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What Intentions Will You Set for 2020?

Recently, we took a look back over the last year with the idea of highlighting the things that weren’t so helpful to us, so that we didn’t bring them with us into 2020. This week, I wanted to take a forward look at the year ahead. What are the things you do want to cultivate in the new year? Whether you decide to set specific resolutions or not, I think that most of us can benefit from starting a bit more zoomed-out. Rather than immediately diving into clear-cut plans, beginning with intentions, and getting more specific from there, can be an even more powerful way to kick off the new year. Here’s why:

Inform Your Actions, Decision, and Goals

Sometimes, our goals can feel a bit disjointed. We’re not always clear on the deeper purpose behind them, and it can be easy to lose sight of our initial motivation. When we start with some intentions for the year, these can create the foundation for our goals and resolutions. When you look more generally at the things you want to see in your life, you can then zoom in to the specific things that will help you realize them. This gives you a bit more control in shaping the overall direction of your year.

Weave a Thread Through Multiple Areas of Your Life

While goals are often separated by the different areas of our lives — professional goals, personal goals, etc. — I like that intentions tend to be a bit more overarching. Instead of compartmentalizing, they allow us to link everything together. This helps us create more realistic plans that align with the life we want for ourselves more generally, not just in one specific context. Then when we do start getting more specific with our goals, those threads will create a strong foundation from which we can build.

Leave Space for Adjustment

Unlike a rigid resolution, intentions leave space for you to evaluate and adjust your goals without feeling like you’ve somehow abandoned your mission. If your intentions for the year ahead are balance, inspiration, and accountability, for example, there are countless goals that can help you foster these things. As you move through the year, you can continue using those intentions as a reference point. Are your goals helping you move closer, or do they need some adjustments?

Transform

Who will you be a year from now? When we try to take too much control over this answer, we can leave ourselves boxed in. We don’t know how the year ahead is going to unfold, and that’s part of what gives it so much potential. Setting intentions for the year creates a strong framework, but it still gives us the freedom to fill that in as the year unfolds. A year from now, rather than just checking accomplishments off a list, you can be looking at the ways in which you’ve transformed overall.

 

When we bring our focus to something, we give it power. Identifying those intentions at the start of the year can create a perfect fuel supply to motivate us through the next twelve months. What are your intentions for 2020? Did you have intentions for 2019? And how well were you able to cultivate them over the last year? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

What Will You Leave Behind as You Head Into 2020?

In many situations, a change in perspective can open up new opportunities. When it comes to planning for the new year, one of the most traditional perspectives is ‘what resolutions will I make for the year ahead?’. It’s a forward-looking perspective that’s often focused on major change. While I’m not suggesting you abandon this perspective if it works for you, I do think it’s worth considering other perspectives in addition to it. Finding new ways to think about how you’ll make the transition into 2020 can help you uncover new ideas, goals, and strategies for success. One perspective that I want to dive into today is lightening your load. What are the things you don’t want to carry with you into 2020? This can be a great place to start when it comes to planning for the new year. It’s a cleaning up of the proverbial clutter and creating an environment in which you can thrive. So, what kind of things might you leave in 2019?

Habits

I recently wrote about the power of habits, and I think they’re key to consider when it comes to leaving things behind. Whether good or bad, all of our habits influence our success. When thinking about what you’ll ditch for 2020, bad habits are a great place to start. If you can identify some of the habits that are slowing down your success, you can make a conscious effort to keep them out of the year ahead. Things like procrastination and too much screen time, for example, are probably not helping you get where you want to go. If that’s the case for any of your habits, don’t bring them with you into the new year.

Mindsets

Mindsets also play a significant role in our success. They inform the way we approach our work, the decisions we make, and the way we respond to challenges. Start the new year off with a fresh perspective. Take some time to reflect on the mindsets you have now and determine if any are negatively impacting your success. As with bad habits, by bringing our attention to these things, we can make a point of leaving them in the past. Whether you’re not open to the potential for growth or you regularly focus on the competition, these kinds of mindsets should be left in the past.

Failures

We’ve all probably had our ups and downs in 2019. Hopefully, if you encountered failure, you were able to learn from it. As you step into 2020, take those lessons with you, but don’t hold on to your mistakes. Past failures can be a weight that holds you back. Whether they make you feel incapable, afraid of future failure, or unmotivated to try again, there’s no use for them. Separate the insights from the failures themselves, and only bring along the things that are going to help you have a successful year.

Fear

Fear is one of the most limiting forces out there. Though it’s not always easy to combat, it’s worth making the effort to leave some of your fears behind and move into 2020 feeling a bit freer. Fear can hold us back from experimenting, setting challenging goals, and taking risks, and seizing opportunities. Where does fear come up in your professional life? See if you can design a plan for the new year that will allow you to transform it into a sense of determination and drive.

 

As 2019 winds to a close, ask yourself how you can move into 2020 feeling lighter. Identify the things that have accumulated and are weighing you down, and make a conscious effort to leave them behind you. Any thoughts about what you’ll be leaving in the past? Please share in the comments.

Why Staying in Survival Mode Might Sink Your Ship

It’s easy for busy professionals to switch into survival mode without fully realizing it. Your plate starts overflowing, and your focus shifts from growing your business to getting through the day. While we all have days like this from time to time, when survival mode becomes your norm, it can create a cycle that not only limits growth but that also pushes you backward. Rather than giving all of our focus to dealing with the stress of the day-to-day, we want to put ourselves in a position where we can thrive. Sure, we’ll still have to deal with the day-to-day challenges, but we’ll have time and energy left over to direct towards progress. So, what does survival mode look like, why is it so dangerous to success, and how can we get out of it? Let’s dive in:

Goals

A great indicator of whether you’re thriving or surviving is your goals. Do you have mid to long-term goals that you work towards on a regular basis? Or are your goals more along the lines of leaving the office by 8pm, getting paperwork in on time, and having time to rest on weekends? When you’re in survival mode, you don’t have the capacity to think very far into the future. If you’ve been in this state for a while, it can take some time to climb your way out. Setting just one or two longer-term goals can be a great stepping stool. It doesn’t need to be something majorly ambitious, just give yourself a future point to focus on that can help you break out of the daily frenzy.

Energy

When you’re in survival mode, you’re likely feeling exhausted more often than not. And unfortunately, you’re probably getting less done than if you were in thrive mode. When we’re in survival mode, it tends to feel like an uphill battle or struggling against the flow. If this becomes chronic, you might need a significant period of time to recharge. If you find yourself regularly skipping breaks and work continues to encroach on your personal time, you might need to take some counter-intuitive steps to make a shift. Even if it feels like you don’t have time for it, allowing yourself a few short breaks throughout the day and maintaining the boundary between your work and personal life is necessary if you want to get out of survival mode.

Productivity

Survival mode is fielding everything as it comes with no strategy or framework to take charge of your day. Professionals need to design the systems and routines that will allow them to work more productively and conserve their time and energy. These create a foundation to break out of survival mode and give you the tools to thrive. Again, this is a time investment, and it can be challenging to do when the daily workload is overwhelming. But if you want to make a change, creating these tools needs to make your priority list.

Progress

Survival mode is about getting through the day. It’s as if at the end of one day, we press a reset and do it all over again the next. Real progress can be painstakingly slow. When we’re thriving, however, we see the cumulative effect of our actions. Each day builds on the one before it. We have goals in the future that we can measure our progress towards. Setting up some small points in the future can help you build motivation as you see yourself progress.

 

Professionals who want to grow a successful business need to do more than get through the day. They need to create an environment in which they can thrive. This means creating an environment where they can set goals for the future and maintain the energy and efficiency to work towards them. How do you differentiate between surviving and thriving? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Harnessing the Power of Habits

As we approach the new year, there’s often a lot of discussion around large goals. Don’t get me wrong, ambitious goals are valuable, but those goals alone won’t necessarily get us where we want to go. Instead, it’s usually our much smaller repetitive daily actions that make an impact over time. Our habits can really pack a punch when it comes to achievement, but only if we know how to use them effectively. So, how can professionals better harness the power of their habits? Here are a few ideas to get started:

Be Strategic

Your habits have the potential to be a great fuel source for your forward progress, but you have to set the direction. Look to your bigger goals for inspiration. What do you want to achieve? What do you want to change? How do you want to improve? When you home in on a few areas that are important to you, you can then identify the habits that will get you there. You want to get healthier? Habits like eating a salad at lunch, taking a walk after dinner, or stopping at the gym after work can help you get there. You can even zoom in on smaller habits to support your progress. Maybe you team up with a friend or family member for your evening walk or pack your bag for the gym the night before. The idea is to look at what you want to achieve big-picture and zoom in to these small actions to make it happen.

Consistency & Commitment

What makes habits so powerful is repetition. They’re something we do consistently, and that consistent effort adds up. This cumulative effect is as true for good habits as it is for bad habits. Though the actions may be small, we can often see their large effects over time. So, if you’ve identified several positive habits you want to build, how can you support consistency? The answer is commitment. If you’re trying to make changes to your current habits, it’s going to take some commit, especially to get started. Holding yourself accountable is important. I highly recommend writing these habits down for yourself. If there’s someone in your life who will support or join you, include them in your mission to cultivate these new habits as well.

Habit Tracker

One of the best tools to maximize the potential of your habits is to track them. First, this is a great way to increase accountability. When you have a notebook or app waiting for you to check off the box, there’s an added motivation to get it done. You can also monitor your consistency. No one’s perfect and life is so often unexpected, missing one or two days of a habit doesn’t mean you’ve completely fallen off track. A habit tracker can help you get right back on course. It’s also a daily reminder of what you’re working towards. Checking in, seeing your progress, and making the connection between your daily habits and your successes is incredibly motivating.

Trade-Off

Finally, trying to ditch 10 new habits and replace them with 10 new and improved ones all at once can be an overwhelming feat. Depending on your current habits, it’s wise to ease into this. While attempting to massively change your routines in one week might backfire, starting small by replacing one or two unhelpful habits with something more useful is great. When you remove a bad habit, you can sometimes leave a gap in your schedule. If you always check your emails before bed, for example, and you want to break that habit, replace it with something that helps you move closer to your goals, like reading a few pages of a book at that time instead. This slow trading in of bad habits for better ones is a great way to revamp your routines over time.

 

Habits are small but mighty. They’re a resource that is completely within reach, we simply have to choose to utilize it. When you start really tuning in to your habits, you see how transformative they can be. This is even more motivation to continue working with them. Are there any habits that help you progress towards your goals? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

The Importance of Self-Discipline

When we look at the most successful people today, whether that’s athletes, artists, business professionals, or anyone else, one commonality we often see is self-discipline. It might look different from person to person, but if we want to achieve ambitious goals and grow a successful career, we need a level of self-discipline to stay on track. The good news is that this is something we can develop and strengthen. So, whether you feel like you’re starting at zero or simply need a little boost, there’s plenty you can do to step up your self-discipline. Here are 4 important areas to consider:

Commitment

We don’t usually achieve massive goals overnight. Major accomplishments require commitment. It’s often easy to commit to a large goal in the beginning, but as time passes, it can be more difficult to maintain the same level of focus. This is where self-discipline is so important. It helps us to renew that commitment repeatedly until we reach the endpoint. It might be as simple as reminding yourself of the importance of a certain goal, or it could be establishing clear checkpoints for yourself to stay accountable.

Consistency

When we put in consistent work towards our goals, we tend to see faster results. This is often easier said than done for busy professionals with a lot on their plates. Self-discipline can help us maintain that consistency, even with a demanding schedule. Though you might be tired, distracted, or ready to check-out, self-discipline can motivate you to put in the work. Skipping one day of work towards your goals can quickly turn into one week, and pretty soon it’s slipped off your radar. Using self-discipline to keep yourself on track and putting in regular effort is a powerful strategy for progress.

Creativity

Self-discipline doesn’t have to be boring. There are plenty of ways to make this more interesting for yourself, so get creative. A great way to do this is by making some incentives and rewards for yourself. Give yourself something to look forward to. If you put in the work you need to every day this week or this month, treat yourself to something you enjoy. We can even be creative in the way we strengthen our self-discipline. While you may be looking to improve professionally, you can build your self-discipline in many different contexts, and the results will often carry over. Maybe you commit to running every morning or meditating every day for the month. Self-discipline is like a muscle, and the more we use it, the stronger it will get.

Compassion

Instead of thinking of self-discipline as some type of punishment, we can think of it as doing what’s best for ourselves. However, we need to ensure this doesn’t go too far. We need to know when to draw the line. If self-discipline is pushing you towards burnout, it’s probably time to back off. Having compassion for yourself and honestly checking in about where you’re at and what you need to perform at your best is important. If it means mindfully taking a day off or toning down your efforts, that’s okay.

 

How self-disciplined are you? And what are your biggest challenges? It’s not always easy to stay on track, but the more disciplined we can be with ourselves, the more likely we are to achieve the things we want. If you have any tips for improving self-discipline, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

How Comfortable is Your Comfort Zone?

Really think about it. Where are you in relation to your comfort zone? Have you been firmly planted there for a while now? Do you venture out occasionally? Or maybe hardly stay in it long enough to recognize it? I don’t think there’s necessarily a one-size-fits-all relationship that’s best here, but I do think there are some key points we can all benefit from looking at. One, we need to realize what our comfort zone looks like and have a sense of how often we venture outside of it. We need awareness. Two, I also believe there’s a relationship between stepping out of that comfort zone and growth. This isn’t to say that you can’t grow in it, or that every time you step out of it will feel like a success. But the practice of challenging ourselves to push beyond the boundaries of our safe zone can be a powerful motivator of growth. Here are some of the most important things to think about when it comes to your comfort zone:

Mindset

The way that we think about our comfort zone tends to dictate how we engage with it. Some professionals stay firmly planted in their comfort zones and rarely think about it. They let routine and lack of risk box them in. Then there are others who occasionally push themselves to step outside, but who prefer to be in their comfort zones. Finally, there are some who find their comfort zones to be not so comfortable. They are so committed to growth that they would rather be uncomfortable and challenging themselves than comfortable and stagnant. When you have a growth mindset, you can start to look at your comfort zone from a more complex perspective. You can see that while there is value in routine and ease, there is also value is pushing beyond that. When your mindset makes your comfort-zone feel a bit less comfortable, that can drive forward progress.

Start Small

If you’re someone who wants to start stepping out of their comfort zone more often, starting small is key. If you’re not used to venturing so far outside of it, it can be, unsurprisingly, very uncomfortable. Suddenly, you’re in a position where you don’t know all the answers, where you need to be able to adapt and think on your feet. If you get inspired to challenge yourself a bit more, don’t force yourself so far outside of your comfort zone that you can’t wait to return. This makes it even harder to try again in the future. Instead, start with small steps that feel right to you. The more you do this, the more you’ll be able to challenge yourself over time.

Fail

Step out of your comfort zone and fail. It will show you that it’s not so bad, that there’s something to be gained from it, and that you can keep moving forward. Of course, you won’t fail intentionally, but allow yourself the possibility. That’s what stepping out of your comfort zone is all about. Try something that you are not certain you will succeed at. This is how you find your edge. And if you go a bit too far and aren’t successful, you’ll see that you can withstand the discomfort. This can quickly shrink the fear of failure and build confidence to try again.

 

To me, a comfort zone is a fine home base to return to, but it’s not a place to stay forever. Getting to a point where you have a level of comfort in your career is great. It’s in this place that we can reflect, explore, and strategize. Then we can wisely venture outside of that comfort zone, to expand, learn, grow, and then return. This means your comfort zone will evolve with you. Things that were once really challenging become par for the course. How do you engage with your comfort zone? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Top Strategies to Maintain the Boundaries Between Your Work and Personal Life

For many driven professionals, checking out of work is a challenge. But that disconnection from work mode is vital to our long-term success. So, how can we support a healthy division between our work time and personal time? Establishing some clear boundaries is essential. These boundaries allow us to draw a line between work and personal time, helping us to more fully recharge. Here are some strategies that can help professionals to get the right boundaries in place:

Evaluate Your Expectations

When you consistently ask yourself to accomplish 12 hours of work in a 9-hour day, you’re asking for there to be challenges when it comes to switching out of work mode. You might leave the office after 9 hours of work, but the remaining work you’d wanted to finish still looms over you. It’s no surprise that this work then often bleeds into our personal time. Whether it’s a lengthy phone call or checking emails from bed, when our expectations for our days regularly exceed our realistic capacity, it’s going to be difficult to respect the boundaries you set for yourself.

Make Some Rules

Simple, clear-cut rules make for easy boundaries. This will certainly differ from person to person, so it’s important to make the designations that work for you. Identifying certain work-free rooms can be an easy way to keep work from infiltrating your personal space at home. Perhaps it’s your living room where you usually spend time with your family or your bedroom where you need to wind down for a good night’s sleep. Labeling these as work-free spaces is a great distinction. You can even take it a step further and make these or other spaces tech-free spaces. This can help you avoid the temptation to check emails or respond to messages, and it can also help you to be more present in your personal life. You could also use the time of day instead of physical spaces. Maybe you’re on call for clients until 7pm, but after that, your phone goes on silent and is out of sight.

Design a Routine

How do you wind down after work? A routine is a great way to support healthy boundaries. Identify the things that help you transition from work mode to personal mode, and shape a routine out of them. This repeated action will start to signal to your brain that it’s time to make the switch. Maybe it’s making time for a quick overview of the following day so that you feel organized and prepared. Maybe it’s going for a run or sitting down for dinner with your family. It doesn’t need to be complicated. Simply choose an activity that helps define the switch from work to personal and make it a part of your daily routine.

 

Make Commitments

You probably already do this in your professional life, but making commitments in our personal lives can help ensure we make the switch from work mode to personal mode. Maybe you schedule an after-work class or make plans to meet a friend for a drink. Including these things on your calendar and respecting them as much as you respect work commitments is key. Having these personal anchors in our schedules can hold us accountable for respecting the boundaries.

 

To be successful, you need to give yourself time to decompress and recharge so that you can show up at your best. When you’re committed to your work and have a demanding to-do list, making a clear division between work and personal can be challenging. The right balance and boundaries will differ from person to person, but it’s worth taking the time to figure out what works for you.

The Path to Burnout

No professional intends to work themselves to burnout, of course, yet more and more are finding themselves there. If it’s not a conscious decision, then how is it that we end up experiencing burnout? From my perspective, it’s often a series of decisions and habits that accumulate over time. Often, these stem from a desire to grow and succeed, but they end up backfiring. Here are some of the most common things that can lead to burnout:

Neglecting a Work-Life Balance

It can feel like dedication when you stay late at the office or get work done on your off days, but when these things become regular habits, they can start to disrupt our work-life balance. You might justify by saying things like, ‘it’s just for this one project’ or ‘I’ll slow down once I reach this goal’, but too often, we find another project or another goal that keeps us in the same pattern. When our work-life balance is off, it erodes our ability to maximize our potential. It tends to make us feel exhausted, stressed, distracted, and overwhelmed, none of which supports our success.

Losing Connection with Your Purpose

Sometimes, we get so caught up in the day-to-day demands that we lose sight of the bigger picture. We start resenting our work instead of enjoying it. When this starts to happen and we ignore it, we encourage feelings of burnout. You might have a long to-do list and a packed schedule, but if you’re so busy that you’ve lost sight of what makes you happy in your work, it might be time to take a step back. It’s important to remember why you started doing the work you do in the first place. What makes you passionate about your job? What are you grateful for? When we stay connected to these things, it helps to prevent burnout.

Skipping Breaks

Similar to neglecting a work-life balance, skipping breaks often comes from a desire to work harder and accomplish more. Though it might look like dedication, it’s often sabotaging our success. When we’re pushing through every day with no time to decompress, we’re asking for problems. This sets us up for mistakes, frustration, and stress. Professionals who see breaks as an unnecessary part of their workday are more likely to find themselves burnt out. Instead, we need to value breaks and see them as an important part of our strategy to achieve the things we want.

Always Saying Yes

You want to grow your career, so turning down an opportunity can feel like a step in the wrong direction. Unfortunately, when we get into the habit of always saying yes, without pausing to check our calendars or energy levels, we can quickly push ourselves to exhaustion. It might feel ambitious to continue taking on more and more, but if it’s maxing out your capacity, you’re not likely to be able to deliver the high-quality work you need to. When you’re regularly in this state of overdrive, burnout probably isn’t far off.

 

What are the actions and habits that cause talented professionals to experience burnout? Things like neglecting your work-life balance, losing connection with your purpose, skipping breaks, and always saying yes are just a few of the common habits that can promote burnout. This isn’t to say that if these things happen from time to time that you’re destined to burn out. It’s more that when they become chronic patterns, they’re simply not sustainable. Are there other habits you think contribute to burnout? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

How Do You Spend Your Off Time?

When we’re looking for ways to improve and grow in our careers, we often look to the ways we spend our time in the office. Interestingly, how we spend our time outside of the office can also play a role in our professional success. The hobbies and activities we engage in outside of work often have an impact on how we engage with our work. Playing a sport, taking an art class, watching tv, and getting outside all have different effects. What are some of the ways our out-of-work activities impact our professional success? Here are some of the most important:

Boost Creativity

When it comes to problem solving, creative thinking can be a major asset. One way to strengthen our creativity is to engage in hobbies that work that part of our brain. You don’t have to be a terrific artist to get in touch with your creative side. The key is working with a different part of your brain. This helps us find different perspectives and innovative solutions, in and out of work.

Build Confidence

Hobbies contribute to our sense of self. They’re a chance to learn about ourselves and build self-esteem. In many ways, this is because they allow us to witness our progress. Maybe you see yourself improving at a sport, perhaps your artwork is evolving, maybe you’ve learned something completely new. Though all the work might be done outside of the office, the confidence we gain comes with us when we head back to work.

De-Stress

We need ways to de-stress and unwind after challenging days. This is a key strategy for preventing burnout. The activities we chose in our free time can help us do this. When you identify the hobbies that help you decompress and recharge, these are powerful tools. It might be as simple as taking a walk after a long day or maybe getting lost in a creative pursuit.

Continue Learning

When we engage in activities that are new to us or in which there is ample room for growth, we give ourselves the opportunity to learn new things. We challenge our minds and keep things active. After years in the same job, your day-to-day might start to look fairly similar. Choosing a hobby that requires you to keep learning helps keep you in that open mindset. It allows you to bring that sense of curiosity to work and find new ways to grow in that environment as well.

 

The things we do in our off time can contribute to our professional success. If you currently have a favorite hobby, ask yourself if it’s offering you any benefits in your work life. If you have space to accommodate a new hobby, consider choosing with these things in mind. If there’s a specific area you’re wanting to strengthen at work, there’s often a hobby that can support your improvement. Anything from teamwork and networking to innovation and branding. How do your hobbies impact your professional life? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

The Law of Attraction: Can you manifest your success?

The mainstream popularity of the Law of Attraction has grown over the last decade with the release of books like The Secret that break it down into its simplest ideas. While I certainly don’t claim to be an expert, there are certain elements that do seem to have some real value, especially for professionals wanting to grow their business. Let’s take a look:

What is it?

Again, I’m no expert here, so this is just a general glimpse at what the Law of Attraction is all about. From what I know, it’s a belief about the way the world works. It suggests that we’re all energetic beings and that our thoughts and feelings have energy too. The real power of it is that the Law of Attraction suggests that we create our own reality through our thoughts. This is called manifesting. What we think about, we draw into our experience (or attract), and that is then the reality we experience. Let’s dive in a bit more:

Thoughts

Experts believe that we think an average of 50,000 – 80,000 thoughts every day. According to the law of attraction, when we think positive thoughts, we’re more likely to experience a positive reality. When we think negative thoughts, we’re more likely to experience a negative reality. We can’t control our minds completely, but we can bring more awareness to our thoughts and work to cultivate ones that are more in line with what we want. If we’re thinking that business is on a steady decline, there aren’t enough prospects, our competition is going to beat us, that coworker isn’t doing a great job — the list goes on — according to the Law of Attraction, those are the things we’re going to experience. On the flip side, when we have positive thoughts, that business is growing, prospects are out there, we have something valuable to offer, and our team is strong, that is closer to what we experience. It sounds simple, but when you realize how much thinking goes on every day, it’s not necessarily easy to manage the quality of your thoughts — it takes effort to notice the ones that aren’t serving you and to cultivate the ones that are.

Resistance

Ok, so you’re thinking that you’re going to be highly successful, double your salary, and take your business international this year. And then it doesn’t happen. Is the Law of Attraction just a myth then? This belief about reality has been highly simplified into ‘what you think, you’ll experience’. And while this is an essential part of it, it’s not the whole story. We also have resistance working against us. When you’re thinking those things, do you actually believe them? Or are you just trying to trick the system? Did you grow up believing there was a limit to your success? Are you subconsciously afraid of growing your business to that extent? For all of us, there are these more subtle beliefs and fears that can work against the things we want. To create the reality we desire, we need to address and maybe dismantle some of these as well.

How it works?

Like I said, this piece isn’t meant to a breakdown of the Law of Attraction. I’m not even suggesting it’s something that I subscribe to. But what is interesting is that even these most basic principles hold value. It doesn’t really matter if you believe that we’re energetic beings or not.

 

Let’s look at an example. If you cultivate thoughts that your business is going to be highly successful, work to reduce thoughts that suggest the opposite, and start breaking down beliefs that you don’t deserve success or that too much success could be too overwhelming, what happens? Sure, the Law of Attraction may suggest that you energetically start attracting that success, but let’s be even more simplistic. When you’re thinking positively about your potential for success, what’s your attitude like? Where is your confidence level? How motivated are you? These things directly influence the way we work. When we have a positive attitude, healthy confidence, and high motivation, we tend to work in a way that promotes success.

 

Now, let’s think about the opposite. What about when you feel like success is always out of reach, that achieving it is impossible, and that work will always be difficult. What is your attitude, confidence, and motivation like then? Chances are, they are all making it more difficult for you to be successful.

 

The Law of Attraction suggests the power of our thoughts and our ability to create our own experience. Whether you dive in and believe it on an energetic-level, or you simply take away the idea that our inner thoughts can influence our outer world, it’s a fascinating way to approach success. Have you heard about the Law of Attraction? Could it hold any value in your professional life? I’d love to hear your thoughts.