Despite our need for external motivation, it’s all you.

I’ve been looking for the perfect mentor, girlfriend, job, food, holiday, car, etc, and what I realized is it’s all me. I don’t need any external motivation to be fulfilled.

This girl made me feel like crap. She became a close friend and then led me on. I got upset and blamed myself. I tried to change my state and had a few drinks. Didn’t work.

Then I went to a Tony Robbins seminar to rediscover my purpose which I like to do yearly. I did all the exercises, danced, chanted, and hi-fived anyone who had a hand. Through a powerful exercise that involved me touching my heart and thinking thoughts of gratitude, I discovered the answer.

The answer to all of life’s questions is: it’s all you. As soon as you go beyond that simple truth, you start to feel pain and suffer. I sat there thinking that it was this girl’s fault I was unhappy, but it wasn’t. She may have been a little selfish, but I get to decide the meaning of every event.

I took back control after this episode and told myself “It’s all you baby!”

Here are some things to remember:

1. You are responsible for the good times and the bad.

You had a great birthday? Yup, that was all you. That holiday you just came back from was phenomenal? It’s all you. That animal you love so much? That was all you too.

All the good times that happen are your doing. You consciously decided to put yourself in a powerful state and be happy. The event itself didn’t do that for you. Likewise, you can’t have the good without the bad.

That horrible breakup? It’s all you. The job you lost because you didn’t meet your targets? That was all you as well. Taking back control in your life is about understanding the fact that you are in control. Events don’t happen to you; you create them. You can decide if the events in your life are out of this world or miserable.

“Blaming events for your unhappiness is like blaming the guy who got cancer and is always sick”

Maturity to me is all about realizing who’s in control. It’s so easy to push the decisions and problems onto other people. It’s easy to stand back and watch people dig the trenches than do it yourself. The thing is that when you get down and dig the trench, you get all the growth. The observers often observe their life away.

You are responsible. It’s all you.

2. We have enough.

We don’t need any more time, money or stuff to stay motivated and achieve our goals. Chasing more resources gives us yet another excuse not to be in control. Instead of getting what we want, we say “some day I’ll be happy when I get X resources.”

The challenge is some day never comes because that magical target continues to change. The first time all you needed was an office, then a warehouse, then an entire building. We could dominate the entire world and still feel like there’s more we need.

It’s all you. You have what you need right now, it’s just that you have to realize what is stopping you from getting what you want. The person that’s in the way is you.

3. Understand yourself and you’ll understand the world.

I’ve got lots of smart friends that either have degrees or are currently getting one. If only they knew that understanding themselves will get them that dream career or business, then they’d probably stop studying at uni.

More than any university degree, understanding yourself will give you the ultimate power. You’ll then realize that you don’t need a bit of paper to have permission to get what you want. A degree doesn’t make you smarter or more worthy.

The people that stand in the way of your goals are more likely to move if they can see someone who understands them self. Someone who knows who they are can talk the human language like no other. They connect in a way that is so deep, anyone can be inspired and influenced to get out of their way.

Truly understanding yourself takes a lot of deep thinking and work. When you understand yourself you know the following:

– You know your excuses
– You know your fears
– You know who you are
– You know what you want
– You know what you don’t want
– You can see other people’s weaknesses in yourself
– You can feel someone on a different level to everyone else
– You can let your intuition guide you
– You can follow your heart

4. Be brave and you’ll be rewarded.

So if it’s all you, then what action should you take? My advice would be to start being brave. Do the stuff that you always avoid. Say yes to the things that are uncomfortable. What’s missing in your life is bravery. You cannot be successful without first doing a bunch of hard things.

That might be hitting rock bottom. It might involve cutting off people. The reward for being brave is understanding yourself and how your mind can grow consistently if you let it. What you thought was hard today, will be straightforward tomorrow if you decide to be brave. You’ve got to work the muscle to see the growth.

It sounds so cliché to say, “Be brave young Jedi and do what scares the pants off you.” I only tell you this because it’s this cliché concept that has transformed my own life.

I’ve seen things I never thought were possible because I decided to be brave. I didn’t listen to what people told me I should settle for. I experienced the pain and suffering that goes hand in hand with life’s hardest challenges.

I came out the other side stronger and more determined than ever. I took ten steps forward, and sometimes, thirty steps backward. Instead of measuring progress towards my goals, I measured how well I knew myself. I took my excuses and quite literally shoved them up my own butt.

It’s all you. You must be brave to get what you want.

5. Forgive people, it’s all you.

Those people you blame for your failures are not guilty your honour. Now that you know you’re in control it’s time to forgive people. These people didn’t let you down, you did. You let their flawed models of the world affect you rather than go with your gut.

It’s not their fault. They’re trying to be the person that makes sense to them. If that doesn’t align with your model of the world, then forgive these people and move on. Don’t judge or blame. Forgiving people shows that you understand yourself on a whole other level.

Forgiving people is the realization that it’s all you. The wave of emotion and pain that you get to dump when you forgive is freeing. You get increased levels of energy because you are not carrying all the negative emotions that come with holding grudges.

Forgiving is not about giving anything to the person you’re upset with; it’s about giving to yourself. It’s also about knowing that it’s your model of the world that is causing you to be angry in the first place. Nobody wronged you; you wronged yourself.

It’s all you. Forgive people and take back control.

***It’s not complex at all***

You thought success was complicated. It’s not. Success starts with you and it ends with you. Everything else between you and your goals is a made up reality that your mind created. You let your mind create this delusion, and so you can banish this delusion once and for all.

Learn to love yourself and to understand who you are. Once you’ve mastered that it’s time to understand who you want to become. You want to grow like the rest of us. Growing requires first knowing where you came from.

We’re often told that life is complex, but I don’t think it is. When we know who’s in the driver’s seat and understand who we are, we can achieve anything. Achievements are not that much of a big deal. Those people you admire have followed the advice in this article and you can do the same.

It’s all you.

It always was you.

It will always be you.

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