Hard work pays off. Writing and thinking instead of just watching and hoping pays off. Preparation and dedication instead of leaving things to chance pays off. It may not be right away, but it will pay sometime, someday – do not worry, because it will. However, even then, suggesting that you work hard and that you dedicate time to thinking, preparing and writing does not cut it. There are strategies, there are ways of doing things correctly.

The pain of ignorance can bite you badly if you ignore it long enough, and the hardest part is that ignorance can be there even when we don’t believe it’s there. One of the most common mistakes is being just a follower and not a student. You will hear someone say “I’m a student! I read plenty of books on plenty of topics!”. Yes, you read them, but the question is “Do you study them?”. It is easy to get caught up reading plenty of stuff and yes, some stuff will stick in your unconscious and you will act accordingly, but that’s your unconscious and it’s only triggered on certain occasions. The best things happen when you design them intentionally. Not many great things occur because of luck, if any! Therefore changing your thinking, behavior, and beliefs will take more than just reading books. It will take right strategies and procedures. It will require you to be a serious student, and not a serious follower. The difference is key.

Let me show you the Cone of Learning.

Yes, the cone dates to 1969, but the measurement is still pretty accurate. Common sense should tell you the same thing. Don’t you remember more when you watch a movie than when you read it. Don’t you learn more about something when you see it done instead of just being told how it’s done? Chances are you do. Now, if you KNOW that reading is the most passive way of learning and realizing, then why are you only reading (Also, why is the school system still using reading as its number one source of learning?). I have advised my readers for a while now to not just read what I write, but THINK as they read what I write. Charlie Tremendous Jones taught me this through his books and presentations and it has changed my life. Chances are that a day from now you will not remember a single thing from this article, but you WILL remember what you thought of it. Therefore, think through it, rather than at the end of it. When you just read, you memorize; but when you think as you read, you REALIZE. Reading is just the beginning of the learning process! Get excited because there is a lot more to it than just reading!

It is not surprise that more often than not a person who has been working for years with little college education is more qualified than fresh college graduate with no job experience. Real learning comes from withIN and not from a book. The book is simply an incentive, but they can be magical. I love books for this reason, they will help you see things as the author saw them, and that alone saves so much time. Of course, it goes without saying that you need to study what you read and not just read it. Take notes, discuss the book with someone, listen to it on audio if you can, record your own notes from the book, stimulate what the book or article suggests to do, and then do the real thing. THAT is studying.

Statistics show that students who take notes, record heir notes, and discuss a subject in group are more likely to get better grades in college and university – that should tell you something. If you’re serious about REALLY becoming more sophisticated on your languages and manners, then take notes. If you’re serious about REALLY improve your dating life, then hang around the people who have a great dating life.

Getting a Mentor

“In order for you to be a compelling person you have to put yourself in a compelling situation.” – Dr. Renford Reese

If there is anybody who influences you in a positive way in any aspect of your life, you have the chance to become a better person; but you have to MEET and GET TO KNOW that person. So show interest and approach that person, email them, be interested in who they are and request them to mentor you, to teach you things. Once I discovered the incredible power of just asking someone to shed some wisdom in me, it made a remarkable difference. Books are a beginning and they will put you in the track to change your mindset and as your mindset changes, so will your ability to attract people who think like you. Engage this people and learn from them.

Be a student, and not just a follower. Be serious and you will succeed.

]]> http://pualifestyle.com/blog/student-not-follower/feed/ 1 http://pualifestyle.com/blog/focus-is-balance-focus-is-time-management/ http://pualifestyle.com/blog/focus-is-balance-focus-is-time-management/#comments Sat, 10 Jan 2009 19:29:44 +0000 Daniel http://pualifestyle.com/blog/?p=1177

By Daniel Becerra

This is not an either-or matter. Do not be fooled by the title. This article aims to clear up one of the things that I am sure has happened to you, is happening to you, or will happen to you.

What happens when you want to improve all areas of your life and you simply just don’t know where to begin? What happens then? Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you had so many things you wanted to improve that at the end you just ended up confused and improved nothing at all? Or what about wanting to improve one aspect of your life more than the others, yet you were afraid you wouldn’t take good care of the others? It has happened to me and plenty of people I know and if it happens on this side of the world, I’m sure it happens on your side as well.

What does it come down to? I will call it “Focus vs Balance”, I’ll explain why now. For sake of understanding, I will call “Focus” the one thing that you have decided to improve the most, the one thing that you want to improve in this new year, or maybe in the next 6 months. And ‘balance’ will be not messing other aspects of your life because you’re ‘focused’ on another particular aspect. For instance, someone who is trying to do a lot of business may have a tough time finding the time to exercise or to spend time with his family and so on. Or if you’re studying or working for long amount of hours, then you may not have an awful amount of time to hang out with friends.

The Focus

There is a difference between focusing and balancing. FOCUSING is a special focus. It’s that SHOULD turned into a MUST. It’s that one thing you must do everyday because it’s what is most important to you at the moment. I find that the best option is to select one aspect of your life that you will FOCUS on and let every other aspect just balance. What do I mean? For instance, the aspect I will focus next is Finances and Wealth. I plan to read books on how to earn money, read biographies of self-made millionaires or billionaires. I plan to do experiments, write on my journal about it, and so on. Does this mean I will drop public speaking (Toastmasters), this website,spirituality, friends, and school? Of course not (even if it means researching until 2 am, and waking up at 8 am). Although if I did and focused entirely on finances, then I’d learn much faster. But I will not do that because other things also need to be done. I think Zig Ziglar said it best “Do what you need to do, so later on you can do anything that you WANT to do”. No matter how much you hate it, some things just need to be done.

There is a need to be clear about what aspect of your life you will FOCUS on next and more importantly for how long will you do it. Some people FOCUS for a period of one year, others for 6 months, others for 3 months. You have to commit these periods and whatever aspect you work on to paper. That is how it’s done. Write it in your journal or Google Documents which is free and you can put as much as you want. It was stated before, when you commit things to writing, that is a sign that you’re taking your studies seriously. So right now (or as soon as you finish reading this article), I would like you to do this:

* Take out a piece of paper. Draw a triangle. Flip it over, so that the widest part is at top and the peak of it on the bottom.
* Divide it into anywhere from 4-10 parts. These parts will be the aspects of your life. You can break it into whatever number of aspects you want to break it. If you visit the forum, then you can have a clear idea of how to break it down.
* Take your time on deciding what truly is the most important for you to DO right now. It may surprise you that you will actually take some time doing this.
* The most important part should be on the top, and then work your day down.

You can see what it will look like if you look at the Cone of Learning. So let’s say that the most important thing to do right now for you is your college education. Then that should be on top. It will signal that’s the most important thing for you and the area where you will spend more time. In other words, it’s your top priority. Other areas will follow, of course. Here is the trick though, every other aspect of your life must be improved as well, because you cannot improve your work if you don’t improve your family or social life, they actually complement each other. Just like your fitness level complements your productivity in the workplace or at home. In God’s infinite wisdom, when we improve one area of our life, others improve as well. They all are connected. The trick is in doing all of them, but putting more time in that aspect that is really important. For instance, my cousin is a relatively muscular guy and he exercises, no doubt that’s important. If you look at me, however, I am not muscular , but I do exercise, a relatively fewer amount of time because that is not my priority. I get enough exercise to keep my head clear but not to grow massive muscle. In my cousin’s case, he exercises to grow massive muscle, and reads enough to keep himself hungry for knowledge. See the difference? My cousin’s priority is obviously different than mine. His is fitness, mine is knowledge. We both do exercise and read, but at different levels.

Another example, I remember clearly the days where my good friend Jamie Craven took seriously his goal on losing weight and gain enough muscle to make it as a model for a prestigious brand, as an underwear model. Did he do it? Of course! Not only did he go from slob to sexy, but also he was featured in a prestigious magazine. We spoke often during those days. He spent hours researching, feeding his mind with the knowledge required for that specific goal. He read everything from how many calories each food has, how many snacks to have, what burns more calories, and so on. He took notes. He asked people. In short, he took seriously. That aspect of his life (fitness) was his priority at that point. (And boy, he made it clear!). But he still made time to hang out with people, talk to friends, feed his mind with other knowledge, help in the website, and so on. He focused on something, and he just…

Let the rest balance

Jamie just let the rest of it fall into place. He did what mattered the most first and still kept with all of his other responsibilities. Follow his example. As busy as your schedule may get, you will notice that when you put your FOCUS first, all the other things will balance. Like I said for me this year, it’s about Wealth and Finances, so I will do whatever it may take to work on it. I’ll do whatever it takes so that I find time for everything else I have to do. For instance, I’m also studying the Bible and reaching a new level on my spirituality, so if I find it hard to read the Bible during the day, then I’ll make the effort to wake up earlier just so that I can catch a glimpse of it. On days where I’m busy and I don’t get much time to read, then I could buy an audio on businesses while I exercise. There are so many alternatives. When it’s a must, you will find your way to get it done and all the other commitments will take place on its own.

If you want it, you’ll find the way, believe me. On the other hand, if you don’t want it enough, if you don’t have a clear sense of purpose and mission, then you’ll find yourself wasting more time, and you won’t even be busy! As corny as it may sound, it’s not the circumstances but rather how you adapt to them. Listen to motivational stuff while you exercise, clear your room, or drive. Wake up earlier to finish a task you may not get enough time for otherwise. Read that book with your girlfriend and ask her to test you on it. Exercise with your girlfriend to kill two birds at once. If you’re trying a new diet, ask her for support and to check on you. There are so many ways, you just have to get creative to find them. I’m not sure who said it, but the message was clear, if you want to get creative, you must remain positive, and if you want to remain positive, you must remain DOING things!

Ultimately – time management is a myth. You cannot manage time. It’s the only thing you will never have control over. What you can manage is your priorities and that you make sure that you commit to them. Something magical happens when you put your priorities first. It’s as if everything was just on your side. Do not focus on time management, it’s a waste of time. (See what I’m saying?) Focus on flexible planning, focus on prioritizing, focus on getting others to hold you accountable, focus on developing a sense of purpose, focus on those things, and time will be your friend, rather than your enemy. Lastly, commit it to writing. I cannot stress that enough. Commit it to writing. When you write it, you focus. When you focus, you balance it. When you balance it, you have amazing time management. That means you’ll have time for the things that matter. And when that happens, you’ll experience… happiness.

Developing an Enlightened Lifestyle takes time and dedication. It is infinite, there is no physical boundary or cut off point, dividing ‘enlightened’ from ‘average’. Only you as a person can know when you have or haven’t achieved this zonal stage, and once you have, you’ll understand that it requires constant maintenance.

However, how do you get there? What is this perilous journey like? Where and what is ‘there’? And why do you want it?

These are all questions that everyone asks themselves, and most begin the journey without answering them first, resulting in a lack of dedication and an early exit after having deemed failure. Without clear intentions, goals and ambitions, it is impossible to achieve. How can you score a goal in football without a goal? You’ll end up playing for ever until one is made.

Yet perhaps the most important, and difficult question to answer is, where do I begin?

At the beginning. Standard, simple answer that gives no guidance what so ever. But it’s true, ask yourself this, what made you want to change in the first place? Why do you want to change your lifestyle? What brought you here? For me, it was a lack of satisfaction with my current lifestyle, brought to light by the lifestylechallenge 2.0. Intelligence, sociability, health and well being, spirituality amongst a whole host of other factors, all of which I knew I could improve. I wasn’t on par.

By answering this, you have already covered many bases. You have your motives (for me it’s improving these areas of my life because I feel unsatisfied), and you have your goals (Increased intelligence…). However this may in fact leave you feeling that this is even more daunting than previously perceived. Problems tend to stack up, almost like in a snowballing effect as your mind links you from one thing to another with effortless ease.

For example, you may have poor health, so people see you as less attractive, which knocks your confidence, leading to pessimism, in turn depression, combined with anger, resulting in monetary instability, giving you stress…

It’s endless. Yet the brilliant thing is, just like how one problem leads to another, it’s exactly the same with solutions. Every improvement and solution has a multiplier effect, benefiting different areas of your life you may never have imagined it too. For example, you might have bad skin. Your doctor tells you to stay outside for 20 minutes a day, so that UV light develops more vitamin D to combat what ever it is. What they don’t tell you is that on the top of your head are sun ‘receptors’ that convert UV into Serotonin, the natural drug that modulates anger and sexuality. In laymen terms: the natural happiness drug. You become happier, less depressed, more optimistic, and more attractive (also resulting from gaining a tan). Transmission Mechanism…

Still, where do you start? What should your first goal be?

Well, why does everyone insist on starting with one thing? Rather than step forward, why not jump? Remember, it’s all about the multiplier effect, and jumping is going to take you much further than stepping. So my advice is this: start with two things.

Make them basic, achievable, goals that can be completed in the short term, but have long term consequences. Now, we’re discussing how to begin to develop an Enlightened Lifestyle. What would be two small goals to get you started on this path?

Mine were as follows:

1) Converse at a greater-than-normal level with everyone I interact with.
2) Greet everyone who makes eye-contact and is within audible range verbally.

My main motive behind this?

To meet new people, converse with them and learn.

Starting at the beginning should be about going down below the surface of things to the core of humanity. To me, this is communication. What sets us most apart from other living things? Our ability to communicate and think consciously. This is one of the first things we learn to do as a child, but yet, arguably, as we grow our skill and learning ability actually decreases. Where did approach anxiety come from? Fear, social and media conditioning.

Saying ‘Hi’ to people isn’t difficult, take a guess at how many times you’ve said the word. Probably in the tens or hundreds of thousands. It’s the perceived difficulty that one has to surpass. And that’s why it’s important to keep it simple. Say ‘Hi’ to everyone that makes eye contact.

You can learn and read all you want, be up-to-date on the world economy, cultural views, revolutionary technologies, cures and relationship advice. But all of it is useless until you can communicate. Who’s ever heard of a 100% communication-less relationship? And yes, I did just make up that word, but you still understood me, that’s the power of communication

That’s not to say you shouldn’t do all of those things, but firstly, learn to communicate. Once you have engaged in your first conversation, that’s when you start learning.

People are fascinating, you’ll find that you can learn so much more from conversation in 1 minute than a book in 10 (depending of course on the quality of both the book and conversation). When you converse with others, you learn about yourself, and the more you understand yourself, the more jumps you can take towards an Enlightened Lifestyle as these understandings are your foundations, your building blocks.

Yet, before I conclude this short How-To, I’d like to finish off on something very important: Taking it one day at a time. Making goals 3 years in the future is useless most of the time. You lose sight very quickly and give up. You may find that the method you use isn’t right for you, so live in the present. Take every moment as it comes, and use it to your full potential.

How To Start From Scratch

In one sentence:

Start communicating more.

Words: Tom Church, the creator of marketing website Flabble

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