It’s important to understand what your standards are and why they matter. The first step in achieving any type of success is to believe that one has the ability to achieve it. There is no magic formula for everyone. However, the willingness to put in the hard work, sacrificing the time that it requires, and setting high standards for one are what will lead to success and self-improvement.
You may be wondering how to work on yourself? It starts with having higher standards for you. High standards are not about being perfect. They are about aiming higher and not accepting anything less than your best and living a life doing meaningful work and building lasting relationships.
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Your Negative Framework
The first step understands what you want and what you are willing to let go of or stop doing to get what you want. The latter is sometimes more important than the former, let me explain.
We know the answers to the things we want in life, but are we willing to make the sacrifices to stop doing the activities that are blowing our chances of success.
The takeaway from this point is that you are where you are in life because of your behaviors, thinking and standards you currently have. Put simply you are a product of your choices. Before I got into fitness I used to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day. I knew smoking was bad, but I enjoyed it too much to quit. Reread that again. I had no reason to quit, why should I have? It felt good and took the edge off as I conveniently denied the truth and smothered reality.
As Hippocrates once said:
“If someone wishes for good health, one must first ask oneself if he is ready to do away with the reasons for his illness. Only then is it possible to help him?”
It was only when my longtime friend took me on a spontaneous jog around the block that I felt the tremendous pain of being out of shape, which led me to question and reexamine my life and choices that led me to quit smoking. I had to feel what was happening to my body, not base it off on what society or even I thought smoking was or wasn’t. The truth was there in the form of physical pain, which was undeniable.
Sign up for Your Next 4 Actions Newsletter here hide behind the excuses and veils we create as to why we can’t succeed, however, the answer is with us and what we are willing to stop doing. Only then can we commit to starting doing positive things in order to achieve our highest potential. We aren’t scared of our failures; we are scared that we will actually succeed in what we do. It is the light that scares us more than the darkness because if you did what you were truly capable of doing, you’d shock yourself and the people around you.
The first step is awareness; you have to believe that you want more than your current situation and not accept your low standards from yourself. The second step is a readiness to stop doing the things that aren’t advancing your life. Everyone has twenty-four hours in a day; it’s how you use the twenty-four hours that define your trajectory. Do the things that are actually good for you, and make the choices that will propel you in life. Commit to this resolve relentlessly and like me, you too will be astounded by your results.
Acquire Abnormal Focus and Concentration
Deep work. This is the ability to do the work you need to do as a prerequisite and entry to point towards your better self. I lost twenty thousand dollars when I failed in a few eCommerce business sites many years ago, I realized the things I was doing were wrong. I tried to outsource and wing it without mastering every in and out there was. I wouldn’t set aside the time to study and focus on what needed to be done and I was in the dark. I didn’t know the things I needed to know and it showed.
The only way that I would succeed in anything I did was that I had to immerse myself into everything I did or I would fail as I did in my past, time and time again.
It was the universe’s way of saying tsk how dare you try to go the lazy route. When I became a master personal trainer, I dedicated sixty hours a week to clients and studied outside of the workweek to further hone my craft. I ranked as the top trainer across every gym in a large nationwide company with over four hundred clubs.
When you focus and concentrate on what it is you want to succeed at, not many things can stop you from reaching your goal. This dangerous combination you put in makes you proficient at what you do and the result is mastery of the basics, systems and processes involved.
This sets you up to foresee any potential pitfalls and possibilities of failure because you’ve studied them. You’re prepared because you know the routes, the ins and outs and won’t be caught off surprise because you’re three moves ahead. Carve away the time it takes to genuinely become good at something and concentrate on it. Put your phone and distractions away and focus on the thing you want to get better at. If you do this daily for even two hours a day, it will effectively move you towards victory. There’s no shortcut to mastery, the time has to be put in.
Discipline
A long time ago, there were times where I overthought almost everything I did in my life, I would contemplate every choice and take days to make a decision on what were important things in my life such as finances, relationships, and even doing the laundry. I realized the way my mind worked, I was inherently lazy.
I shied away from the hard tasks and didn’t want to look at numbers and the not-so-fun stuff of business. I didn’t like doing them. I began to see the repetitive patterns that showed up in my earlier life, which led to me not reaching success.
Here was the catch: successful people don’t like doing these tasks either, they discipline themselves to do them, even when they don’t feel like it because of the higher purpose it brings from completing the task.
There were days when I first began working out that I didn’t want to work out, I was tired or I didn’t want to train that day with an easy list of reasons and justifications not to. Being a beginner and subjecting myself to hours of painful repetitions of exercises wasn’t always exciting. I knew if I skipped the workout, it was an opportunity for growth that I’d lose.
You’ll be faced with resistance in your life in everything you do, there’ll be days when you don’t want to do things. I had to learn and accept that there was never going to be a time where every day I was going to be one hundred percent. I had to develop the habit of practicing self-discipline if I was going to achieve anything worthwhile in my life.
Everyone struggles. You’re not alone in the battle of the day to day problems and obstacles. The individuals that use discipline when in their lives go on to achieve great things simply due to the extra bit of effort that adds up over the course of time. Discipline repeated daily will lead you to the achievement of your goals. As Jim Rohm stated, “Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.”
Thank you for reading!
Kawan Karadaghi
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