By Daniel Becerra

Wherever I go, whoever I talk, I always begin with this opening line: “When you begin working on yourself, the first thing that happens – by nature – is that you raise your level of awareness”. I actually said that on the first minutes of the bootcamp in San Francisco. So there, you just got lucky. I love that statement, although I’m not particularly sure if I came up with him or if I heard it somewhere else. That’s an irrelevant point though, what matters is the message that is being compassed in it. When you begin by working on yourself, then you automatically rise your level of awareness in so many ways. When it comes to awareness, the question is not “How?”, it’s “How much?”. How much our level of awareness raises is in direct proportion to the amount of work we put in ourselves. Two days ago, I posted an article on “Be as good as the best” and in it I stressed the importance of working on yourself more than others around you do. It is that act that will place you further ahead. So the real question is “How do I really get started and how far can I go”?. Let’s explore that.

Denial Is Your Enemy

“It’s in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped”
- Anthony Robbins.

The first step is to make the decision of getting things done. To make that real decision. Not the “I’ll look into it” or “I’ll try it”, but the “I’m doing it”. However, this may not be as easy as it sounds, at least it wasn’t for me. A couple of years ago now, I realized that one point I couldn’t get past through was not being able to accept the truth. For example, I didn’t want to accept that I felt lonely and that I needed help. I didn’t want to admit that I wanted to learn social skills. I didn’t want to admit that I wanted to work out – in fact, I denied it. I’m sure this case is not unique. As I began teaching, I realized that my case was shared by nearly everyone – so it’s safe to bet that as you read this, you can identify with what I’m saying.

If it’s too big of a step to just go ahead and make a conscious, powerful, drawning decision, then the first step toward the decision would be to stop denying what you want and accepting it as a part of you. It’s much easier to simply say “Okay, I don’t stand this relationship anymore. It doesn’t mean I’ll end it, but I admit that I don’t stand it” than to radically decide (and do) to end the relationship. Can we agree that it’s much easier to do the former instead of the latter? For example, this last weekend I spent in San Francisco, I had Joel as a student, he rarely paid any attention to what was being said for the first day and a half. He either didn’t pay attention or pretended not to pay attention. I knew this was a special case, after much trying and fake anger, we got him to express himself. Under that behavior of causing troubling and just distracting others, he was denying his wish to improve. Joel didn’t want to accept it because it is quite scary. At one moment, he snapped and said “I want to try this drill!” and he did. Later on, he was more willing to do approaches and the day after he quit a job he hated. Talk about stopping one’s denial. This guy stopped denying himself the fact that he wanted to improve, he openly admitted and he was now conscious about it. Though admitting it didn’t make him succeed right away (and neither will it do for you), it certainly set up the first solid step for him.

Preventing That Your Fear Grows

Once you have stopped denying yourself what is it that you want, you must now start discarding all the things that get in your way. Stop saying no to the things that are no longer compatible with your current goal(s). For example, from the case above – Joel understood that having a job that he hated (and quite honestly he didn’t need) would only get on his way of getting what he wanted. He knew he didn’t another job, he already held two other jobs. He knew he was not investing, he was wasting something very valuable, his time. And this realization made him do something I myself didn’t expect – first thing in the morning, before I woke up, he called the company he worked for and QUIT. That’s just one example. Here is another, I used to be addicted to chat rooms – I had nothing else to do, so I went into chatrooms to chill around for a while. When the goal of becoming more social arose, guess what activity of mine got in the way? The chat rooms, of course. So bit by bit, I began saying no to the temptation of logging in and distracted myself with other things, eventually I reached the point where I had control over it. So find a bad habit you currently have, or a current thing you do almost daily that you know you shouldn’t be doing and simply begin saying “No” to it. Simply begin saying “No” to it, you don’t have to quit right away. Start small and eventually you’ll become completely detached from it.

Once all or most of the things that could prevent you from reaching what you want are discarded, then you start action toward your goal. For example, let’s say your goal is to get really good at Public Speaking – one of the first things you can begging saying “no” to is wasting your time in unnecessary things, since Public Speaking requires some time and the more time you waste, the less time you have for it. So you begin saying “No” to video games, TV, being a couch potato or even going to bed too late.

Don’t mistake “Saying ‘No’ to things that prevent you from reaching your goal’ with “Making a decision”. It’s easy to make this mistake. Saying no to things is simply taking a look at those factors that could prevent you from reaching your goal and blocking them your life and making the decision is actually saying “I’m starting now”. You could say that saying “No” to things takes more courage and time than to make the real decision. For example, it took me a long time to quit chatrooms and getting used to wake up early – but it didn’t take me too long to decide “I’m doing more productive things now”; it was easier because now time-wasting things were out of the way. It took me a long time to quit saying “No” to those friends who invited me to parties where I knew they would drink. I didn’t begin by quitting alcohol, I began by saying “No” to those party invitations first. Then I decided to completely quit it by surrounding myself with other people, who didn’t drink.

In short, begin saying no to those things that add up to that bad habit or belief, just boot them from your life or prevent them from coming in. The more times you say “No”, the more aware you become. Soon, you’ll get enough awareness to make intelligent decisions.

Move Toward Your Goal, Fail And Try Again

“When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The thing I love the most about taking action is that you never really know what will happen until you do it. Once you do it, you get results and once you get results, you begin to expect and want more. It’s an ongoing process. It’s an endless learning experience. There are sacrifices to it though. The main one being that when you step into a new level of achieving, your power/journey may go down momentarily – this is normal and it will always since now you’re working not only in mastering a new level of skill, but also making it connect with the skill achieved previously.

If you read a step by step guide on how to meet a girl, you don’t just go and do it all right away. It takes time, right?. It takes some time to actually get things done the right way. While one’s mentality must always be to aim high, one can’t reach for the sky if he/she can’t touch the roof of the house. That was a bad analogy, but you get my point. Often times, people attempt to reach a high goal and expect quick results, but when they don’t see no immediate results, they stop trying. I will not tell you that you shouldn’t stop because you don’t see immediate results, everyone says that (and the results continue to be the same). What I will tell you is actually the quite opposite – It is okay to start something and drop it. It is absolutely okay to do that, as long as you try again some time near. Soon, after many failed attempts, you will realize that there are some things and mindsets you have to take into consideration to actually begin doing things on a row.

For example, I’ve recently (and finally) began taking the gym to heart, I work out a minimum of 5-6 days per week and I’m convinced that I will continue to do it for the rest of my life. At this point, I finally feel like I will not go back to the old bad habit of not doing it. The same thing couldn’t have been said a couple of months back or even a couple of years back. At the age of 17, I decided I would exercise and I actually did, I ran rigurously almost everyday but eventually I slacked off. I tried again a couple of months later, I started but came short a couple of weeks after. Almost a year back even, I decided I would start exercising and not stop, I started but fell short again. I tried again a couple of months ago and this time, it worked. It’s been about three to four months now that I exercise regularly and I know that I’ve finally adopted the discipline of the work out. The example above serves to tell you two things. First is that it is okay to try something and drop it. It doesn’t make you a failure to start something and then drop it, as long as you try it again in the near future. What would make you a failure is that you don’t try it again at all. And second is that success is not a destination, it’s a journey. You don’t say “I have arrived to success!”, before you know it, you’re already there.

Charlie Tremendous Jones quoted once about a book he read that basically gave the following message: “You can’t be a successful person trying to be one, apply basic principles everyday of your life and success will eventually find you”. Success is an ally with patience and patience – as Warren Buffet says – is a virtue, my friend. It is safe to assume that you will find people who will be no strangers to the case mentioned above (about the gym); there have many cases in my life where a failure allowed to later achieve something that wasn’t possible of being achieved before. It’s a matter of trying again and again. I know this piece of writing contradicts any other type of advise you’ve heard before, that is because I’m not advising you here, I’m telling you how it happened and how it happens to a lot of people. Even if I write a piece of advise for you on how to grasp the work out AT ONCE, it wouldn’t be much effective, because one thing I can’t do (and anyone else for that matter) is control how much you want things. You’ll do it once you really want it. The key – I believe – is to always keep your aim high. Eventually that overwhelming feeling of really getting things done will get you. When that moment happens – whether it’s through overwhelming inspiration or overwhelming desperation – you’ll realize that it was hard enough to make the real decision and harder to commit to that decision.

By the way, even though an overwhelming feeling will hit you, it is also possible to build possitive thoughts to actually move toward your goal, but for that you must know very clearly what is it that you want to achieve. If you would like to try it, do the following: Sit down and picture yourself actually doing whatever activity that will lead you to your goal and really feel it. Feel what you would do feel, talk the way you would talk, move the way you would move. Your energy and mood should change, because your motions (physicality) dictate your emotions. Not the other way around. For example (and don’t laugh at this) sometimes I’ll stand in front of my mirror and deliver a speech and really get into it. If you’ve seen speak in public, you’ll know how into it I get. I speak in front of my mirror the same way I speak in my seminars or any other event, because I LOVE it. Feeling that rush through my body actually gets me in a great energy. It really works. So next time you find yourself knowing that you have to work out (and you have it very clear) then just stand up and say “I’m going to work right now!”, and feel it as you say it, bring your arm up, then bring it down and emphazie the words as you say. This is not an “affirmation” exercise, you’re not just saying things – you’re FEELING them. When you FEEL them, you BECOME them. I personally combine both, I motivate myself through motions and emotions, as well as keeping my goals high.

Get ready not to give up

My goal is to get 10,000 unique hits per month. We currently get close to 4000 unique hits, so my goal is more than double our current stats, that seems like an impossible goal to reach at the moment. Even more impossible with our current participation (not traffic) decreasing. However, I find that this seemingly-impossible-to-reach goal actually motivates me more than to simply say the “leading forum on PUA”. My motivation a while back was to be the forum with the most traffic and we sure became that. We kicked PUAForum’s butt in no time, once we got past that it wasn’t enough to just say “Let’s continue to be the number one forum”. I wanted more hits, more knowledge, more expansion. The strategies we tried for long failed, and many of them continue to fail but I don’t give up and I will continue to try. Now, I don’t want to give you a rant saying “Don’t ever give up!!!”. You’ve heard that before. Instead, I will share with you one secret, one so simple that many people miss it or overlook it. Here it is: If your goal seems almost impossible to reach, the more motivated you will be to get there. I really mean this.

Attitude plays an important role as well. Before I saw the decreasing traffic as a failure and dissapointment, now I see it as a natural consequence of moving past Pick Up to a broader area. Decreasing participation? That’s OKAY. Changing my attitude and view has allowed to be motivated to write more again, this time with much more power. Attitude plays an important role, but it’s of course – opposite to popular belief – not everything. If attitude was everything, then I would be pretty wealthy already and I tell you this: I’m not. I have a very positive attitude and it doesn’t make me all I want to be, yet. I know that there are some skills and events I have to go through before I can meet all my long term goals. I do my best to keep my attitude up every single day and I tell you this, it gets easier with the day. How? Before I motivated myself by listening to motivational speeches or motivational readings, that’s great enough. But now, motivation comes easier, I receieve many messages on daily basis of guys thanking me for the inspiration that has come to them through my writing, I get phone calls, emails and so on. It’s not fame or recognition what motivates me, NO. It’s knowing that the value I offer to others willingly pays off, and that other people love taking it as much as I value giving it.

I believe there are many ways of preparing yourself not to quite, I mentioned some above. I’m going to summarize them now and end it with that. 1) Make your goals hard to reach. 2) Feel that emotion by telling yourself with words and body movement what is it that you want to do 3) Constantly giving value to others without expecting anything in return (this pays off, trust me) 4) Self-motivating yourself by listening to tapes and recordings. By the way, none of these things won’t work if you don’t want something bad enough. I mean it. You just can’t push yourself to do something if you don’t want it bad enough. You can certainly push yourself to do something you DO want bad enough, and this alone can be challenging. Imagine how challenging it will be to push yourself to do something you don’t want to do? That’s only challenging, it’s also absurd! Self-improvement is not a series of techniques, is a desire and a way of improving your life. If you don’t want it, take a break and come back to it later.

One last thing: Cultivate gratitude

If there is one thing that keeps you thinking positively, it would be gratitude. Every single day as you shower, or when you wake up, get thankful. I really mean it, get thankful for every single thing you have. It sounds cheesy, I just don’t know in what other way to put it. Each morning as I shower I get thankful I have food for breakfast, a place to stay in, a family that’s healthy, my friends and so on. I’m thankful more than ever for having food at my house because I was in San Francisco starving last weekend . I’m thankful I ran into a group of guys who led me to growth. Since I started giving my “Thank You” lists, I’ve naturally developed a much more positive attitude and it has allowed to survive in a household where the male head is a very negative person. That’s important too, sometimes you’ll be surrounded by negative people and it can get tough to stay positive. I assure you, gratitude will help you remain positive above anything else. Cultivate it!

Words: Daniel Becerra. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook