I learned this from Les Brown.  When two people are walking together, something happens.  One person will either slow down or speed up to match the speed of the other person.  This is true in life as well.  Have you slowed down to match the speed of certain people around you?  Who are the people around you?  Where are they going with their lives?  Are they even going anywhere? 

I have found that when I committed myself to growing and going, I had to work to stay aware of the effect that the people around me were having on my own pace.  The tricky thing with going somewhere significant with your life is that at first you want to take people with you.  You don't want to leave anyone behind.  And so you kind of wind up sticking around, trying to tug them along.  But nobody gets anywhere with that approach.  Nobody.  Yeah, maybe you feel like you've made some difference for them...helped them a little bit.  But what's really happening is you've slowed down yourself, you're spending time that could be invested more valuably, and you're getting really, really tired. 

If people are going to walk with you on that awesome, challenging, fulfilling, empowering journey that is personal development, they need to do it by virtue of their own energy, not yours.  Tugging and pulling people along is not allowing them to light up and make use of their own energy...it's just sucking up all of your energy.  And eventually, you're going to find yourself moving at the sluggish pace of the people you were trying to "help." 

You can love people, be patient with people, and treat them with integrity and respect, but don't sacrifice your own progress for people who simply aren't ready to move...or move more quickly.  Sometimes the best thing you can do for the people you want to help is get out there and show them what is possible.  Be a light in the darkness.  And you know what?  The people who are ready will find you and they will run that race with you.  And everyone else will just watch.  And that's okay.  Who knows?  Life can surpise you.  People can surprise you.  But first, get out there and surprise yourself.

My Notes from our last OWL workshop:

• The X Factor = YOU are the ONLY variable
• Everything is a reflection of you. 
• Every external effect mirrors your internal causes
• Money will meet you where you're at mentally.  What is your attitude toward money?  Your
  
  relationship with money? 
• Your reality reflects your self-image
• If you will grow, everything in your life will grow
• If you want to have more, you have to become more
• For things to get better, you have to get better
• Work harder on yourself than you do on outside factors
• You sell you.  People aren't listening to you.  They're looking at you.  They're thinking, "Do I want to be like this person?"
• Be that which you want to attract
• It's not what you say.  It's who you are.
• You are the creator of your outcomes
• Why are you pursuing what you're pursuing?  Why are you doing what you're doing?  Your motivation, your reason WHY needs to be BIG ENOUGH.  Find out what it is that's going to generate and harness the passion you need to create success in your life.
• Input > Thoughts > Expecations > Creation > Life
• Flush your mind with positive input
• You will only have the level of success in your life that equals your personal development

3 IDEAS:

1.  Success is simply a formula.  Understand that you're not going to be great the first time.  Just follow the formula!  Figure out what are the skills you need and practice, practice, PRACTICE!

Your greatest "secret" needs to be that you just practice.  Just practice more than anyone else.

2.  The key to success is massive failure.  Life is a pendulum.  On one side is fear, failure, rejection...on the other is success, happiness, and wealth.  The more you swing the pendulum on the side of your fears, the more the pendulum will come back and swing on the other side rewarding you with success.  Most people can only handle a small amount of fear and failure and so they can only receive a small amount of success and joy.

Your objective is to seek rejection and failure.  Learn to accept it and love it because it means you're getting closer to even greater success.  The most successful people are the people who dared to fail more than you have.  Pop that pendulum!  This is a hard point to understand for many people and even harder for people to embrace and practice.  And this is precisely why achieving massive success is such a mystery to most people.  Your greatest life is on the other side of your greatest fears.  You gotta run through the rejection, the fear, the failure in order to get to the success.  Just look at the track record, the story of any mega successful person and you will understand this concept better.

3.  Consistency wins every time.  This is the one principle that most people don't have.  The stop-and-start process is what kills success.  Keep going!  Just keep putting in the effort.  It's easier to just keep it going than to keep starting.  Consistency is doing the thing you said you were going to do long after the mood has left you.

How do you know if you're living your life on the Slight Edge?  How can you be sure if you are improving your future...or just perpetuating the present?

Well, besides doing the obvious, daily habits that you are already aware of as necessary for daily improvement in the different areas of your life...

I think being on the Slight Edge should literally feel like you are on the edge.  On the edge of your fears, on the edge of your comfort zone, on the edge of your self-imposed limitations.  I think 99% of the "battle" is realizing that the edge is a good place to be.  The pull of what's comfortable and known wants us to think that the edge is bad, that it's foolish and risky to try things we've never tried before.  But the edge is the best place to be.  The edge is where things happen, growth happens, opportunities happen, epiphanies happen, your better future happens. 

Living on the edge is a lesson in the art of learning how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.  This is a practice, a skill even, that will take you far.  Remember the Slight Edge: "What's uncomfortable early becomes comfortable later."

Been a while since I watched Cinderella Man, but I was listening to a CD in which someone recounted the story.  It was the Great Depression and James Braddock could not get enough work to support his family.  At one point his kids were sent away because there was no food left.  Determined to change his circumstances he decided to get in the boxing ring against the number one contendor in the world.  When asked why he would fight someone who had viciously killed two other boxers in the ring and could quite possible kill him too, Braddock replied, "I'm doing it for bread and milk."

What represents "bread and milk" for you?  What desire/dream/goal burns you enough to get you in that ring with your weaknesses, fears, and doubts?  You can't overcome what you don't face.  Braddock won that match.  He should have lost.  It would have made more sense if he had lost.  But when the dream is big enough, the facts don't count.  Is your dream big enough?