When I started my first business, I was broke, living with my parents and working a frustrating job. It was a no-brainer to go in the direction of starting my own business to be my own boss and take control of my time and earnings.

When I first got started I thought it was going to be a piece of cake to make tons of money and I thought I’d be rolling it in within a few days. Boy was I wrong. Firstly, it took me a whole month to design and get a website up thinking it needed to be perfect, it took me about a week to work up the courage to call one lead and I was so afraid of spending money on advertising in case it didn’t work. On top of that, when I’d come home from my job, instead of working on my business I’d watch South Park and How I Met Your Mother. At the end of every week, I’d beat myself up because I hadn’t done any work in my business.

You see, my business wasn’t going anywhere – no one told me it was going to be this hard. A few months later, I thought to myself that maybe I should start getting on the live company training calls and start reading the Personal Development program I got through the business. To my surprise, a couple of weeks after doing this I signed up my first person through the business and it was so much easier than what I thought.

Over the next few months my business went up and down and I didn’t know why. I was also stop starting with getting on the training calls and doing my Personal Development program. Looking back on it now, I didn’t realise that my results in business where a direct reflection of my personal growth. When I fed my mind with new wisdom and knowledge (and applied it), my business grew. And when I didn’t work on myself, my business didn’t go anywhere.

After having this realisation, I now priorities my personal development because I know that to get to the next level, in life and business, I constantly need to be uncovering limiting beliefs that are holding me back, changing unsuccessful habits into successful habits, and learning how to interact better with the world around me.

Some of the things I learned through my personal development were that I need to stop listening to the opinions of the people around me. I had family and friends making fun of me because I wanted to be successful and I had to develop myself to the point where the only opinion that mattered was that of my already successful mentors. I learned that my results are 100% in my control. I used to hope that a successful person would come to my rescue and make me rich, then I realised that I alone can create my own results by developing myself and doing the required work. I also learned that success is not a straight line. When creating success in life you're going to be thrown off track and it's up to you to make the required course corrections so you continue heading toward your goals. Did you know that a rocket to the moon is only 7% of the time on the correct course? The rest of the time it's off course and needs to be corrected and put back on course! That's a perfect analogy for creating success in your life. If you know your destination (goals and dreams), no matter what happens, you can always get back on course. I could talk endlessly about the lessons I’ve learned but I’ll leave them for future posts (be sure to subscribe to this blog to stay updated).

Focusing on my personal growth on a daily basis has also been one of the most empowering things I do. When I’m having challenges in business and I don’t feed my mind, all my focus goes on the challenges and my self talk can easily become a negative one. But when I focus on my personal development and challenges come up, I feel empowered to overcome them because my internal communication is one of strength and power. It’s amazing what can happen when everyday you read something that’s reminding you how much power you have as an individual!

Tony Robbins, the most sought after success coach, says that 20% of your results is the technical work, the other 80% of your results is mindset (or your psychology). So if you're only focused on “doing the thing”, it's going to feel like an uphill battle. But when you combine it with conscious personal development, you're going to have the right mindset for success, you'll be more in flow and your results will feel effortless.

To conclude, I’d love to give you a gift so you see how powerful working on yourself is. There’s an amazing book I was recommended, by my friend Hems, that completely changed my perspective on life and being a giver. The book is called The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and I would highly recommend that you read it and apply it's principles. You’ll be blown away at how much power there is in reading and applying a book like this!

How To Win At Life Part II – Counting Your Wins is now up. To read this life-changing article, click here.

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Alex Ford

Alex Ford
Digital Marketing Trainer
Email: [email protected]
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