As an attempt to give back as much value to this forum, as possible, the threads I created when I started my journey where based around the topics of mindsets and belief systems as well as talking about what did harm to my goals and my journey, in the past. I couldn't and still can't give advice on how to run a successful business or how to market your product to millions, simply because I didn't do it yet, but I thought about giving advice on (or simply writing about) the things that I learned so far on my journey, hoping that it will help others who are not as far into their journey as I am at the moment. When I started my journey about 6 months ago, the only advice I really could give was about changing your mindset and belief systems and what detours you can probably avoid that I took in the past.
There is not much valuable information currently that I can provide for those in front of me, but maybe I can help those behind me in their journey. Thanking all those in front of me for their valuable threads and posts on here (@MJ DeMarco , @Vigilante , @Andy Black , @AllenCrawley , @biophase , @Kak , @SteveO , and so on, you know the names) I hope I can follow their great example.
Before I started my journey, and before I started to take real action, I first learned about the Power of Your Belief System, about the Power of Keeping Your Mindset, and about the Power of Leaving Your Comfort Zone. Now that I'm into my journey for about 6 months I discovered something that I used to only read about in the past, the Power of Habits.
Process over Events
Before you can form any habit, you have to hammer this mindset into your head, if necessary you can tell it yourself every morning in front of the mirror. You can't form a good habit if you are still looking for events. Forming a habit is a process, it's not done by the event of deciding to form the habit. While you're in the process of forming positive habits, you're actually in the process of driving your road to the Fastlane. You can view your habits as building the road in front of you. The better you build the road (your habits) the higher your possible speed on this road. Not forming positive habits is like not building your road, without your own road you have to travel the road of someone else, or in other words: you have to drive wherever your boss in your Slowlane job tells you to drive.
Man shit's getting pretty metaphorical right now, please put on your image thinking while reading through my threads.
Old Me vs. New Me
I like to think of the process of forming new habits, like getting rid of the old me, and forming a new me.
The old me loved to do nothing, to be lazy and just dream about being rich and not having to get up the next morning for my job. Every mentioning of hard work over a long time (in other words process) made me shrink and get back into my safe bed as quick as possible (yep like a squirrel). After reading TMF and reading a lot posts on here I knew that this me will never be successful, I realized that before I can even think of being successful I need to change my thought processes, my actions, my routines, my everything.
I had to accept that the old me is not the me that I want to be (rhyme time...). I read those progress threads and stories of successful forum members and felt like 'I need to do what they do, in order to be as successful as they are, someday' I looked at their habits they wrote about and then I looked at my poor habits. They were working for hours every day on their businesses for months and years, while, at the same time, I was debatting wether I should watch The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones now. Pretty easy to see why they were successful and I was not. I realized that the information provided in TMF and this forum is absolutely worthless in the hands of the old me, so let's use that knowledge as a foundation to form a new me. A new me that is capable of putting it into action. That decision was the first step before the first real step.
Step by Step
I decided to form a new me, great right? Halfway there now right? Bullshit. I was still were I was before I decided to form a new me. It would be easy to just fall back into the old me patterns and routines after the first motivation is over. I was aware of that, thanks to several posts on here.
One important shift in my mindset was to stop thinking hundreds of steps ahead, and to just focus on what you have to do to reach the next step. Climbing a whole mountain can seem pretty overwhelming, so stop thinking about that whole mountain the whole time and start focusing on your next step, how do you overcome this trippy path or how do you overcome that river, focusing on step after step while knowing the overall picture (the mountain) will lead you to realizing someday (6 months and 100s of steps later, in my case), that you're in the middle of climbing that mountain. You realize that you forgot to worry about step 100 while you were working on doing step 4, you were looking forward to completing step 4 and starting step 5, but you stopped thinking 'shit what if X, Y and Z happens when I reach step 100?'. You realize that you're in the middle of a process, a process that your old me would never even have started.
Forming Habits
No matter if you want to use the image of building a road in front of you, or of overcoming a mountain, you have to do it step for step. While you do this, you're engaging in a process, and while you're engaging in this process, you are forming habits. Your taking action and making good choices formed positive habits, and those habits form more action taking and more good choices, which results in even more good habits and... You get that point.
It wasn't until recently that I realized that I was creating habits while I was putting one foot in front of the other. I was just doing it and the steps I took after each other formed a process that resulted in me forming habits which made me engage even more into the process.
Don't get me wrong guys, I'm still somewhere there on that mountain climbing it, I'm still far from the top. But while engaging in the process and forming new habits I got rid of my old ways of thinking and doing, I created a new me. A new me that knows that it's possible to reach that f*cking top.
In Front and Behind
I hope that I don't come off as bragging, because that is absolutely not what I want this text to deliver, there's nothing to brag about anyway. I am thankful for this forum and the people on it, without you I would never have developped any positive habit or took any action.
Climbing this mountain, I can't help those in front of me, I can only take their advice and learn how they got so far, but what I can do is looking back and trying to help those climbing that mountain behind me, while at the same time hoping they do the same and help those behind them.
Taking a break from climbing, to look back and help those behind you, just like those in front of you did it for you, is a good way of giving back to this awesome place in my opinion.
There is not much valuable information currently that I can provide for those in front of me, but maybe I can help those behind me in their journey. Thanking all those in front of me for their valuable threads and posts on here (@MJ DeMarco , @Vigilante , @Andy Black , @AllenCrawley , @biophase , @Kak , @SteveO , and so on, you know the names) I hope I can follow their great example.
Before I started my journey, and before I started to take real action, I first learned about the Power of Your Belief System, about the Power of Keeping Your Mindset, and about the Power of Leaving Your Comfort Zone. Now that I'm into my journey for about 6 months I discovered something that I used to only read about in the past, the Power of Habits.
Process over Events
Before you can form any habit, you have to hammer this mindset into your head, if necessary you can tell it yourself every morning in front of the mirror. You can't form a good habit if you are still looking for events. Forming a habit is a process, it's not done by the event of deciding to form the habit. While you're in the process of forming positive habits, you're actually in the process of driving your road to the Fastlane. You can view your habits as building the road in front of you. The better you build the road (your habits) the higher your possible speed on this road. Not forming positive habits is like not building your road, without your own road you have to travel the road of someone else, or in other words: you have to drive wherever your boss in your Slowlane job tells you to drive.
Man shit's getting pretty metaphorical right now, please put on your image thinking while reading through my threads.
Old Me vs. New Me
I like to think of the process of forming new habits, like getting rid of the old me, and forming a new me.
The old me loved to do nothing, to be lazy and just dream about being rich and not having to get up the next morning for my job. Every mentioning of hard work over a long time (in other words process) made me shrink and get back into my safe bed as quick as possible (yep like a squirrel). After reading TMF and reading a lot posts on here I knew that this me will never be successful, I realized that before I can even think of being successful I need to change my thought processes, my actions, my routines, my everything.
I had to accept that the old me is not the me that I want to be (rhyme time...). I read those progress threads and stories of successful forum members and felt like 'I need to do what they do, in order to be as successful as they are, someday' I looked at their habits they wrote about and then I looked at my poor habits. They were working for hours every day on their businesses for months and years, while, at the same time, I was debatting wether I should watch The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones now. Pretty easy to see why they were successful and I was not. I realized that the information provided in TMF and this forum is absolutely worthless in the hands of the old me, so let's use that knowledge as a foundation to form a new me. A new me that is capable of putting it into action. That decision was the first step before the first real step.
Step by Step
I decided to form a new me, great right? Halfway there now right? Bullshit. I was still were I was before I decided to form a new me. It would be easy to just fall back into the old me patterns and routines after the first motivation is over. I was aware of that, thanks to several posts on here.
One important shift in my mindset was to stop thinking hundreds of steps ahead, and to just focus on what you have to do to reach the next step. Climbing a whole mountain can seem pretty overwhelming, so stop thinking about that whole mountain the whole time and start focusing on your next step, how do you overcome this trippy path or how do you overcome that river, focusing on step after step while knowing the overall picture (the mountain) will lead you to realizing someday (6 months and 100s of steps later, in my case), that you're in the middle of climbing that mountain. You realize that you forgot to worry about step 100 while you were working on doing step 4, you were looking forward to completing step 4 and starting step 5, but you stopped thinking 'shit what if X, Y and Z happens when I reach step 100?'. You realize that you're in the middle of a process, a process that your old me would never even have started.
Forming Habits
No matter if you want to use the image of building a road in front of you, or of overcoming a mountain, you have to do it step for step. While you do this, you're engaging in a process, and while you're engaging in this process, you are forming habits. Your taking action and making good choices formed positive habits, and those habits form more action taking and more good choices, which results in even more good habits and... You get that point.
It wasn't until recently that I realized that I was creating habits while I was putting one foot in front of the other. I was just doing it and the steps I took after each other formed a process that resulted in me forming habits which made me engage even more into the process.
Don't get me wrong guys, I'm still somewhere there on that mountain climbing it, I'm still far from the top. But while engaging in the process and forming new habits I got rid of my old ways of thinking and doing, I created a new me. A new me that knows that it's possible to reach that f*cking top.
In Front and Behind
I hope that I don't come off as bragging, because that is absolutely not what I want this text to deliver, there's nothing to brag about anyway. I am thankful for this forum and the people on it, without you I would never have developped any positive habit or took any action.
Climbing this mountain, I can't help those in front of me, I can only take their advice and learn how they got so far, but what I can do is looking back and trying to help those climbing that mountain behind me, while at the same time hoping they do the same and help those behind them.
Taking a break from climbing, to look back and help those behind you, just like those in front of you did it for you, is a good way of giving back to this awesome place in my opinion.
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