Success Advice
My Giant Imaginary Billboard Would Say This: The Stories You Tell Yourself Come True.
We’ve all played the game where we try to think of a message we’d put on a metaphorical billboard that costs us nothing.
The point of the exercise is to try and find out what one message you would share with the world that could change the game for all of us.
I racked my brain trying to think of mine. There are so many messages I want to share. Finally, I figured out what mine would be.
The message I would put on a giant billboard is:
“The stories you tell yourself come true”
The stories you tell yourself.
The reason I chose this powerful message is that it’s the one thing that has changed the course of my life. When I began telling myself a new story, everything around me appeared differently. I genuinely believe that I am going to change the world in a big way and create positivity.
You have a recurring story running through your own brain that you’re probably unaware of. The story might be one like this:
– Life is hard, so I better relax tonight.
– I need to make more money so life will get easier.
– Why do these disasters always happen to me?
– Why is it so hard to make a living?
– Why can’t I find my passion like everyone else?
These stories are all built on a lie. These stories focus on inaction and that will get you nowhere.
The stories you tell start with a question.
To improve your story, you first need to start by asking better questions. Questions that limit you will destroy your success. I’ve found the best questions to ask yourself have the following elements:
– They’re big and audacious
– They mention the phrase “Changing the world”
– They’re open-ended
– They assume the best, not the worst
– They’re not of a selfish nature
Write down some questions that will help you create a new story for your life.
You’re going to be repeating this story a lot so it might as well be good.
These stories play over and over in our head every day. You might as well have a story that’s interesting and makes you feel good don’t you think?
I don’t want to hear nonsense playing in my head on repeat. There’s enough of that in day-to-day life already.
That’s why my story says the following:
– I will inspire millions of people
– I will be healthy so I can have energy to do what I love
– I will have a life full of challenges and no matter what I’ll find the positive
– I will be fearful and that means I’m excited
– I will help others because that’s the true wisdom of life
What you tell yourself over and over becomes your reality.
Your life becomes what you tell yourself over and over. Change that pattern and insert a new story, and if you’re patient enough, you’ll become that new story.
Not overnight. Not in 60 seconds. In a few years probably.
So tell yourself things that are going to inspire you to do the extraordinary. Don’t fill your head with deadbeat ideas like “I’m not enough.”
You are bloody enough and you can be a bloody ripper of a person if you put your mind to it and tell yourself clever things.
The whole “Life Hacking” sport has become everybody’s favorite TV station. The thing is you don’t need to hack anything if you tell yourself the right stories.
Translation of “The Stories You Tell Yourself”
This line is a bit hocus pocus when I think about it. If I were to transcribe this phrase, I’d say that the stories you tell yourself stem from one idea: YOU MUST BELIEVE IN YOURSELF!
All the stories I just shared with you that I tell myself are stories of believing in what I can achieve. If you don’t believe in yourself then how can you expect anyone else to take a chance on you? There are so many distractions nowadays so for anyone to give you their attention, they have to believe it’s going to be worth it.
Believing in yourself is centered around one idea: You’re going to back yourself even though you don’t know the outcome or the steps you necessarily need to move forward.
Believing in yourself is a belief in the reality of uncertainty.
Uncertainty takes courage and that means crushing fear. All of these fundamentals of life that I’m sharing are not new things that you’ve never heard. These pillars of life are interconnected.
“When you fall in love with uncertainty, you tell yourself that you’re confident, strong and can deal with obstacles. This creates a fortress around your mind that protects you from outside, negative forces, telling you a different story. It’s how you avoid the opinions of others and back yourself”
5 years ago…..
I told myself a story that I was going to crush my ridiculous fears and become somebody who focuses on the “doing” and spreading positivity.
That new story seemed so stupid at the time because of where I was but none the less I believed it. It then took everything I had to make it come true. I never let challenges bring me away from that storyline and I kept it front and center.
People told me I wasn’t good enough, rich enough, smart enough, experienced enough and I decided to tell myself the story that “Yes I am and I won’t be stopped from achieving my goal.”
I’ve told this story so many times since then that now the majority of my network and colleagues believe it. It’s no longer an idea. It’s now a reality.
“The stories you tell yourself do come true and I’m living proof of that”
Commit to a new story.
I never write any blog post without insisting on one action from you. The action for you right now is to commit to a new story. Sign up for a new story and put all your poker chips on the line. Throw away that old story that told you that you weren’t good enough.
Create a new story that supports the person you want to become and the goals you want to achieve. The last step is this: Tell that new story to yourself every single day and believe every word.
The stories you tell yourself do come true and that’s what I would put on a giant billboard if I were given access to one. Much respect.