What is up everyone? It is Saturday, October 21st of 2023. So this is live. So if you’re watching this right now in this moment or if you’re about to log on and say what’s up like you always do I just want to say good morning or good afternoon depending on where you are in this beautiful world of ours (sarcastically said that but yeah), there’s beauty in it it’s just a matter of where we choose to look, right? It’s all about focus. So welcome back to another family education and support group with your host Parham. This is something we’ve been doing here for years now. It’s nice to be able to say years (plural), and it’s something that we’re gonna continue doing and I’ll gladly take up the opportunity to teach and preach and coach and get to know some wonderful people that are popping up. Let me tell you a little bit about this real quick. It’s kind of like a weekly show. You know, I looked at my basketball schedule – there will be about three or four conflicts in the next three months but that’s not too bad, but a coach has got to coach. I’m a little tired right now because last night I got home pretty late. We had our first basketball practice and get this, it’s called Midnight Madness, so yes, we practice through midnight. And it’s the first practice that you’re allowed to have in the year and the kids get excited. We play music, lost my voice a little bit but not too bad. Here we go. We got 28 games coming up and pretty much practice every day and all that kind of stuff so I’m gonna start getting going here.
But this talk, you’re not here to learn about my basketball side project passion that I’ve been doing for 15 years. You’re here because you want to get something out of this from your time that you’re investing and this channel really helps talk about and support anybody who firsthand or secondhand has experienced any type of pain as a result of addiction, mental illness, trauma, grief and loss and hopefully we can encapsulate a large group of humans that can benefit from this. It is interactive so as you can see right here for example, Counselor Jim, Katalin, Jess, Mom and Dad, Marilyn, if you leave comments or say hi or just ask questions I could put it up, we can have a nice discussion about it. There’s no right and wrong.
A couple things about myself: I do have a Masters degree in marriage and family therapy. I am in alcohol and drug addictions/ processes, that kind of specialist. It’s okay Marilyn, it’s okay. I appreciate that. She said “sorry for the caps,” meaning capital letters because over here it’s a “Good Morning PARHAM” – it looks like she’s she’s yelling at me but what, I know you’re just enthusiastically saying hi, so I didn’t even take it in a bad way. Jaleh Joon, what’s up? So pretty much we come here every week and we talk and I teach and people share their experiences and we go from there. Some weeks it’s about mental illness, some weeks it’s about addiction, some weeks it’s about boundaries or codependency or rebuilding trust or personal development.
Today’s conversation is about the causes of failure that we can have. So I’m really cautious when using the word failure because I think even a perceived failure can be a huge monumental, transformative life experience so not saying that all failure is bad. I believe that sometimes when we fail we have the ability to fail forward and we have the ability to get back up and make progress as a result of that fall. That’s a different way of looking at failure. I think failure could be a very powerful, powerful life experience if we extrapolate and pull the nuggets and the wisdom that we need to prevent it from happening again. Because if we don’t and we fail and then fail again over the same thing we just failed about, and fail again and again then the failure is just sad. It’s a heartbreak. Any talk I ever do is dedicated to the possibility of human transformation. I would not be doing this if I didn’t believe that.
So let’s get right into it my friends. The 10 causes of failure. If you’re wondering where this came from, there’s a book called Think and Grow Rich which is one of my first topics of the year that we usually talk about or the last topic of the year. Because it gets us ready for the upcoming year. They have 31 causes of failure outlined in this book. I’m not going to go through all 31 because you’d be spending your entire Saturday with me and I don’t know if you want to do that so let’s just pick 10 of them and go from there. And the 10 causes of failure – I just chose these ones because they resonated with me the most, and in the past when I’ve done this group, people were able to kind of have a different perspective from it. So long story short, the five
minute intro is over, so let’s get into the 10 causes of failure.
1. Let’s get into number one which is a lack of a well-defined purpose in life.
You know when they say a human being knows the Why of their life the How takes care of itself. When why you wake up in the morning and why you do the things you do and why you don’t do the things you do and why you live the life you live, the how am I going to do it, how am I going to overcome this, how am I going to figure this out, all of that takes care of itself. Because the why is so freaking powerful. If the why is compelling enough the motivation exists inside of it.
So what’s your purpose? My purpose is to leave this world a better place than I found it. As simple as that. So how do I go about making that become a reality for myself? Well, with every interaction I have with somebody I do my best to make sure that they leave that interaction in a better way than they did before. Anything that I do, if I go and speak somewhere, engage somewhere, exercise somewhere, I leave it better than I found it. And if I continuously leave situations, people, places and things better than I found them, ultimately my goal of making this world a better place will become true.
Another one of my ways is to be able to empower human beings to realize that they can also transform their lives because the reason that’s a big, big one for me is because I believe if enough people transform, those transformed people can transform people the same way. I always say that every week on this talk. At some point I say, “Hurt people hurt people.” Hurt people are the ones that hurt people. Well, on the flip side of that, shouldn’t transformed people be the ones that are able to transform people? And if I’m able to help a few people transform then I definitely know I’m making the world a better place before I leave this place.
So I don’t know what your purpose is. Some of you are so codependent that the only purpose you have is for your loved one and for your children and for your spouse and for your family members to succeed. And as long as they succeed then you’re okay. I say that’s so narrow-minded. I say that’s so playing it safe. Let them have their own goals and dreams. What are yours? Let them have their own purpose in life. What is your purpose? Can’t be for your loved one to be happy and you’ll be happy. What is that? My motto is, “I make a difference in people’s lives every day.” I know based on the interactions we’ve had here that you’re doing that kind of work. And I like how you wrote ‘everyday’ in there because if we just make a difference in people’s lives once in a while won’t be enough.
So hopefully that inspired you to find out that your purpose is not the same purpose your loved one has. You got to find your own.
2. The next one we have is the lack of ambition to aim above average or mediocracy or mediocrity whatever you want to call it. If you wake up everyday and you do not have if you do not have the desire to aim above whatever your average is you will never have a life beyond average. See a lot of people want to have above average lifestyles, above average relationships, above average mental health, above average outlook and perspective, above average bank accounts, but they never aim above average. So how is that going to work out? How do you get to the top of the mountain when you don’t want to climb? How are you going to have an above average life with an ordinary work ethic? What it’s called is wishful thinking. The same way somebody goes to 7-Eleven or the gas station, gets a little lottery card and fills it out and sits and waits to see if they won couple billion dollars is the same way that someone sleeps in their bed, goes to work, goes back home, watches TV, goes to bed, wakes up the next day, doesn’t even try, just automatic robo like that, wondering if tomorrow is the day that my life is going to change, no it’s not a lottery ticket. Ain’t gonna hit like that. So if you just aim for average, and I get it, why do people do it? Some people like to play it safe, some people have a fear of success, some people have a fear of failure, some people have a fear of the unknown. So instead of trying I’ll just go in my little turtle shell and I’ll go on my little Netflix and I’ll watch 20 hours of TV in a 3 day span. And then the next day when Monday comes around I’m going to say, “God, it’s Monday again, I feel like I’m never moving forward in life. I always feel like I’m stuck. I always feel like I’m on a little hamster wheel. Well [ __ ] you sat down and did nothing for three days. What else do you want to feel like?
Jim gave a little purpose, “To give hope and receive hope in the same interaction.” Yeah, that’s cool! it’s Jim, obviously he’s been doing this for a while and I like talking about him because he’s a faithful follower and friend and colleague and co-worker and mentor. I mean [ __ ] he’s a well-versed person but he does one thing that I definitely don’t do outside of work and outside my scope of practice and stuff. Jim gives a lot of his time to people in the fellowship 12 step program. They call them sponsors. You know, the sponsorship family. And when you have, let’s just say, a couple decades of sobriety like Jim has and there’s some kid with 20 days of sobriety, still got the shakes, not feeling that well, drinking themselves to oblivion, losing family, dealing with legal stuff, you figure that these two sit down in a conversation together and Jim’s just gonna pour all of his wisdom and experience, strength and hope into this person. See what Jim said right there which is really powerful, “in the same interaction” as he’s helping out this person that’s really struggling is also giving Jim something that without that interaction he wouldn’t be able to get. And that’s the beauty of when we have a purpose. It’s not one-sided. We get something from what we give, we get something from what we give, so good stuff there. And yeah, if you just aim for average your whole life, just be ready for average, that’s all.
3. The next one is lack of self-discipline.
Our society is plagued with this. I’m not saying everybody but if you got a bell-shaped curve – you guys know what those bell-shaped curves are. It’s got 90% of the middle and then 5% on each side. They’re called the outliers. I believe that people with self-discipline are the outliers. Everybody else falls in this norm of the bell shaped curve. You want to know why? Because it’s easy, it’s comfortable, and it’s crowded. You look around and everybody around you also doesn’t have self-discipline. It looks familiar. It’s like, “Well I’m like those guys. I’m okay. I’m in the middle of the pack, the middle of the herd.”
And you know, we look at self-discipline as such a negative connotation. I mean the word discipline in general just makes us kind of feel a little uncomfortable because when do we ever get disciplined in life? When we did something wrong. Discipline him, discipline her. So now we’re older and we’re self-disciplined: I don’t want to punish myself. Man, you got it all twisted because discipline is an act of self-love. I believe human beings that are disciplined love themselves more than the ones who are not. It might be a controversial statement but I do believe it. Because when a person is disciplined they ensure and make sure that their mind, their body, their spirit is in check. Why do they do that? Because they know that without that they can’t be who they want to be, they can’t do what they want to do, they can’t go where they want to go, and they can’t experience the life they want to experience. Self-discipline creates freedom. Some people think it’s restrictive. It creates freedom. It creates the ability to transform. That’s one thing that I take very high levels of pride in, is the amount of discipline I have when it comes to different areas of my life. I wish I could just strike somebody in the head and give them the same discipline. I don’t know how that works but I do know that when you got your Why it makes it a lot easier.
Allan, man, last time you came on here you broke me down and made me cry. No, I’m just kidding. Man, you said some beautiful words and that’s when I said that the student became the the teacher. But I have been following you and I have seen that you’re working in a pretty prestigious university over there in Oklahoma, you got a good gig man, and it’s so wonderful to see where you were to where you are. And your story is one of those reasons why I believe in the possibility of human transformation.
Right Monir Joon, good morning, hope you guys are well.
4. So the next one that I have here is this uncontrolled desire to get something for nothing.
Yes uncontrolled desire. Once in a while it’s okay to get something for nothing. Like it’s your birthday, you didn’t do anything but breathe and eat and go to sleep and do all the other things human beings do for 365 days and people come and say “Happy Birthday, here’s something for nothing.” But outside of that we only get what we put in. In life you only get out what you put in. If you want something for nothing what you’re gonna have to do is you’re gonna have to lie, influence, manipulate people to get it from them. That might work for a little bit but if you do that over time you’re going to look at yourself in the mirror one day and say who the heck have I become? So we have to curb our appetite to get something for nothing.
Things like the microwave screwed us up. Why? It tells us, I don’t have time to eat, I need something quick, I don’t have time to prepare it, I’m going to put it in the microwave. Three minutes later I got my dinner. No man, plan and prepare better. Set up an hour for yourself to be able to fuel yourself the proper way. It’s all prioritization, it’s all prioritization man. So our adolescence and our younger generational demographics really are turning into these instant gratification machines. It’s happened to our older generation too because we adapt and we evolve but you know adolescence, man, they want something for nothing all the time. But as an adult the work is worth the effort. If everybody could get what they wanted then what’s the point of things? If everybody could be who they wanted to be then what’s the point of people that actually do it? You got to start putting in the work.
And family members, you’re like, “Hey man, this is a weird talk Parham, I’m here because there’s a loved one in my house that’s struggling with alcoholism and drug addiction. I’m here because someone in my house has a mental illness. I want to know how I can help them.” You want to know how you can help them focus on you and if that doesn’t help them, at least at the minimum it helps you. Who says that their life, their serenity, their peace of mind, their life experience is more important than yours? Wherever you learn that narrative, it is false, it is wrong. If you’re taught that as a parent or a spouse, I’m supposed to ensure that my loved one is healthy and happy and achieving their goals and all that kind of stuff, that’s my responsibility, no it’s not your responsibility. It’s the same way their responsibility is to them. I wouldn’t want somebody to say I’m only doing this for my mom and dad. Would you want that? At first you’ll be like, “Well yeah, that’s what I want.” Well guess what? As soon as everybody’s off their back they’re going to go back to it anyways. So please, please, please start to care about yourself a little bit, even if you’re here for somebody else. Hopefully you realize you’re here for yourself.
What did Katalin say? Yes I do feel that this entitlement of “I deserve this” is poison. Yeah, the whole entitlement thing – we’re not really entitled to nothing. I do believe we’re all entitled maybe to a little bit of love because we are living beings and one of the things that we need to survive is love. But if we don’t have that self love and we go out in the world feeling like we’re entitled for other people to love us when we don’t love ourselves, it just don’t work like that. So yeah, the whole entitlement thing is sad but here we are so. We can either say, “Hey, I got a problem with this” or say “I’m not going to live a life that I feel like I’m entitled. I’m going to work and earn what I have in life, and I’m gonna be grateful for it.” And if other people want to be entitled, man, that’s on them, not us, not the people in this group. Set the example. That takes a lot of work, so there you go.
“I think everything takes a lot of work.” Jim, it really, really does and and I’ll talk about it in a little bit when it comes down to how hard this is to do some of these things but I’ll come back to that. If anybody by the way has any questions just know that I’m open to them. If I’m saying something or if you’re like, “Hey, I really like the fact that you’re talking about all this stuff right now but I got this going on in my life with my kid, what do I do?” If you want to completely pivot us I don’t care, we’ll have a conversation. It’s okay, there’s no right and wrong. We don’t have a boss. Even if we did we wouldn’t listen.
5. So the next one that we have here is number five. One of the biggest causes of failure is something called ill health.
I don’t think actually I know that human beings cannot achieve the life they want to have or aspire to have, with poor health and here is why. Ill health will always get in the way of your progress. It might not be immediately but it will eventually catch up and all the work you’ve done will be wiped out. There’s a powerful quote that says, “Many humans spend their youth and their health chasing wealth. Once they achieve their wealth they use all of that wealth to chase the health that they sacrificed.” How sad is that? I’m going to say that again because I think it is very important that human beings use all of their health, consecutively, to achieve this thing called wealth. Once they achieve this thing called wealth they use all of their wealth to chase the health that they sacrificed and gave up in the pursuit of that wealth. So my friends, whatever that wealth is you’re pursuing, whether it’s money or just a life experience, if it’s coming at the sacrifice of your health, eventually you’re going to lose it, eventually you’re going to lose it. So when we’re talking about ill health as a cause of failure what are we talking about? Yes I am talking about our physical body. Do I think that people need to be at the apex and the peak of physical fitness in form? No, but I do believe that it is something that needs to be addressed and a part of an everyday life routine.
You might say, “Well, hey man, I don’t think you understand the way life works. It’s impossible to do something for my body and my physical health everyday.” No, it’s not. That’s a narrative and a story you told yourself. Because you might be assuming that I’m saying to go to the gym for two hours or join some group exercise classes or go on wellness retreats. I’m not saying that. I’m saying if at the minimum you don’t walk around for 20 to 30 minutes a day around the block, if you don’t move your body at some level, if you don’t mindfully and consciously look and think about everything you put into your body, that your health will be compromised. And on top of that health is not just our physical body. It’s also our mind and our mental health. So if you live a life that is constantly stressed out with your adrenaline glands just pumping cortisol, if you are unable to sleep at night, if you’re experiencing symptoms of anxiety and depression, and you don’t do something for that everyday, do you think a person that doesn’t take care of their health, their body and their mind will actually succeed in life? What is this? How is that even realistic?
I don’t know if it’s mine Monir Joon, I don’t know what is happening today you keep disconnecting. Well if I am disconnecting, I want you to know that I’m speaking consistently to a disconnected camera but I don’t know if it’s happening everywhere so if it is let me know, guys. I don’t think I could do anything about it though.
Another take is that sometimes with ill health it’s important to stop and reassess. Not necessarily fun, but an opportunity. Yeah, so that’s a part of health though. So let’s say that you’ve gone down a certain path in the pursuit of becoming healthier right? So the intention was beautiful, you go down this path and all of a sudden you get to a road, you get to a moment that maybe you start to experience burnout, maybe you experience some fatigue, maybe you realize that what you’re doing or how you’re doing it just is not aligning with you. At that point it’s beautiful to pause to reflect and course-correct and make some adjustments and changes. But here’s the most important part. After you reassess and after you charge your batteries, whatever that means, you better get back moving towards your health again. Because what happens in certain situations is that there’s a lot of people that are very black and white, so they’ll do something full-blown, like crazily for a while. While most people give up after 30 days but they’ll do it and then they’ll get somewhere and they’ll be like, “Ah, this isn’t working anyway,” and then they’ll go like a year of just not doing it because it didn’t work, so there’s a very important line we have to find out and that line is this: no matter what you do for your health, whether it works or doesn’t work, or whether you want to tweak it or change it, you got to make sure that you’re implementing it every day. One of my mentors, Keith Stump is his name, taught me the following. He said that every single day when I wake up I make sure I do three things – one thing for my mind, one thing for my body, one thing for my spirit – every single day. And if you look at this man that every single day he does one thing for those three things he doesn’t have to say it. It’s just obvious that he does, and it’s just a very important way to kind of start the day.
Jim, I gotta get you on here one day, one of these days we’ll coordinate and just get the little side screen, the split screen that we used to do and get you on here just to talk a little bit so I’ll check with your movie schedule. Jim’s a movie buff. He’s seen more movies than I think of movies been created but a few years ago he went to the doctor’s and the doctors do the routine blood work and they do the markers and they see the data and they’re like, “Alright well, overall you’re not bad, but this area, this area, this area, it’s not looking that good. Let me pump you with a bunch of medication and you can keep living the life you’re living.” And Jim understands. He’s committed to his holistic health and he’s like, “Alright well, I don’t know if I want to be pumped with these medications everyday just so I can barely survive. I want to thrive.” So he started making small incremental changes to his diet for example. And they always say it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks, but no it’s not. People believe these stupid things that they want to believe because it gives them a way out. when it comes to diet, what’s right, what’s wrong, obviously deal with a nutritionist and all that kind of stuff. But let’s say that Jim never learned all that stuff and now the doctors are saying your markers don’t look that good. Let’s potentially put you on these medications. He’s like, “I don’t know man, like maybe I could just change my diet.” See he was able to change his lifestyle with what he ate so yes, you can learn new tricks even being an old dog. It’s BS that people think that. It’s just a copout. I believe you could transform at any time and there’s an example right there.
(I’m glad it’s working well, the audio for people by the way).
6. So the next one that we have here is unfavorable environmental influences during childhood is one of the causes of failure so I want to make sure that when I say this if you had unfavorable environmental influences in your childhood it does not equal that you’re doomed or a death sentence. All it says is that you had a tough childhood okay? And what is a tough childhood? By the way, because everyone thinks what’s really tough? Because I might have had it bad but those people have it worse, or mine wasn’t as bad as them. It’s whatever it is to you. So some of these influences they talk about or environmental influences, maybe you came up in poverty, or you came up really struggling, maybe you moved a lot. Some of these environmental influences could be inside the home. Was there separation? Was there divorce? Was there domestic violence? Some of it could be in your journey of life. Did you experience any type of pain as a result of addiction – self/others? Mental illness – self/others? Trauma, abuse, grief and loss? If the answer is yes, which for many human beings the answer is yes, that doesn’t mean that you’re going to fail in life. If you choose to believe that because you experience those that you don’t have a chance to succeed you’re going to prove yourself right. And guess what you’re going to do on top of that? You’re going to recreate the cycle and you’re going to do to others what was done to you. You’re going to do to others what was done to you and you’ll be wondering why the heck am I doing this to someone when I know how difficult it was? But that’s what happens. Or you can say, “Okay I experienced these things in my life and I don’t want to make my future look like my past,” and you get in the weeds and you start to work on these and you address them and you process them and you break multigenerational patterns of dysfunction and abuse. Because if not you, who? If not you, who? So you want the next generation to be the ones to do it. Why them and not you? Because it’s too hard. Because it’s hard to teach old dogs new tricks. Because you’re already set in your ways. Those are all stories and narratives you’re just telling yourself to make yourself not wake up to the possibilities available to you. Wake up to those possibilities.
Yeah, the blame game. And by the way, people that play the blame game – so they blame their past for reasons why they can’t move forward in the present moment – they find people that they can blame to not look at themselves. Also God – it’s so easy to blame that person over there for reasons why I’m struggling. It’s easy to blame that situation over there for reasons why I can’t focus. Oh man, don’t act like this stuff’s just happening right now. We are the way we are always. How you do one thing is how you do everything. You know I do this talk early. Before this talk I do another talk for our program participants. A lot of them are living inside structured residential sober livings, just kind of like a group home for better sake of a term. Some of them are watching it from home but the biggest complaint that they have is that my talk is too early in the morning. And so here’s what it looks like. Half the group is like watching, kind of like semi-interested, the other half is like they got their hoodies on, they’re sleeping, they’re on a couch like this. They’re kind of like they got little headphones in so they can’t hear me talk and their chief complaint is the fact that it’s too early. But I’ll say this. How you do anything is how you do everything. That same person is gonna be struggling at work, struggling at school, struggling with doing the things when it doesn’t match their perfect time to do them. I tell them “Hey, long before you guys showed up here I was doing these talks and trust me when I say this, long after you leave I’ll still do these talks because I’m committed to the possibility of human transformation. It’s not your fault that you are the way you are, but it is your responsibility to work towards fixing it always comes to mind.
I’m sure you’ve heard my talks here and there’s the book that I think we’ve talked about. Here it says that you are not responsible, okay so this is a really good quote. Okay Jess, this one’s for you. Actually when Jim moved into my office seven years ago he got my computer given to him and on the back screen I had the following and he still has it. Ready? “You are not responsible for the world that created your mind but we must take responsibility for the mind that creates our world.” I didn’t say that. Some guy much smarter, more intellectual than me called Dr Gabor Mate said that. But what a powerful statement that growing up in this world we’re not responsible for the world that creates our mind. Especially when you’re a kid, you’re not responsible for what’s happening in your environment. You’re not responsible for Mom, Dad, social stressors, socio-psych, socioeconomic status, the trauma you experience, the pain, the loss, you’re not responsible for that. But as an adult you are responsible for the mind that creates your world even if it’s broken and tore up from your childhood. We still got to take responsibility for it.
7. The next one we got here is negative personality.
Some people got a negative personality and that’s the biggest cause of failure. And I’m not talking about people that are just unlikable. Here’s what it looks like. So like I have this definition of pessimism. Pessimism, most people think is cup-empty. Cup-full as optimism. Too basic. Ready? Here is how I want you to perceive pessimism. Let’s say that me and you are sitting inside a Malibu beach house and inside this Malibu beach house we’re sitting in a room that’s got this huge piece of glass in front of it that we’re looking at the Pacific Ocean and we’re sitting there just in awe of how majestic it looks. The sun is shining, reflecting on it, and it’s just exploding into the sky and it’s the most breathtaking scene that you can imagine. And we’re talking, we’re like, “Wow, look at this moment, look how beautiful it is.” We’re full of gratitude and someone comes through the door and they walk in they’re like, “What are you guys looking at?” We’re like, “Man, just open your eyes and look at this beautiful thing, how powerful is this?” and they’re like, “Yeah yeah, it’s all right.” But they walk right up to the to the glass and they say, “But what’s this dirt on the window?” That’s the negative personality. Those of us that see the dirt on the window we miss out on the big picture of life and if you are trying to succeed, if you’re trying to level up, if you’re trying to go from where you are to where you want to be, if you got a negative personality you will always be stuck. You can take my word for it. Not only will you be stuck you’ll regress back because you’ll find negative things across the way.
So the way you look at life is the way life is going to present itself. Wayne Dyer has a quote that I’ve shared all the time. I’ll continue to share it even though he’s passed on. He’s passed away and left a legacy of transformation. He says that when you change the way you look at things the things you look at change. So when you’re looking at a life situation, a circumstance, people, places, things, we have choices. We can either look at it from a negative lens which disempowers us, takes away our vitality, takes away our creativity, takes away our passion. Or we look at it from different perspectives until we find a perspective that empowers us, that brings us energy, that awakens our passion and ultimately helps us transform. Your perspective is your choice. It could either be your advantage or it could be your assassin, you choose. And that question alone is also a choice. You choose how you want to view this world, how you want to view yourself, how you want to view others. If you look at it positively I have a feeling that it’s going to resonate and it’s going to turn into a positive place and if you look at it negatively I know that it will resonate and it will turn into a dark negative place. Because Wayne Dyer also said hostile people live in a hostile world. Loving people live in a loving world. Same world. I’ll let you chew on that. I’ll let you marinate that. I’ll let you digest that and let me know what you thought of that one. Tiffy Sloan: “Positivity and negativity are equally contagious.” Yep, I prefer to be positive to the best of my ability. I can’t always change my circumstances but I can change my perception. 100%, I can’t even agree with you more even if I try to.
8. The next cause of failure we have here is procrastination.
Unfortunately society is plagued by this one too and I don’t think I rarely ever use the word lazy because I don’t believe that people that procrastinate are lazy. I believe that procrastination is a motivation or lack thereof. People that are motivated to do things do not procrastinate when you want to do something. You do it. There’s a sense of urgency. You ever see somebody buy a concert ticket that they know is going to be sold out? That they really want to go to? They’re on the computer at 12:01 to hit Purchase when it went on sale at 12 o’clock. If they procrastinate what’s going to happen? It’s going to pass them by. But how are they able to show up in that moment, in the first moment possible, to do something when in other areas in their life they’ll procrastinate till the last moment, the last minute, the last second? It’s a motivation thing. So if you procrastinate you’re not lazy, you are just unmotivated to do what it is that you’re procrastinating about. Now here’s the thing. We talked about self discipline in life. Oftentimes we have to do the things we don’t want to do, especially when we know we need to do them. That’s just a maturity and responsibility thing. Like I’m not highly motivated about everything I do but I make sure that I’m motivated about most things I do. So when I have to do the things I don’t want to do it ain’t that bad. Procrastination is a very painful thing. Get her done first. Handle what you could. Don’t push off till tomorrow what could be done today. Cliche but it’s real.
What’s the point of it? That’s another thing people think. Here’s a good thing about procrastination. People think that somehow, someway what they don’t feel like doing today, that one day they will wake up with the motivation and the enthusiasm and the energy to do it is going to come then. Bro, if you don’t want to do it today, the odds of you not doing it tomorrow are very high. We don’t just get struck one day with the desire to do all the things that we’re procrastinating on. It just doesn’t work that way. Do it now and get the payoff of getting it done.
I love lists. Yeah, probably sounds really dorky. Yellow pad, writing it all down, crossing it all out, I like that. Why do I like that? Because people have taught me that is how you can get a lot done when you’re overwhelmed. And if I didn’t have that list I’ll just sit back and get paralyzed by the weight of the responsibility. But you cross it out. Here’s a good tip for anybody. Let’s say there are 10 things that you’re procrastinating on right now. Make a list of those 10 and then stack rank them or prioritize them. What are the most important ones and go down if you successfully complete the top two most important things. It will provide you with 80% mental health relief of that list. 80/20 rule. It applies to not just sales and business, it applies to the lists, in the tasks of your life. 20% of the things that you need to do will provide 80% of the relief.
9. We’re just gonna work through this one the next one we got right here my friends is this thing called lack of persistence.
Do you just try? Do you just try and give up when you fail or do you try again, fall down seven times, get up eight? We all love that. What’s weird about people is that human beings love to read stories about businesses where the person was very persistent, like the Starbucks or KFC, this Colonel Sanders guy. I’m not a big KFC guy by the way but everybody likes KFC. When they hear that this guy took his little recipe and he was shot down a thousand times and he kept trying to sell it in a thousand Nos and a thousand Nos and a thousand Nos and eventually someone said, “Oh we love this chicken recipe. Let’s make a restaurant out of it,” and there you are. Now it’s all over the world. People love that. But when it comes to themselves they’ll try once or twice and they’re like, “I’m just not gonna do this anymore, I’m not gonna try man.” What we admire in others we also would admire in ourselves if we just allowed ourselves to do it. But why do people do it? People don’t because they say it’s too hard. So here’s the other truth. Working on your mental health is hard. Working on your childhood trauma is hard. Working on your addiction is hard. Working on your grief and loss is hard. It is. I’m not going to lie to you. It’s hard. But not working on your mental health is hard. Not working on your childhood trauma is hard. Not working on your addiction is hard. Not working on your grief and loss is hard. They’re both freaking hard. So we’re talking about perspective and we’re talking about choices. You got to choose your hard. See, one of them comes with a significant payoff when you deal with your stuff and you heal and you transform and you recover. Then your life becomes anything and everything possible. But if you choose not to work on that stuff because it’s too hard, guess what happens? Your past becomes a part of your future. It will repeat and repeat and repeat and not only to yourself but it will just repeat to the generation underneath and just keep going and sucking everybody out like a freaking cyclone. So it’s all hard. Choose your hard.
10. The very last one I got here before I let you out of here is the lack of a well-defined power of decision.
So we can just use what I said in the last part and bring it here. So what was that? I’m going to give you an opportunity to make a decision and here it is. It is hard to work on your mental health. It is hard to work on your physical health. It is hard to work on the wounds and the pains and the traumas you experience in life. But it’s so freaking hard when you don’t work on your mental health. It’s so freaking hard when you don’t work on your physical health. It’s so freaking hard when you don’t deal with the wounds and the pains and the traumas of your life. There is the binary decision right there. Either you work on it or you don’t. If you work on it, if you make the decision that despite it being hard I’m going to work on my mental health, my physical health, my pain, my trauma, my losses in life, you’re going to feel so good. You want to know why? Because you’re going to heal, you’re going to recover, and you’re going to transform your life, in your experience and the lives of those around you. And if you don’t, if you make the choice not to because it’s too hard just expect and anticipate that your future will feel exactly the way it does right now. And it’s going to look a heck of a lot like your past so as an adult watching this right now you got the choice. Choose your hard and come back and let us know which one you chose.
Love and appreciate all of you. Thank you for another family education and support group. It was really rooted in personal development because that’s what it’s all about. Love and appreciate all of you.
What’s this one right here? Someone said something nice: “Terrific topic discussion today and you hit several of my current struggles. And last week’s was amazing. I’ve listened four times.” Oh man, that’s awesome – four times watching this – that makes me happy. I hope that you continue to get something from these and I love and appreciate all you guys. You could tell I still bring the same passion I did every other time even if I slept at like 2 or 3 in the morning last night. Love and appreciate you. Bye everyone!
