5 truths that will increase your success in life August 7, 2022 by Belinda EganIt’s been another sleepless night, and you’re ready to scream at how frustrated you are over your lack of adequate rest. You toss and turn, flipping your pillow over and over, trying to get comfortable…but the problem isn’t your bed – it’s your head. You lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling, and all of your worries come rushing at you all at once. You pick up your phone and scroll mindlessly through it, trying to quiet the frantic to-do list and wildly dangling loose ends doing a tap dance behind your eyes. You glance at the time…4am. Might as well get up. You’re definitely not falling back asleep now. After these sleepless, troubled nights, it can feel like a real struggle to be hopeful for the day ahead. How can you turn it around? Those who are successful in life make a very specific decision in moments of angst: They lean into the discomfort. They boldly press forward and look for opportunities to rise above the stress instead of ruminating on lost sleep and what-ifs. They know that pain brings change – and change is a very good thing, indeed. Today’s article breaks down 5 core beliefs or ‘truths’ that will keep you moving forward – and ultimately – become successful in all aspects of your life. But fair warning – these aren’t easy truths to swallow. You will have to ‘fake it til you make it’ for some of them. You might feel like you’re downright fooling yourself believing them, at the beginning. But as you start to see incremental progress in your life (see Truth #4), you’ll know you’re doing something right. And then you just keep moving and pushing yourself. The truths below will help strengthen your mental toughness and resilience. When you have a strong mind and a determined attitude, you’re strapped in for the ride of your life, and you’re ready to take on what comes to you. Let’s jump in! Truth #1: Failure is an opportunity to learn “I haven’t failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that didn’t work.” ~ Thomas Jefferson Failing sucks. It makes you feel like you wasted your energy and your time. Often, your first thought after a failure is, “Well, I’m never gonna try that again.” But that thought is another failure by its very nature. Failure just means that you tried something that’s not going to happen naturally in exactly the way you tried it. Here’s how you turn failure into a learning opportunity: Retrace your steps Change something about what or how you tried Observe what happens with the change you’ve made Repeat these steps (ad nauseum) until you succeed It’s really as simple as that – but most people give up after a few tries. Those people don’t succeed. Do you want to succeed? Then try it a different way. Truth #2: Willpower is a finite resource – don’t rely on it You can promise yourself up and down that you’re going to break that bad habit that’s holding you back, and you might be able to white-knuckle it for a while. You might stack together a bunch of days where you don’t do the bad habit, and it feels great to be free…but you feel like you’ve got a monkey on your back the whole time. Some days, it’s the only thing you can focus on. Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it. When you hit the pillow on those nights, you feel like you ran a brutal marathon – and if you reflect on the day, you probably didn’t get much done. You might have even leaned a little heavy into something else that isn’t exactly super-healthy, just to distract yourself from the bad habit. That’s because willpower is a finite resource, and you drained it way too fast. If you’re depending on sheer force of will to determine your actions, without having a really good reason for them, you’re going to burn out and return to the status quo. Instead, try this: take an honest account of what good things this bad habit is bringing to your life. And I mean, a reeeeally honest account. Does it just make you feel good for a little while? Do you feel great all day afterwards? Is it having some unintended side effects that you don’t feel so great about? Is it really bringing you joy? Is there something else you could be doing that could bring you more joy and be overall better for you? Consider the answers to these questions carefully. Once you decide you’re just not going to do something (or are going to), for a really good reason, no matter what, you don’t have to use willpower anymore. No moderation. No white-knuckling. No fighting off temptation. Just a decision and an action: no matter what, you do this instead of that.* *Vital disclaimer: Obviously if the issue is one of addiction or health, please consult with your practitioner before making any life-changing decisions. Truth #3: You only need one big win, and then the wins will start snowballing Celebrities get given everything for free. Really wealthy people have almost no barrier to entry for anything they pursue. Executives get offered jobs left and right at networking events. These people know one thing really well: once you break the glass ceiling, there is no limit to what you can get. So take it from these people (and from me): You only need one big win, and then the wins will start to snowball. Keep going. Believe that your win is coming. And once it does, another one will follow close behind it. Truth #4: Incremental progress beats being perfection every time “It is so easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily basis. It is only when looking back 2 or 5 or 10 years later that the value of good habits and the cost of bad ones becomes strikingly apparent.” ~ James Clear, author of Atomic Habits If you’ve ever adopted and stuck with a workout routine, you know how this works: On the first day, you do three sit ups. Your abdominals ache for two days. You consider never doing it again. Once your abs stop hurting, you try again. You find you can do a few more. Your abs don’t hurt as much the next day, either. In a month, you can do 50 sit ups in under a minute. You start to notice that your posture is better. You can feel tiny baby muscles trying to pop out from under the soft fat on your belly. In six months, you’ve got a full-blown gym membership that you actually use, and you’ve learned how to deadlift. You have actual gym friends now. You’re a gym person. Who woulda thunk it? If you had focused on trying to do 25 perfect sit ups on your first day, you might have been in so much pain that you promised yourself you’d never workout again. But you didn’t. You chose incremental progress over perfection, and now, look at you. You’re a gym rat. You own workout clothes. You look great naked. That’s the power of incremental progress. Truth #5: Growth is always uncomfortable If growth wasn’t uncomfortable, they wouldn’t call the zone where nothing happens your “comfort zone”. Growth happens in lots of different ways: learning something new about yourself, making friends with someone totally different from you and really loving them, getting physically stronger, changing your mind about something. But make no mistake: while you’re growing, you will have growing pains. Learning something new about yourself means that you have to question your identity and how you fit in the world. That can feel super isolating and awkward for a while. Making friends with someone who’s different than you challenges your beliefs about the world and the people in it. That takes some maturity to grapple with. It will make you question a lot of stuff about yourself and what you’ve been allowing and dismissing in your life. Getting physically stronger is literally the act of making tiny tears in your muscle fibers and then having them repair themselves stronger. It hurts. A lot! Changing your mind about something requires admitting that you might have been wrong. That is something that some people never learn how to do…because it’s really uncomfortable. If you’re growing, you’re gonna be uncomfortable. There’s no way around it. But on the other side of the growth, you’ll appreciate the experience so much more because it wasn’t easy. ___________________ Success is never guaranteed, and it must be earned. We all know that. If it’s handed to you, it’s not success – it’s luck. In your career trajectory, you will have plenty of chances to either fly or fall. Surrounding yourself with people who adopt these truths will help you stay focused on making the most of the opportunities given to you. Our next cohort of Courageous Leadership opens up on Sept 29, 2022. We will bring together 12 highly motivated women to grow, learn, and challenge one another in a mastermind environment. 12-week guided Courageous Leadership Course, cohort style (valued at $7,500) Four Modules, Twenty-Three Lessons from The Courageous Leadership Course Becoming A Leader Leadership Vision Strategy Effective Communication Executive Passion Personalized Leadership Roadmap Lifetime access to the Courageous Leadership Course (including all future iterations) (valued at $1,997) 1-year access to The Leader’s Edge Membership and guest speakers throughout the year (valued at $2,997) Be one of the selected 12. Fill out your application here. Waiting for you, Belinda Egan