The process of transformation is a difficult one. Just like cleaning your house, when you remove things that don’t serve you, you begin the process of transformation. Don’t wait for rock bottom to hit and then take action on cleaning up your life.

Start now! Create space for the things you want in your life and minimize space for the junk, bad emotions, and negativity you’ve been living with.

Give up these 12 things to put the wheels in motion:

1. Your ego

No one cares how big your six pack is or how much money you made on your website yesterday. Start conversations with a sense of humbleness rather than trying to show everyone that you are the best at everything. People with egos are very unattractive.

2. Your Harry Potter wardrobe

Sorry, Harry, I love you mate, but your wardrobe sucks. I know people that dress really poorly, and then they wonder why they’re not always taken seriously. We humans are a judgemental bunch so make sure you give up your poor wardrobe to the charity bin.

The way you dress matters, and you should take pride in your appearance. Dress like you’re worth a million bucks even if you’re not.

3. Closing your heart

If you want love – which is part of success – open your heart up. Believe that there is someone out there for you who wants to make you really happy. Have faith in the process and try to smile once in a while.

Until you are open to finding love, you’ll never discover it. We’re all meant to find that special someone, but it’s hard to believe that sometimes. I know I’ve failed at this endeavor quite a bit and it can certainly feel challenging at the best of times.

How do you have faith when something consistently doesn’t work? I’ve found that you keep improving yourself and trying to give more of yourself.

“Opening your heart means giving more than you have ever given to anyone before”

Opening your heart means being okay to not ask for anything while at the same time trying to find as many ways as you can to give everything you have. Opening your heart means being prepared to: go broke, move countries, sell your car, sell your house, lose a few friends, change your diet, lose weight, take up a new hobby, and be interested in something you hate.

We think we’re walking around with an open heart, but most of the time we’re not. We have wild expectations of the people we are dating or in a relationship with, and then we wonder why it fails. Expectations and rules are the fastest way to a broken heart.

Why would any of us want to be with someone exactly like us? Love means finding someone who is often very different to you. To have an open heart means to accept your lover for their good points and their bad points. Opening your heart comes back to being okay with imperfection.

Imperfection is where the real beauty lies, and it’s how you open your heart again.

4. People who put others down

Making people feel horrible to make yourself feel good is the worst habit ever! If you have people like this in your network them dump them. These douche bags are holding you back from success, and by you aligning yourself with them, you’re repelling all the awesome people who could be in your life.

5. People who are the champions of bad news

We’ve all been friends with someone like this. They’re the guy or girl that rings up everyone they know when there’s a terrorist attack. They’re the one’s telling you it’s not safe to go out at night. Fear is a powerful tool, and these people are using it to fill their own voids in life. Surround yourself with people who spread positivity and build you up.

6. Your need to be perfect

So I met this graduate. She’s top of her class with everything in her day-to-day job. Congrats you get a gold star! The problem is that there’s always moments where she can’t quite be the best at everything.

These moments crush her confidence and stop her from taking negative feedback. You’ll never be perfect 100% of the time so stop trying too.

“As long as you get your life right more than 50% of the time, people will accept your failures”

7. Your lack of action

I spoke about doing my first Toastmasters speech for six months. Then I did it and crushed it. Why did I wait? Because I was fearful. When I did my next speech and acted in spite of fear, my results got better.

The time is never right to take action on any goal. When you commit to taking action without necessarily knowing the outcome, your results triple and even quadruple.

8. Looking in the rear-view

To go forward, you can’t keep looking back. There are lessons in the past that you can use, but at some point, you’ve got to stop, saddle up, and ride that horsey into the future. Giddy up….yeehaw!

9. Not being you

As one of Tony Robbins coaches told me, “Tim personal incongruency is what causes so much of our pain.” Not being you will destroy you.

10. Not taking risks

Life transforms once you leave your comfort zone and do some crazy stuff. Join a Meetup, start public speaking, visit a new country, stand on one leg, play hopscotch like you’re five years old again. Take a risk and back yourself, I promise you it will pay off amigo.

11. Saying I’ll call you back

It’s seemingly small, and it’s killing your success. Only tell someone you will call them back if you will. If you lie about calling people back, what other promises are you not delivering on? Remember, to be successful you need to do what you say you are going to do.

12. Apologising for everything

I had this guy message me the other day. He apologised for contacting me and asked me if I could promote his Instagram page which had a large number of followers. There’s no need to apologise all the time. Be confident and know that you have value to share.

This man had a lot of value, yet he was giving it away for free by thinking that he didn’t deserve to have people respond to him. Only apologise if you have done something wrong.

What are you going to give up?

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