I hear people all the time complain about their employment situation over and over.  I know a few people who have had the same job since I’ve known them and even though they’ve stayed at the same place for as many as 30 years, every time I see them they tell me how much they hate their job.  They complain about how their boss doesn’t treat them right and about how tedious it is.

I don’t get it!

Why would anyone stay in a situation that brings them nothing but unhappiness?  I’ve even heard these same people tell me about how they are always looking but just can’t find a job “as good as” the job they currently have.

Huh?  Are they kidding?

Being an entrepreneur I typically recommend starting their own business.  I believe that if you find something you’re extremely passionate about, that you’d love to do every day, and you put some thought into how to turn that passion into a business, you can come up with something that could generate an excellent living.

Most importantly you can improve your quality of life immensely!  All the money in the world isn’t worth anything if your quality of life sucks.

I am not saying that starting a business is always the answer, in fact, I don’t believe the majority of the people in this world are cut out to be business owners.  The problem is there are still many people who are, and many of these people never give it a shot.

It wouldn’t matter if they had a fool proof business plan, all the financial backing in the world, and Donald Trump whispering in their ear guiding them the whole way.  They’ll still stay in that crappy job and complain and moan about it every day like they had for the previous 30 some years.

Why the heck would someone subject themselves to that?  Well the answer is very easy.

They are afraid to fail!

Personally I think the fear of failure is completely irrational.

I’m extremely competitive and hate losing more than most people I know, but I could NEVER imagine spending my last dying seconds reviewing my life and realizing that I never put myself in a postion to succeed because I was afraid to fail.

I am not only talking about monetary success, or just business ownership.  I am talking about anything.

There are people who never get married because they are too afraid of failing and getting divorced.  There are others who never try to get an education because they are afraid they won’t pass and will ultimately fail.  And then there are the others who spend every single day hating their job but never look for another one because they are afraid the new job won’t work out.

I once heard an acronym for fear which couldn’t be more accurate.  That acronym is …

False Evidence Appearing Real

The next time you find yourself paralyzed by fear or not taking action because you’re afraid it won’t work out.

Stop for a second …

Imagine the worst possible result that might occur if you did fail …

And ask yourself if you could live with it if that result happened.

If the answer is yes (and in almost every case it will be), GO FOR IT!

I promise you the price you’ll pay for failing will be far less than the price you’ll pay for regretting you never took a chance to improve your life.

The most successful people on earth have failed over and over until they finally succeed, and then people point to them and say how “lucky” they are.  They aren’t lucky and in some cases they aren’t any smarter than the average person.  They were just determined to continue on and on until they made it … and they did!

It’s funny how small the failures look once you’ve finally succeeded.

If you’ve got something you’ve wanted to do, but haven’t moved forward with it because you are afraid it won’t work out, I hope this article helps give you the push needed.  If it does and your plan doesn’t work out, you’ll find out it isn’t that bad and I am quite sure it’ll be much easier to move on to the next plan!

No … I promise you I haven’t lost my mind, nor am I encouraging you to “shape shift” into an inanimate object.

One thing each of us can be assured of in life is that we’ll all experience a roller coaster of events and emotions that accompany those events.  People we love will die, people we work with will be dishonest and take credit for the things we do, and companies who we absolutely knew were going to buy from us … won’t.  You can be assured that in business you’ll experience just as much good as you will bad.

Wow … how uplifting huh?

Well, it doesn’t have to be a downer as long as you accept these facts as truth and prepare yourself for the reprocussions.

If you haven’t already, you might be quickly starting to understand what the title of this article is all about.

If not … let me explain.

If you have a thermometer hanging outside your kitchen window or out on your deck you probably use it to gage fairly quickly on how you should dress before you leave for the day.  That thermometer rises and falls based on the environment in which it resides.

Is that much different than most of us?  I don’t think so.

How many times have you told your kids or your wife to talk to you about something later, after you’ve had your first cup of coffee?

or

How about the last time you had a bad day at work and ended up snapping at your wife when you got home and said something like, “I’ve had a bad day, can’t you just cut me some slack?”

When this happens are you really being any different than a thermostat?  Not really.

You are allowing your environment to affect your mood and the way you behave toward others.  If you’ve already accepted the fact that your life is going to deal you an ever changing set of good and bad circumstances, and you are going to allow yourself to constantly be affected by your surrounding environment … how are you ever going to make any positive progress?

Plus if you do, how long lasting will that positive movement be when you have a negative event lurking right around the corner?

Now let’s take a second and look at the thermostat you have within your house.

That piece of equipment allows you to set the temperature and the internal mechanisms regulate the environment within your surroundings to make sure the temperature is exactly what you want it to be.

The human brain is very powerful and has the ability to be much stronger than a thermostat.  Each of us has the ability to regulate our emotions no matter what our surrounding environment deals us.  We ALL have the ability to look at these, so called, negative events that occur in our lives and learn from them so we can ultimately create a much more positive situation than we had before the event.

If you want to be successful you need to get to the point where you realize …

It doesn’t matter what happens to you in life, it matters how you react to those things that happen to you.

I know it is much easier said than done, but I would encourage you to make today a new day, and from this point forward, focus on controlling your emotions and the way you percieve the events that occur in your life.

Be more like a thermostat where your internal mechanisms (your brain) regulates your emotions and keeps you on a steady course.  Don’t be like the thermostat outside that rises and falls based on its environment.  That is exhausting and will lead you to a life of frustration and failure.

In the words of the character from the Adam Sandler movie “The Waterboy” … YOU CAN DO IT!  :)

Since beginning this experiment I’ve had a lot of time to think about things during my seven mile walks each day.

It seems all we hear about in the news lately is how all the mega-corporations are failing.  Whether it’s a company that is completely destroyed and forced out of business due to corrupt managment, or the government needing to jump in an bail out the automotive companies.

The fact that I even know what’s going on in the world is amazing, since I boycotted the news back in January and haven’t began watching it since that time.  Unfortunately I spend a good amount of time with Twitter and see all the doom and gloom headlines each day.  THANKS ALOT TWITTER!!!

My heart goes out to those of you who make the evening news a part of your evening schedule.  I am surprised there aren’t more people who climb in the bath tub and open a vein with all that depressing news.

Well, I promise I’m not here to give you some solution on how the big mega-corporations can fix themselves for a couple of reasons…

The first reason is I believe they’ve been doing things the wrong way for too long to improve overnight.

Secondly I don’t have a clue of how to run a mega-corporation, nor would I have the ability to articulately lay out a solution.  If I could, I’d be swimming in a room full of cash.  :)

I do know something about small businesses though.

I can remember the day I started my first business.  I was so excited and absolutely knew I was going to set the world on fire.

I looked at all the companies I’d be competing with and could give you a list of things they were doing wrong.  I spent some time putting together a plan which addressed all these deficiencies, chose a name, got business cards, and eliminated all the other excuses I could think of as to why I wasn’t ready to get started.

Then it was time to begin and I sat there scared to death questioning whether my plan was going to work.  This fear left me completely paralyzed.  What if it didn’t work?  What if nobody wanted to buy from me?

Does this sound familiar?  I bet it does.

If you’ve ever been a first time business owner it is impossible to know what to expect and more importantly how to deal with the challenges you are going to face.

What happens when the excitement of making your first sales wears off, and you have your first rough week where you get no sales?  Well if you are anything like me you begin to panic!

That’s very normal and unfortunately, more often than naught, it paralyzes you.  Paralysis typically leads to inactivity, and inactivity leads to the death of your business!

DON’T LET THAT HAPPEN TO YOU!

I recently had a conversation with a first time business owner about this exact situation.  I mentioned to him that we have absolutely no control over whether our prospective customers want our services now, whether they want to spend their money at this time, or whether they make the decision to pick up the phone to even discuss your services.

The only thing we have control of is the actions we complete on a day to day basis.

Although it is difficult to train yourself to celebrate the victory of accomplishing your planned daily activities … it isn’t impossible!

I believe companies fail for a variety of reasons.  Some companies are under capitalized, some companies lack the technical knowledge, but I believe most companies fail because the leadership doesn’t have the mental toughness to weather the storms that will DEFINITELY come.  The first time they don’t have the funds available for payroll, or their star employee decides to join the competition … they immediately fold up their tent and go home.

I believe that if  business owners had a strong belief in themselves and their ideas, stuck to their plan, kept a positive attitude during difficult times, and focused continuously on the only thing they can control … THEIR ACTIONS … everything would be just fine and far fewer businesses would be folding.

I’d love to hear from you if you’ve ever found yourself in these same situations and how you dealt with it.  Also, if you know of anyone who has recently started a business I’d encourage you to give them a call and support them.  Entrepreneurs are going to make or break our economy in the future and they need as many people encouraging them as possible.  Don’t let all those negative people be their main source of advice.  If that ends up being the case … you haven’t even seen a bad economy yet.

Well I survived my first day of my new commitments, and you know what?

It wasn’t that bad!

I’m not saying that it was easy.  If I did … I’d be lying!

Every time we start new habits it is very uncomfortable, but if we continue to do things the same way over and over and follow our old habits  … we can expect to live with the uncomfortable feeling of never achieving more. In my opinion, the second we stop striving to become better, we begin to die.

You tell me … What could be more uncomfortable than death?  

With this little experiment of mine I’ll be tracking my thought process and my progress toward the achievement of my goals over the coming 30 days.  I won’t be talking specifically about the action goals I set.  If you are interested in knowing what those are you can follow me on Twitter.

I will, however, be discussing the challenges I bump up against and how I fight my way through them.  I figure by doing this, you will be able to relate.  Especially if you are coming along on the journey with me, and we might just be able to assist each other.

If you haven’t decided to participate, I am guessing  either there is nothing in your life left to accomplish, or you just haven’t gotten around to it.

Whatever the case, I’d love to have you jump on board so we can create as many success stories over the next 30 days as possible!

Anyhow, when I set my three action goals I struggled with what goals to set since I already stay quite busy.  I was in pretty good shape though since one of my goals had been accomplished by simply launching the experiment to the public.

I was feeling great … one down and only two to go!  This was going to be a breeze … or was it?

I completed a portion of my second action goal and human nature kicked in.  I began to attempt to come up with a valid excuse so I could get away with not quite completing this goal.  I came up with the same excuses I believe most people would.

I began to rationalize with myself that it was only the first day and since I started it mid morning I really didn’t have to count bed time as the end of the first day.

I then attempted to convince myself that my true action goal was something I needed to accomplish over 30 days and therefore as long as I averaged my daily goal by the end of the month, I’d be fine.  Sounds like a very popular excuse for a procrastinator like me.  :)

Then I got home from work late and was planning on using that as an excuse since I obviously didn’t have the time necessary to get it done.

These are all very common thoughts that all of us have when we are attempting to start new habits.  We are accustomed to doing things a certain way and modifying that behavior, no matter how much good will come  … it just plain sucks!

That’s when the accountability trap I set for myself kicked in.  I started to realize that I already put my action goals out there into the universe and I was sure that there were the normal negative people lurking, waiting for me to fail.  There was absolutely NO WAY I was going to let those people succeed through my failure.  Because of this I found the motivation to accomplish the remaining tasks in my second goal.

As I finished I began to feel great!  I had accomplished two of the three action goals I set for myself and only had one to go.  That’s when those little voices came back.  They said …

“Come on Pete!  You just finished goal number two three hours later than you planned.  It is only the first day and two out of three isn’t bad.  Come on … it’s late.  You should go to bed.”

Again, I almost succumbed to the pressure of negativity, but again I thought of the naysayers that I was sure were lurking  out there waiting for me to not follow through.

Alright, now before you think I am a schizophrenic that has voices in their head, you better look inward.  Everyone experiences these little battles centered around what you know you should do, and what you really do.  If you say you don’t, then I am sure you lie about a bunch of other stuff also.  :)

I completed the last of my three action goals at exactly 11:43pm last night and it felt great!  One day down and only twenty nine more to go!  I awoke this morning a little tired, but ready to plow through the day and knowing I am going to accomplish my three action goals for a second consecutive day.

Feel free to leave any comments or thoughts you may have on the process of starting new habits.  If you’ve decided to join me on this journey, I’d love to know that as well.