will constantly be watching others achieve the results that you want.

Are you merely INTERESTED in your success?

The pig is committed. When you’re committed to something, you will do whatever it takes to achieve the results that you want. You won’t make excuses, or find reasons to avoid the difficult actions required of you in your pursuit of excellence. You are an aggressive learner, constantly challenging yourself to be better, and to improve your knowledge and skills.

Are you truly COMMITTED to your success?

It’s not enough for you to do your best. It’s time to do whatever it takes. There is a specific set of disciplines required of you in your particular field, that if applied diligently and consistently over time, will lead to your success. If you are not achieving the success you desire, then you are more than likely avoiding the activities required of you.

Everything that you experience in your life is the result of a choice you made. You’re never going to fulfill your potential if you remain interested.

Here are 3 tips to help you shift into a space of commitment:

TIP 1: Say it out loud. If you’re interested in success, and need to shift into the commitment space, the first thing you need to do is set a brave goal, and then tell somebody about your goal.
If you keep it to yourself, it’s too easy to hide when times get tough. Be brave. Jump in with both feet. Let the world know what you want, and then boldly go and get it.

TIP 2 : Pay for Something.
Put some skin in the game. Sign up for a training course, hire a coach, invest in something that is going to help you get closer to your goal. Once you pay for something, you are committed. If anything, you will do whatever it takes to ensure that you get a good return on the investment you make in yourself.

In 2013 my life changed forever when I attended a free property seminar in Durban. At the end of the 2 days, the presenter started selling aggressively on coaching. Most people in the audience got offended at the selling tactics, and the guy next to me got up and walked out. Something resonated with me. It was very expensive. More expensive than any coaching I had ever taken before.

However in that moment I made a decision to jump in. Something resonated, and I decided that if I was going to pay this amount of money for coaching, then I would absolutely have to follow every bit of advice and throw myself into massive action.

How many times have you gone to a training course and implemented nothing that you learned? How many times have you started a diet and changed the diet plan because you don’t like oats, or brocolli?

Committing means jumping in and doing what it takes. When you’re merely interested you do what you feel like.
My commitment in 2013 took my life on a completely different path. I went from bored business owner, to Business Owner, International Speaker, and coach.

TIP 3: Stick at it for at least a month.
Commit to your new routine of disciplined activities for a minimum of a month. 4 weeks. Don’t expect results during this time either, rather focus on building the new habits and consistencies in your daily activities.

The results will come once you’ve formed the new habits and new way of thinking, I guarantee you.

Be committed this week. Be like the Pig. Start today.

Having an ability to hear is a privilege. Learning to listen however, is a learned skill.

Effective listening requires that you stop talking. It requires that you disconnect from your own thoughts and experiences, and listen to another. This is the skill you have to learn.

Most people internalise when they listen, which means that while you are listening to another, you are already preparing your answer, or are relating what you are hearing to your own thoughts, experiences or agenda.

When you listen with intent, you listen to understand, not to answer back. You’re no longer distracted by your own thoughts, and the advantage of listening with this sort of intent, is that the other person can genuinely feel that you’re interested in their story.

As much as learning to listen to others is a learned skill, so too is listening to your own gut instincts. Ironically, your tendency to overthink means that you don’t listen to yourself effectively either.

Here are 3 areas where you can improve your self-listening skills:

1. Intuition
Every answer you seek, you already know. If you listen intently, you will find the answer, and you will figure it out. The challenge you have to overcome is that you listen to everybody else’s opinion first. Your mind gets so busy trying to weigh up the opinions of others, versus what you have been conditioned to believe is socially acceptable to other people. You overthink everything. Listen to yourself more.

When your mind is so busy trying to collate all these thoughts, you miss out on the opportunity to listen, and trust, your own instincts and intuition. Nobody knows you better than you, but in order to listen to your intuition, you have to learn how to switch off your thoughts.

Action: Meditation. It’s a really simple practice that you can do in the comfort of your bed, or in a comfortable chair in your lounge or office. 10-20 minutes of mindfulness, practiced on a daily basis can be life-changing. Remove all the crazy thoughts running around your mind by focusing on your breathing. Quieten your mind and see what comes to you.

2. Listen to Your Body
Your body is an intricate system of nerves, veins, and vital organs that all work together in a way that you and I cannot ever fully understand. It has a finite life span, and it’s therefore important that this vehicle that carries you around in this lifetime is well looked after.

Your energy tank will run out if you push yourself and ignore the obvious signs. Again, nobody knows you better than yourself. You know when you are pushing yourself to keep work, family and personal lives all at acceptable levels to somebody else. It’s not worth it. One day when your energy tank runs dry you will have nothing to give to anyone, so be observant of the signals.

Your body will send you these signals when it’s time for a break. Listen. Put yourself first. It’s not selfish. Change how you think by reminding yourself that you are doing this for others.

Action: Be proactive. Schedule your body and energy maintenance activities into your week so that it’s a consistent part of your routine. Exercise, holidays, massages, yoga. Look after yourself. When you feel exhausted, take a breather.

3. Listen to Your Loved Ones.
There are people in your life who will always look out for you. Sometimes these people know you just as well as you know yourself. You might ignore them. They are special people who are sent to you for a particular purpose. Call them guardian angels, soul mates, lovers, friends, family, or whatever you want, but most importantly, be aware of who they are in your life. Listen to them too. Especially when you realize that they love you and have your best interests at heart.

This week, practice listening more than you think or talk. You are more powerful than you realize and you always know more about yourself than you think.

Until you stop and listen you will never truly know how much.

What would you do tomorrow, if you were 20 times Braver?

Think about that for a second….

If you could summon up all the courageous energy in the world, what would be the first thing that you would try to accomplish?

Would you quit your job and start your own business?
Would you phone that friend you haven’t spoken to in 8 years?
Would you take a risk on that relationship?
Would you take charge of your business and stop avoiding your activities?

Being brave is one of the most critical aspects of human existence. Growth and comfort cannot co-exist, and therefore if you want to escape mediocrity, you will have to at some point push yourself outside of your comfort zones.

Not everyone is born with super-hero courage, but you can always start somewhere and build up along the way.

The key is to start. Do it this week. Here’s some help:

1. Confront your fears. Own them. Call them out. Swiss psychologist Carl Jung famously said, “what you resist will persist” and those fears that you fail to own, or simply do your best to avoid, will continue to find ways of showing up and sabotaging areas of your life.

Action: Write a list of all your fears that are currently holding you back in business, in your family life, or in your personal relationships. Write as many as you need to.

2. Assess the risk. Once you can name and own your fear, it’s time to stop imagining the worst. We suffer way more pain in our own imaginations than we do in our reality. Imagination is a wonderful thing, but if left untamed, your imagination can cause you to underestimate your own value, and overestimate the consequences of taking action.

Ask yourself, “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” Let your fear play out. Then tame your fear by asking yourself “What would I do if that happened?”

A worst case scenario is highly unlikely in most situations, but if it were to happen to you, it probably wouldn’t kill you. Ask yourself what you would learn, how you would grow, and how you would emerge as a wiser, better version of yourself.

No experience is ever bad. It may seem like it in the moment, but the learning from every experience is always good.

If this doesn’t help, then how about re-assessing your fear from the reverse angle….

3. Assess the Risk of Doing Nothing. What would you stand to lose if you weren’t brave enough?

Imagine your life 5, 10 or 20 years from now. How do you think your life would turn out if you decided to play it safe and you never took a risk because your fears dominated your decision making?

Now ask yourself, “What’s the Best thing that could happen?”

Why focus on what could go wrong if your fears materialize, when you could focus instead on the magical life you could have if you faced your fears head on?

At the end of your life, your business, your relationship, you will be more likely to regret the risks that you didn’t take, rather than the ones that you did.

4. Take Action. Whatever it is for you, take action this week. Everything you need in order to be successful in your life, you already have. It lies within you, all that you need to do is summon up a little extra courage to take the first step.

Sadly, there is no magic potion to make your fears disappear, but I can guarantee you that once you take action, you will realise that the fear was never real.

Conquer it. Then do it again. Be brave once, and watch what happens.

It was a gift for my 40th Birthday.

It was something I had always been intrigued to try. Was it dangerous? Yes. Was it something I would ever have purchased for myself? Probably not.

I’ll never forget receiving the envelope on the morning of my birthday. I knew straight away what it was. They had called my bluff. My family had clearly had enough of listening to me wondering out loud about whether or not I had the courage to try this. My stomach went into a knot immediately at the thought.
I opened up the envelope, and there it was, …. a voucher to go Sky Diving.

I faked a smile. I tried to act brave in front of my kids. Under the brave smile however, I was dying.

Truth be told? I was already scared at the thought. Me and my big mouth. I had been called out, and now the money was on the table. This was really happening.

The first thing I noticed was the expiry date of the voucher. I had 6 months. Phew. I could put this off for a while. Time would allow me an opportunity to ease my mind into this….

Procrastination is a killer.

From that day in May, I used every trick in the book to come up with excuses not to book. No time. Too Busy. Have to travel for business. Not a great time of the year for cloud conditions. Nobody to go with. I even started to use other people’s fears. They said I’m crazy to risk my life. I’ve got a family and a business to look after. How could I put all of that at risk.

Procrastination is avoidance. Plain and simple.

You and I procrastinate on a daily basis. You put so much energy into coming up with excuses why you can’t be, do, or have the things that you want. You spend so much time designing the perfect distractions to keep you from tackling your dreams head on.

Imagine if you used all that energy to go after what you want, and what you need in your life right now.

Procrastination is one of the most popular forms of self-sabotage because it’s so easy. If you’re serious about changing your life you will find a way. If not, you’ll find an excuse.

5 months and 21 days after receiving my sky diving voucher, my Assistant at the time took it upon herself to book my jump. She ran after me one day after I had left the office. “Your sky diving voucher expires in a week. You can jump on one of these two dates. Which one will it be?”
She gave me no room to back out and I chose a date without thinking.

Don’t give yourself time for excuses. Don’t give yourself time for thinking up more fears.

If you have to, count down, “5, 4, 3, 2, 1, …and make a decision.” Take action. You will be right more often than you will be wrong. Any decision is better than no decision at all.

If you try it and it works out. Bonus. You win. If you try it and it fails. You learn. Bonus.

I jumped out of that plane on a cloudy imperfect day. Not quite the conditions I expected, but in hindsight, perfect for me. Instead of staring down at the ground, 10,000 meters below, all I could see was white cloud.

What I can tell you today is that it was the most exhilarating experience of my life. No words can properly describe how you feel when you are free-falling 200km/hour towards the earth. What was even more amazing is that I had the opportunity to free-fall through the clouds. How many people can say that they have felt the feeling of moist precipitation due to flying through a cloud?
It was a massive life experience for me. One that I will talk about for many years to come. One that I so nearly never got to experience.
If left to me and my procrastinating, the voucher would have expired, I would have used that as an excuse, and I would have missed out on a bucket list experience that I will never ever forget.

What amazing experiences, opportunities or business successes are you simply procrastinating away?

You’re never going to be 100% ready. Conditions will never be 100% perfect. You’ll never be an expert at business, or at life. You will never have all the information you think you’re waiting for.

Stop procrastinating your life away.

Whatever it is. Just start. Take one aspect of your life that you have been delaying over and over again, and start doing it this week.

Make it a goal for this week, then tell somebody about your goal. Don’t keep it inside your head, because that’s too easy to hide.

The only time you have is right now. Make the most of this moment.

Be Here Now.

Have you ever used the flashlight function on your phone to search for…….your phone?

Or my personal favourite,… have you ever spent time searching for your sunglasses when they’ve been sitting on top of your head?

You, me, and the Queen of England, …….we’ve all done this.

Sometimes you can’t see (or hear) what’s right in front of you. Opportunities. People. Objects. Often it’s something you’re searching for, but you just don’t see it. You don’t even register.

Why is this?

It’s your mental blind spot, and it once again comes down to your conditioning, your perceptions, and your beliefs.

You’ve heard the saying, “Seeing is Believing,” but when it comes to these mental blind spots, it has more to do with believing than seeing.

Beliefs are powerful. They limit what you can see, and more importantly, they influence that which you cannot see.

Take opportunity as an example. An opportunity doesn’t always present itself in a gift-wrapped box with a beautiful ribbon. Quite the opposite actually. Opportunity so often comes dressed in overalls and looks like a lot of hard work. Most people avoid hard work, and as a result, most people miss opportunity.

If you don’t believe the opportunity is sitting in front of you, then you will not see it.

If the opportunity doesn’t take the form or shape that you expected, then you will never see it.

It doesn’t matter whether we are talking about business or relationships, every human experience you have lived through is stored in your unconscious mind. These experiences shape what you believe. What you believe, is projected through your own eyes onto the world in front of you.

So how do you hack this mental blind spot? What would you be able to see if you believed something completely different?

Are you able to step back from your current existence, and gain an understanding that the person you are right now is shaped by your beliefs, and these beliefs are delivering all the results in your life.

Remember that life doesn’t give you what you expect. Life gives you who you are.

Perhaps it’s time to shift from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset.

A fixed mindset is one where you believe that your ability, talent and intelligence is fixed. You base all your future decisions on what has happened to you in the past. You believe that the hand you have been dealt is the hand you have to play for the rest of your life.

For example, “the last time I made a sales call, I had an angry person slam the phone down on me and I will never make one of those calls again.” Or, “my last relationship destroyed me emotionally, so now I’m going to stay single forever.”

A growth mindset is one where you have an underlying belief that the hand you’re dealt in life is only the starting point. With a focus on constant learning and growth you believe that you can always adapt, and change for the better, when you need to tackle new challenges and opportunities in your life.

For example, “my last sales call was horrible, but if I adjust my script and approach the next call with more self-confidence and belief, I know I can achieve a different result.” Or “my last relationship was not great, so I am going to take some time to learn about who I am and the type of person I want to attract into my life.”

Ultimately, what you believe, can hurt you or help you. What you believe about yourself, about others, and about what you truly deserve in your life, will determine where your life goes from this point.

How do you think one of your own personal beliefs is currently holding you back?

Interrupt your own patterns. Keep growing. Nothing is fixed, unless you want it to remain so.

Assume nothing. Ever.

Nothing in your life will hold you back or cause you more pain than the result of an incorrect assumption.

The problem for you and I is that we do this constantly. What’s worse, is that once you make an assumption, you tend to believe that it’s true, and you take actions based on this unconfirmed truth.

You make the mistake of relying on your assumptions in your business as well as in your personal relationships, and as a result you end up causing yourself (and others) so much pain and suffering.

You will make assumptions for one of two reasons.

You assume something about a person or situation because you’ve experienced something similar before, and you attach an assumed outcome based on your past experience.

Or alternatively, you make an assumption about a person or situation based on a projected response that you would give to the situation. ie You’re projecting your own understanding, beliefs or value system onto another.

Either way, you’re reacting to a lack of information by believing in an unconfirmed truth, and this can be incredibly destructive.

So how do you avoid making this mistake in the future?

1. Ask More Questions. When you don’t know something, or are lacking enough information to clearly understand a situation, assume nothing. Rather, ask more questions. Don’t die wondering about anything.

The pain of asking the question is far less than the pain of not knowing the answer.

If you’re waiting on an order, or you haven’t heard back from a client, don’t make assumptions as to why they’ve gone quiet. Rather, pick up the phone and communicate. Ask more questions, and uncover the objection or real reason why they’re stalling.

The same goes for any personal relationship too. Before you take any reaction personally, ask questions and engage in communication to satisfy any issue that remains unclear in your mind. Some of the best relationships you will have are those where communication, founded on trust, is open and direct.

2. Be a more Attentive Listener. People tell you so much more by their body language and actions, than by the words that come out of their mouths. Being an attentive listener requires that you are present in the moment, listening with your eyes, ears and mind.

When listening attentively, you will be able to open up a conversation and drive it to a deeper level of understanding by not only mirroring what the other person is saying to you, but also by asking clarifying questions on anything you are unclear about.

You gain so much more from a conversation by listening than you do by talking.

By asking better questions and by listening more attentively, you will find that you will naturally need to make fewer assumptions.

By making fewer assumptions, you will make better decisions in both your business and in your personal life.

Try it this week.