Do you want to overcome the three enemies to personal growth? In today’s episode I’m going to tell you what those three enemies are, and how you can overcome them.
KEY POINTS
Recognize that Action Generates Feeling – A professional knows that an action generates feeling, however an amateur believes feeling generates action. Identify as a professional and create action!
Minimize Impulsivity – Reduce distractions. Out of sight, out of mind. Distractions will impede on personal growth.
Minimize Delay – Cut down your large goal into smaller milestones to get a taste of success sooner.
Increase Focus – A productive day begins the day before with a good night’s sleep. All devices should be switched off an hour before bedtime to increase melatonin. Ensure you are getting 8 hours of sleep.
Embrace Failure – It is a very necessary part of our personal growth. Learn from it, don’t let it get you down!
FREE DIGITAL BOOK
Grab a copy of my Amazon Best Selling Book The 3 Alarms. Click Here
TRANSCRIPT
Do you want to overcome the three enemies to personal growth? Well in today’s episode I’m going to tell you what those three enemies are, and how you can overcome them. And make sure that you listen for the entire episode, because I’ll be sharing things today that you haven’t heard anywhere else.
Hi, my name is Eric Partaker, and I’ve been recognized as one of the top entrepreneurs in the country, and the CEO of the Year. I’m also the author of two best-selling books, including The 3 Alarms.
So the first enemy to personal growth is not having enough feeling. But here’s the thing, we have to recognize that we can’t wait around feeling like doing things. We have to recognize that our action generates feeling, not that we need to wait for our feeling to generate action. And in fact, this is the way that I like to describe a professional versus an amateur. A professional knows that action generates feeling, an amateur believes that feeling generates action. So what ends up happening, from a personal growth point of view, for the amateur? Well, they wait around a lot of their life waiting to feel like doing things, but then they don’t end up doing those things because they rarely always feel like stepping into personal growth.
Whereas the professional will also not feel like doing loads of things, pushing themselves harder than they’ve done before, learning that new technique or skill, or reading that book, or taking that course, or challenging themselves in a way that they haven’t before, but they don’t wait to feel like doing those things, they take action, noting that action generates feeling.
Often you just need to get started. What do they say the hardest part about it is for going for a run? It’s putting on the gym shoes. So once you put on the shoes, then it’s like a snowball effect and you can gather the momentum that you need. So it’s the same thing from a feeling point of view. We have to be very, very careful that feelings don’t dictate from a personal growth point of view whether or not we take action, it’s action that generates feeling. So decide to show up as a professional, not an amateur.
The other thing that can relate to feeling and personal growth is feeling motivated. And there’s actually a science to motivation that’s really, really important to keep in mind because it will help us from a personal growth point of view. And there are two things that we need to seek to maximize in order to stay motivated, and they are the value of whatever that activity or thing is, why is it important to us? What benefits will create for us? What benefits will it create for others? As well as our expectancy, which is simply a term for our self-belief that we can do whatever that thing is.
And there’s lots of different ways to gather self-belief from reflecting back into the past about similar things that you’ve done to the current thing, or noting that other people have done this as well, you’re not the first, or enlisting support from other people to actually help you. So to spike our motivation, to feel motivated, we need to increase our value, we need to maximize that. Why is it we’re doing this? What are the benefits that we would get from doing it? And maximize our expectancy, or our self-belief in doing it.
We also need to minimize two things, and one is impulsivity, which is just a complicated way of saying that we need to minimize our likelihood of being distracted whenever we’re working on something that relates to our personal growth. So if there’s anything that you find distracting within your environment, make sure you get it out of sight, out of mind. For example, your phone, out of sight, out of mind, it would probably be an inhibitor to your personal growth.
And we also need to minimize delay. And what they mean by that is we need to minimize the amount of time between where we are right now and our first taste of success as it relates to whatever we’re working on for our personal growth. So what that means, simply, is that we need to take our big goal, whatever it might be, for our personal growth, and make sure we’re chunking it down into much smaller milestones, so we get a taste of success sooner rather than later. And if we do these things, maximize the value and the expectancy, minimize the impulsivity and the delay, we’re going to increase our feeling of motivation, and that together with deciding that we’re going to be a professional and not an amateur, recognizing that action generates feeling, helps us in our quest to grow and become a better version of ourselves.
So the second thing that can get in the way of our personal growth is not having enough focus, and there are a few things which you can do to increase your focus which will help you on your personal growth mission. And one is to recognize that a productive day actually begins the day before, and it relates to how you shut down your day such that you get a good night’s sleep. And there’s a simple acronym that I’ve created for this, SD8, S-D-8, the number eight, and it’s simply the S stands for shut down your day at the same time every day by deciding, okay, what is it that I’m going to do, top three things that I’m going to do the next day, and plan those into your calendar so you know when you’re going to do. Then that increases your focus. That’s the S for the SD8 acronym.
The D stands for digital sunset. And you want to make sure that you’re shutting out all that electronic light in the hour before bedtime, because it’s been shown to reduce your ability to sleep deeply, which then leads to this number 8, we want to protect those eight hours of sleep, because all of that strongly relates to us having great focus for the next day. So what this means is you wake up the next day knowing what you’re going to be doing when, and you’ve gotten your good rest, you’ve got eight hours of sleep.
The other thing that I recommend you do to improve your focus is define what are the outputs that matter most for your personal growth, for example, what is it that you’re working on? What are the outputs? The things that you want to complete? Is it reading certain books, or completing a certain course, or having thinking time around a particular subject or topic, but define what those outputs are that matter most. And then last but not least, make sure that they’re scheduled into your day as appointments with yourself that you show up to just as you would with someone else, and during which you only focus on those appointments.
For example, if you were to meet someone else, you wouldn’t also then start talking with another person, or start reading a book, or doing something other than that meeting with that person. So make sure that you’re having that same respect with yourself. So number two is all around focus, and if we increase our focus, we will increase our personal growth. So we talked about not having enough feeling and what to do about that, we talked about not having enough focus and what to do about that, and the third enemy of our personal growth is failure. So feeling, focus, failure, not having enough of these three things can get in the way of our personal growth.
And you might be saying, “What not having enough failure is going to get in the way of my personal growth?” Yes, 100%, because it’s through failing that we actually learn and develop. It’s not just through success. Abraham Lincoln, before he became president of the United States, he failed at war, he failed at his first attempt at politics. Thomas Edison had 1000 attempts at making the light bulb before he finally pulled it off. Michael Jordan, before becoming the greatest player of all time in basketball, was actually cut from his high school team at one point. So failure is part of, and a very necessary, aspect of our process to grow personally, to become all that we’re capable of becoming.
So we need to make sure that we’re embracing failure, and that we are not afraid of it, and that we’re treating it as the data that it is. It’s a signpost, it’s an indication of the things that we need to be working on or improving. We’re just collecting data in the end, and the failure doesn’t speak about us, it just speaks about what it is that needs to be worked on, what it is that we need to improve. And those that achieve the top of their game, whether they’re in business, or music, and entertainment, or sports, or military, these are people who have a great relationship with failure. They don’t see failure as something that shouldn’t happen, they see failure as a way in which they will learn, grow, and develop.
So I have a question for you, what is one thing which scares you, but which you know you should be doing for your success and growth and development? What’s one thing which scares you, but that you know that you should be doing? And I want you to summon the most courageous version of you, and ask that version of you for advice. Should you do that thing, when, how, and then listen to that advice. And I’d love to hear from you, so don’t forget to leave a comment and a rating as well. And if you’d like to get a copy of my new book, The 3 Alarms, please head over to my website at EricPartaker.com. That’s E-R-I-C, EricPartaker.com, where you could pick up a free digital copy of my new best-selling book, The 3 Alarms.
