By: Shantanu Das Sharma, Sr. Associate Editor-ICN Group
Ways To Achieve Anything You Want
Quick recap of what we have covered in Part 6
It is Not What We Expect, But What We are Willing to Accept in Life That Matters
Learn To Raise Your Acceptance Levels
Do You Feel Stuck in ‘No Man’s Land’?
Be ‘Dissatisfied’ and Get ‘Inspired’
What is Your Level of Expectation and Acceptance?
Can You Put Yourself On the Line!
Choose To Raise Your Standards & Acceptance Levels
KOLKATA: Will you now be ready to finally raise your standards? Then I want you to take the time and write down the new standards you are going to set for yourself. What are you going to make a must? Who are your chosen three people you are committed to spend time with who will inspire you and can make you dissatisfied with where you are now?
1 – Income level: How much money are you willing to settle for?
Name 3 people you will invest time with.
2 – Lifestyle: What kind of lifestyle are you going to aim for?
(It does not necessarily have to be a flashy lifestyle. There are people who actually aim for a simple, yet financially independent one). Name 3 people you will invest time with.
3 – Health: What is your desired weight? What level of health must you be at?
4 – Career: What must you achieve in your career & business?
5 – Relationships: What kind and quality of relationships must you have?
Now Put Yourself On the Line!
Now that you have listed down your new standards, here is a strategy to use to ensure you will achieve it. The secret is to put yourself on the line! In other words, put yourself in a situation where you have absolutely no choice but to achieve it. When our brain is given a choice to do something or to put it off, we will always gravitate towards the easier path. But when we have no choice but to do something, we will always find a way! Many successful individuals created the results they did because they simply had no choice. They put everything they had on the line.
Leo Burnett Worldwide, Inc., also known as Leo Burnett Company, Inc., is an American advertising company, founded on August 5, 1935 in Chicago by Leo Burnett. (Wikipedia)
At age 44, Leo Burnett started one of today’s largest advertising companies in the world. He started his business in the middle of the 1935 depression. He borrowed against his life insurance policy, mortgaged his home and threw in every last dollar he had. Talk about putting yourself on the line. He knew that he had no choice but to make it work. This ‘must’ drove him to build his tiny advertising agency into a worldwide business, grossing hundreds of millions in sales each year.
Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson is an English business magnate, investor, author and philanthropist. He founded the Virgin Group, which controls more than 400 companies. Branson expressed his desire to become an entrepreneur at a young age.(Wikipedia)
When Richard Branson (in pre Virgin Airlines days) was caught selling records meant for export in London, he was arrested and charged with fraud. He was given a few months to pay a fine or risk being thrown in jail. Being almost broke, he knew that the only way he could make enough money to stay out of jail was to rapidly expand his business; which he did by opening more record stores. It turned out that the need to keep himself out of jail was the urgent motivating force he needed to build the Virgin business at lightning speed! It was this commitment that led him to go on to build the Virgin empire, which includes an airline company, and become one of Britain’s wealthiest businessmen.
Begin Putting Yourself On the Line Right Now!
So, how do you choose to put yourself on the line? One way is to make an open public declaration of your goals. Better still; could be to get other people involved in the process of attaining your goals. Or make a small financial commitment so that it will hurt not to do it, and your brain will start taking you seriously. As I tell people to do this, many chicken out and just do not dare to make even this level of commitment. Then it is clear that if you dare not commit yourself to it, then you were never serious about your success in the first place. So, if you are really committed to achieve something significant, put yourself on the line!
I Put Myself On the Line, Again and Again! One of the reasons why I have the drive and motivation to achieve much is because I commit myself to people and put myself on the line, constantly. When I decided to write my first book (‘Awaken The Incredible Within – Incredible Is The New Giant’), I knew that there was a good chance I would procrastinate and give up halfway. So, even before I started writing, I went round telling all my friends to look out for my books in the bookstores in the coming months. The minute I committed myself publicly, there was no way I could back out. My reputation was on the line. It was an absolute must for me to deliver! It was this must that drove me to complete my first book while still without a job after my return to India. By the way, the only reason this book ever got written was because I put myself on the line and made it an absolute must.
About two years ago, I set a goal to launch one to one certified NLP lifestyle coaching & training program from practitioner to master trainer considering the vacuum in this space for learners who are very serious to learn NLP lifestyle coaching and reap the benefits but at their own convenience of time and pace. I told myself that I would finish creating the content structure and achievable outcomes of the training based on individual competencies and goals within six months. As my schedule was already very hectic for life coaching clients, I told myself that whenever I had the time, I would use it to write the content and training plan for each levels of NLP Lifestyle Coaching & Training program. Sure enough, I started putting off writing as something more urgent always came up. After six months, I had only completed NLP Lifestyle Practitioner level out of four! Then, one of my trainer friends came to me and told me, ‘Shantanu the reason you have not achieved this goal is because it is not a must for you!’ Unless you make it a Must, you will never achieve it! I knew he was right and that I had to put myself on the line. I had to use this formula.
So I got all my social media feeds announce that my signature NLP Lifestyle Coaching & Training program would be launched in the next 3 months in India. Sure enough, I started to find the time to start writing the training program plan and that is how Neuromind Leadership Academy, India eventually came out with it’s one to one NLP+ Lifestyle Coaching Certification program which is also first and ONLY of it’s kind in Asia.
So what can you do to put yourself on the line? For example, if you wanted to lose weight but always made excuses for yourself and put it off, what could you do to make it an absolute must? You could give away all your dresses except one, and buy an entire wardrobe three sizes smaller. You could make an announcement to all your family members and friends. You could go out and immediately pay a 6-month advance for a gym membership. The idea is to put yourself in a situation where it would be more painful to quit than to stay the course and finally achieve your goal. So are you ready to start making some commitments? Are you ready to get serious and start putting some power behind your dreams? If so, then I want you to write down five goals or tasks that you have been constantly putting off. Next to each goal, write down at least 2 ways you are going to put yourself on the line so that you must achieve it.
Do it now!
List your top 5 Goals – I Must Achieve 1,2,3,4,5
Correspondingly record the dates – I will Make it (1,2,3,4,5) a Must by…dd/mm/yy
Choose to Use ‘Must’ Language
Simply by actively listening to the words people use, you may understand how truly committed they are to achieve a certain result. You may tell if there is any power and conviction behind what they say. And you may tell straight away the people who will eventually succeed and those who won’t. For example, if someone says, ‘I would like to finish this project by today’ and someone else says, ‘I must finish this project by today.’ Who would you bet your money on? The words we use represent the way we frame the thoughts in our mind. If you observe and pay attention to the most charismatic and influential leaders like (the late) Martin Luther King, M.K Gandhi, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, they consistently use the word ‘must’ in their speeches rather than ‘should’ or ‘could’.
Same way, the words we use on ourselves will impact how we represent something in our minds. When we use certain words like ‘should’, ‘would like’ or ‘wish’, we hardly get a sense of conviction or urgency. These words are not compelling for us to take immediate action. The next time you are putting off doing something or feel like giving up halfway, pay attention to the words that are firing off in your mind. I bet you it would be a ‘I could…’ or a ‘I wish…’
I actually want you to begin noticing that every time you take action, it is because the word ‘must’ is firing off in your mind. Like when your assignment, report or quote is due tomorrow morning and you have not done a thing and it’s already midnight. I bet the word ‘Oh Sh…t!…I must do it now!’ is firing off in your mind. Or when you oversleep and say ‘Oh dear! I’m late! I must get up!’ You see, words evoke different emotions within us. Instead of allowing the ‘must’ to come when it is too late, you can consciously begin controlling the words you use on yourself and others to invoke a powerful response in their actions. So start using ‘must’ and it will get you what you want. One of the things that you must do in order to be ahead of your game is to keep growing as a person. How do you achieve massive growth in a short period of time… let’s find out in the next article!
(I facilitate Thought Leaders, Change Makers; Professionals & Business Owners translate NLP concepts into actions to achieve and elicit personal excellence. I conduct NLP Lifestyle Coaching Certification programs for individuals, corporate and celebrity clients. In the next article, I will share about ‘How to achieve ABSOLUTE POWER’ and after that you will come to know in subsequent articles, how you can utilise concepts of NLP+ in all walks of your life to replicate the success blueprint of a winner mindset to win through life. So, stay tuned every Monday & Saturday and fasten your seat belt to ‘Enhance Your Lifestyle With NLP+’)
My #1 Amazon Best Selling book ‘Awaken The Incredible Within – Incredible Is The New Giant’ is available at Amazon in English at http://bit.ly/Awaken-The-Incredible-Within
Shantanu Das Sharma, Creator of the concept NLP Lifestyle Coaching with NLP+, Founder of Neuromind Leadership Academy is an Amazon #1 Best Selling Author, NLP Lifestyle Master Trainer & Coach, Clean Language Facilitator & Strategic Interventionist.
