If I ask you now: Who is your biggest competition? You will give me answers about a colleague. Another company in the same field as your business. You will tell me how there company is bigger than your company. How they pay their sales people lousy salaries, but they seem to have the best. How they have been in the business a long time. How they undercut and the rest of you cannot compete.
Or perhaps it is at school, or as a sport team. How about that mom who seems to serve on every committee?
The truth is, the real competition exists in your head.
Some of the greatest sport stars, will refuse to discuss the other competitors on the circuit or field. They do not allow themselves to entertain any information regarding these people. Some of the most successful business people will tell you they do not know anything about same service delivery companies. If they can learn anything from them regarding their methods or systems, they do. But they make sure they stay on top of the latest and best techniques and equipment.
Why do they do this?
They have learned, early on in life, that you do not give your attention to the achievements of your competitors. You stay focused on your life, your future and your goals.
We are all here to run our own race. You run your race at your own pace. You run your race at your own motivation. And this is where we become stuck – our motivation. When you hear yourself say every day, how you are not satisfied by where you are, and you constantly want to be like someone else, what do you think happens?
Your subconscious will, unbeknown to you, give you exactly more of that. Wanting to be like someone. More and more – you will always stay in lack. Your subconscious will search for events for you to keep satisfying the need to “want to be”. When you tell yourself, you are not good enough, it becomes a belief that you live by. A limiting belief, that starts ruling your life and you will never be satisfied by what you have already achieved.
It sounds simply, yet difficult.
Well, it is actually easy. The problem lies in the story you tell yourself.
So how do you start to change all of this?
1. Gratitude. Gratitude is perhaps the single biggest key to a future of abundance. The moment you realise and acknowledge all that you already have in your life, and you feel the gratitude for it, your whole energy level changes and you start attracting and looking for more to be grateful for. If you cannot even appreciate what you already have and have achieved, how will you ever be satisfied?
2. Focus on your life. Stop looking out the window at all the other people. If you want to people watch, go to your nearest coffee shop and have a cup of coffee without your phone. When you finish, get up and focus back into your life. You are the only person who can change anything in your life. I cannot come and take over and force you to do things – only you can do that. Forget about the other people, unless it is to learn a new skill.
3. Invest in yourself. You are the factory of all your goals. If all the parts in the factory is not well maintained and fully functional, how can your factory work at optimum? This includes courses, reading, experimentation, networking, etc. But what about you – the brain of all that is happening out there in your factory? Do you ever invest in yourself? I have just said, your subconscious will give you more of where your focus is. Do you ever give yourself a hand up and work on your beliefs? Do you think it is possible that if you cancel those limiting beliefs, that you might make your life easier?
4. Believe. If you have set a goal, an achievable and sustainable goal, and you work diligently towards it every day, do you still stress at night? Why? If you are doing everything you might be able to do to achieve that goal, what is stressing about it at night going to help? There is an old proverb that goes something like this: If you have a problem and you know that you can solve it (by either knowing what to do or to get help), then why do you stress? You are going to solve it, it is only a matter of time. If you have a problem and it is out of your hands and you cannot solve it, even with outside help, then why do you stress? That will not make that problem any less. Believe in yourself. Believe in your abilities and your vision and determination to see it through.
5. Relax. Take time away from it all from time to time, to prevent you becoming the problem. We need to step away sometimes to see the bigger picture. I have so often seen entrepreneurs and sportspeople becoming the very problem of what they are trying to get away from. Why? Because you focus on the smallest of details and you no longer see the bigger picture of where you are on your way to. It is like a child sitting in the back of the car, on the way to the beach and you keep asking your parents how long still. You do not have a map or perception of the road ahead – you have no idea of how far away you are, whether the road is smooth or if there is still a mountain to climb. You only know you are going to the sea – nothing more, nothing less and you are not interested on the in between here and there. Get into the driving seat and keep the map on hand.
6. Enjoy the ride. We all have dreams and goals. We all can imagine ourselves at the end post. But do you really have all the skills and experience needed to achieve our goal? Surprise, surprise – life will always take us on the root best suited so we can achieve our gold star goal. Enjoy the ride, see and acknowledge what you learn along the way. Be grateful for the lesson when it comes. When you reach the top, you will have all the experience along the way to carry you forward to your next goal. This process does not become a once off quick fix. No, it provides you with tools for the future.
Next time you look at everyone around you for reasons why you are not achieving your best, start looking at your way of thinking. And then, forget the other, they do not exist in your future. You have not intention of enjoying your future with your competition – why give them so much energy?
Come on, you have all the drive, vision and skills within you to achieve your goal. Believe it, see it, feel it and go for it.
Sue Leppan
Transformation Life Coach
NLP Practitioner
Follow me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SueLeppanLifeCoach/
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