It’s been a weird year and a lot of people are stuck. Stuck in their own head, trying to figure out where to go next.
What to do next.
How to move on from this point.
How do you get used to the new normal that we keep hearing about?
Well, I’ve got three simple letters for you. You need to study your A-B-C.
I don’t mean the alphabet. We all learn that in school. I study that when we are growing up…
When it comes to creating change (and actually taking control or moving forward) we all need to master a different A-B-C.
So what do I mean when I say A-B-C?
Well, first of all, let me start with A because A is all about..
ACCEPTANCE
Until you accept where you are right now, you aren’t going anywhere else. It’s as simple as that.
It is impossible to move forward and make change until you ‘start with where’.
Now I know there’s been a lot of talk over the last few years about starting with why.
Simon Sinek’s book ‘Start With Why’ is absolutely brilliant. I love that book. But sometimes you don’t want to start with why. You want to start with WHERE.
Where are you starting from? Because if you don’t know where you are, how can you ever get a map to where you want to go?
Think about that logically. If you’re lost in a shopping mall or some other big place, you look for a map. When you find the map, the most important thing is not where all the stores are. It’s the arrow that says ‘you are here’.
Where are you right now? You need to know where you are. Then you can start thinking about how you move forward to where you want to go.
So step one. In any kind of change, is always about ACCEPTANCE.
It’s about accepting “I am here”.
You need to embrace reality, not better than it is, not worse than it is, BUT as it is.
You don’t need to know go off into fantasy or catastrophe. You don’t need to daydream about the future or what might happen next. You need to know about the reality of where you are.
When where you are, that goes from A (acceptance) to B. B is all about…
BELIEF
It’s about believing that you can actually create change.
Why? Because if you don’t believe you can do it, guess what? You’re right.
There is a famous quote that says, “Believe you can do “something you can, believe you can’t do something you can’t”.
If you don’t believe it, you will never see it. I know they say “Seeing is believing.” It’s back to front. Believing is seeing.
You have to believe in your own abilities, you have to have faith.
You have to have some hope.
What if you’re so stuck that you don’t know how to believe in the things you want to achieve?
Try and find someone else that’s already done it. Look for examples of people who’ve been in the same kind of position as you and have come through it.
Even if there’s only one. Even if you only find one person that’s had a similar kind of experience. If that person can get a successful result and get through that difficult time, so can you.
At least you have the ability to. I’m not guaranteeing you’ll get a result, but you have the ability to. When you believe in yourself, you are much more likely to get the result that you are trying to create.
So we have to ACCEPT, we have to BELIEVE.
But it’s A-B-C, right? So what’s C, The C is all about…
COURAGE
Here’s the harsh reality. The thing you need to do to get the result you want is probably the thing that you’re not doing. Because if you’re already doing it, you’d already been getting that result, right?
If you’re already showing up as the person that gets that kind of result, then guess what? You would already have the result you wouldn’t need to change anything.
If you’re talking about moving forward and doing something different, you have to have the courage to try that thing.
It doesn’t matter how much you learn. It doesn’t matter how many books you read. It doesn’t matter how many videos you watch. It doesn’t matter how many seminars you go to. It doesn’t matter how much you pay for coaching…
If you never take action, you will never move forward.
So, let me recap.
If we want to make a change, we have to ACCEPT where we are where we’re starting from.
We have to have the BELIEF that we can move forward. We have to believe in ourselves in some way, shape, or form. And, like I said, very often the best way to discover that belief is actually find someone that’s already had a similar journey.
For example, if you want to lose weight, how many people out there that have lost weight? Right now, there’s a whole bunch of stuff in the news about Adele. Stories about how Adele has lost weight.
Well, if she can do it, I can do it and you can do it.
That doesn’t mean it can be easy, but it does prove that it’s achievable for human beings to get that result.
ACCEPTANCE, BELIEF, and then COURAGE.
When you know what the steps are you need to take, you have to actually take them. You have to make time to invest in yourself and put the action in.
The only place that success comes before work is in a dictionary. I learned that when I was 12 years-old. It stuck with me ever since. Even in times when I haven’t wanted to do the required work or put in the required effort.
In fact, I don’t particularly like the word work. I prefer the word practise.
We need to figure out what we want to change. Part of that is figuring out who we want to become. Then we need to practice the kind of habits, routines, behaviours that person has.
We’ll never get them right on the first attempt. The first time we do anything, we probably suck at it. We won’t be perfect. Practice creates progress. It gets things done. And remember, done always beats perfect.
