ONE LESSON

For the early part of my life, I felt that I was constantly dealing with what I called struggles. Playing sports, I would consistently be looked over in favor of other players, regardless of how hard I worked or how talented I was. When it came to relationships, I had multiple end because my girlfriends decided to cheat on me (those hurt). When I entered the real estate industry, I couldn’t find clients, and it took me until my 3rd year to finally close a sale. Every time I faced another thing that “worked against me,” I thought about all of my previous struggles and lumped them all together. This caused me to fall into a depressed state, resulting in me regularly asking why I was putting myself through more frustrations. It wasn’t until I realized that what I was saying to myself directly impacted how my mind viewed every event.

LESSON LEARNED: Your mind focuses on what you tell it to focus on.

In my mid-20s, I had a mentor explain to live the life I wanted. I needed to educate myself and learn from the successful people who have achieved what I wanted. Seeing the life my mentor had, I became obsessed with learning and growing every day. I stopped watching TV or doing things that didn’t benefit me and began using every free moment I had to better myself. As my life began to go in the direction I wanted it to, I found that I was still feeling the negativity of my past and viewing many current events the same way. That was until one day I heard Tony Robbins explain how the mind works and that what we say to ourselves directly impacts how we see the world. Hearing this, I began to pay attention to the words I was using. I found that I used the word “struggle” a lot to describe anything I was having difficulties with. Once I realized this, I decided to say “challenge” instead, and something magical happened. Instead of my mind reminding me of all the past “struggles” I had to reinforce that the current event was just another one of them, it began to show me how I could overcome the challenges, which allowed me to become a lot more productive by focusing on solutions instead. This simple word shift has played a huge part in helping me to create the life I want. If you listen to what you say to yourself and change the words that are negatively impacting you to something positive, you will begin to see what I see, which can open up a world of possibilities.