Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Your Environment is a Trap!

Success is making something out of nothing, which means, there's no path to actually follow. Yes, you have had predecessors create possible paths that you can follow. Yes, you can certainly model the success of others.  In fact, I highly recommend doing both. But in the end, your path will be a lonely path. It will be an individual path. Your path is going to be a path that you design and you create out of your own choices and your beliefs about the world.

Success is not going to be as easy as you think. It will always be more difficult and be wrought with challenge. Those challenges will make you great and deliver a success story that is all your own. Challenges are the lessons you need to become the person that you see in your mind. If success was easy, everybody would have it.  

Seven Steps to Happiness and Success is about engaging those challenges with ease, not because they're easy, but because you're in a state of resistance, and you aren't resisting the challenges and the setbacks that come at you when you are going after the success process.

Realize that a goal is a planned conflict with the status quo

So many people quit one step before they're about to make it. So many times in my own life, I have been one step away from succeeding, and I quit. Today, I listen to the radio, and I hear dance music songs with amazing pop hooks in them. Ten years ago, I was out peddling pop songs to be put into dance music, and over and over and over, I was rejected by the DJs, telling me that that was the stupidest thing they'd ever heard. I now realize that all I needed to do was to stick with my idea, to keep going, and today I would have more hits underneath my belt.

What about you? Have you quit too soon? Have you been faced with challenges, confronted with all kinds of disasters and chaos, insurmountable barriers that have stopped you? I believe that you have.

Success is destructive. Success challenges what you've been. Success requires you to change, and this is not easy to do, because it challenges the status quo in your life. Your life wants to be the same. Your mind, which I call The Drunk Monkey, is pulling you always toward what you've always done. The way in which you're going to break out and become something new is literally through destruction.

Homework:

Forgive yourself for all the failures you have had over the years. Recognize that you are a risk taker.  Realize that there were no instructions for the things that you've done, and there are no instructions for the things that you're going to do.

Ponder this thought, "There is no failure; there is just feedback." Let go of the idea that you are wrong or bad, because your success isn't turning out the way that you want it. Let go of your resistance. Get into the flow, and trust that all is well.
Congratulations, I am so proud of you. That you are reading this is truly a sign that change is afoot. Your life IS changing, shifting, and transforming with each lesson.  I know this is true because I have seen thousands of peoples lives change just from regular exposure to high conscious ideas.  Let's keep it going, okay?

Your Environment is a Trap!

Did you know that success ultimately is a function of the environment that you are in? The people you know, their expectations, and how you have spoken to them in the past is an invisible trap.

Your environment will influence your ability to succeed positively or negatively.  Environment is the invisible glass ceiling holding you back.

You have spent many, many years convincing the people around you that you are the way you are. You have told all of your friends and family members the reasons that you don't achieve what you want.  You have spent many hours discussing your past and how it has influenced to be the person you are today.  Your up bringing, your parents, your schooling, your friends, your experiences are all conversations you have discussed with your friends and family.  If I could be a fly on the wall, I imagine that I would hear you DESCRIBE what's happening in your life and why you think it is happening that way.  Plus I would hear you use your past experiences to justify why things are happening the way they are today. 

Say this out loud several times right now, "Describing is actually creating."

So often I hear people around me say...
The markets bad. 
The economy is stalled.
My background limits me. 
My skill set is inadequate. 
My lack of a degree is limiting my career. 
I'm not disciplined.
I'm not smart enough to figure this out.
I can't

These kinds of statements trap you without you knowing it. These statements create peoples expectations about who you are and what you can be counted on for.  The people around you get used to the kind of person that you have spoken yourself to be.  When you try to make a change, it makes people uncomfortable. You literally break rapport with your environment. When you break rapport with your environment, your friends, family and co-workers naturally resist, which causes you to go back to your old behavior.  Welcome to the prison you created for yourself!


Begin to talk about what you are committed to.  Begin to own that in the past you had weakness and that today you are overcoming them.  You are doing this lesson, right?  That's evidence that you are committed to growing beyond your limitations.

JFK did not know if we could get to the moon first or not.  But he spoke that future with conviction and it became our reality. 

Ghandi did not know if India could be free.  He simply spoke his commitment and followed the inspiration of that future until it became reality.

What do you want?  What are you committed to?  What can we all count on you for?  Who are you going to be in the world?  What is the legacy you are going to leave? 

Thank you for being a part of these lessons with me.  Can't wait to do something else with you.  It is a great pleasure to share what I have learned and implemented in my own life with you.

Posts on this blog were written by Mathew Ferry of
Elevate The Vibe LLC

Stop Thinking Negative

Success won't make you happy, but happiness can aid in your success. When you understand the The Drunk Monkey, you can let go of resisting everything that it takes to succeed. Success is difficult, but that doesn't mean it has to be frustrating, agonizing or cause suffering. You can learn to engage the challenge of success and do it in such a way that is easy, effortless and enjoyable. By effortless, I don't mean that it will lack effort, I mean metaphorically, for you, the effort will not feel like effort. 

Ease, effortlessness, and joy, begin with an understanding of The Drunk Monkey. When you realize that The Drunk Monkey in your head doesn't care about you, isn't interested in your goals and dreams and wants your life to remain the same, you begin to move beyond it and ignore the mind. When this occurs you effortlessly over come challenges and succeed with ease.

It is imperative that you understand that success will not make you happy. People with money are generally more satisfied then those without.  In the end, happiness is nothing more than context with which you view the world. Learning that context is essential for happiness.  Like I said before, when you get happy, success is easier.  Happiness makes you more attractive, easier to be with, which causes more people to want to deal with you.

Stop making up negative futures and avoiding them.

One of the tactics The Drunk Monkey uses to keep you safe (in a world that is not even dangerous) is dreaming up potential negative futures that you should avoid. The problem, of course, is these potential negative futures aren't coming. They are nothing more than a figment of your imagination, yet their impact is no less intense. Imaginary negative futures literally imprison you before anything negative has even happened. You worry, fret and feel fear even though nothing has actually happened.  You make plans to avoid this imaginary future, even though you have not encountered it. 

The truth is that you have infinite possibilities before you. Any future that you dream up, you can manifest. This is good news and bad news.  What you focus on, you create.  So, if you allow The Drunk Monkey to focus on imaginary negative futures, then you will create that in your life.  This only reinforces The Drunk Monkey's conviction that you should listen to its insanity!

You are not psychic. You don't know the future. You are not a fortune teller. So, these ntegative futures that The Drunk Monkey creates aren't nessisarily coming.  They represent one of millions of possibilities.  Yet, notice how you operate like they are coming.  This will cause you to zig when you need to zag.  You will operate out of fear when no fear is nessiary.  After coaching more then 8000 people to achieve happiness and success I can tell you that taking action when you are afraid often leads to disaster.  More importantly, it WILL NOT make you happy.

Can you succeed with fear in the background? Absolutely. Almost every person who has ever succeeded has had fear in the background. But I am suggesting that there is a new paradigm which is success without the fear. Fear is not necessary for success. Fear makes success harder. All fear stems from The Drunk Monkey and its foolish imaginings. Anything other then happiness and peace is just a state of mind. 

Homework:

Catch The Drunk Monkey making up negative futures.  Then question the validity of the imaginary future.  Dream up all the different futures that could happen.  Ask yourself, "Why couldn't one of these other futures be what's coming? Am I phycic?  Do I know the actual future?" 

Make up futures that you want. What are you committed to? What do you want to have happen? What are the futures worth going for?

If you are going to make things up, why not make things up that make you feel good. If you're going to make things up, why not make things up that empower you, inspire you, and gets you in action.

Stop allowing The Drunk Monkey to make things up, that debilitate and put you in fear.

Matthew Ferry & Elevate The Vibe LLC