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1 Story That Will Make You Feel Better About The World

Do you have patience? Do you have any faith in what you are doing?

 

Right now, I am seriously lacking in both of these departments.  

 

Part of me is filled with so much excitement because I am launching my goal-setting course on Udemy next week.

 

But the other half of me is filled with so much frustration.  It is simply taking so much longer than I originally thought.

 

I wanted to intro this clip of a talk I did earlier this year to a high school. It’s on the topic of having more patience and having more faith.

 

It is holds up well today because we live in a society where it is typically a go-go-go mentality and as young people we want all these amazing things to happen in our lives and then we get upset when they do not happen immediately.

 

Public Announcement: Change takes time.

 

I think we all need this reminder in our lives. To be more patient with others, and to be more patient with the changes that we are trying to see in our life. I hope this video/story is able to serve you.

 

I will give you guys more information on the Udemy course when it is happening you, you guys probably will have access to that next Monday.

 

“Another one is having faith and I actually learned about this when I was living in Shanghai. Are you guy’s familiar with a Chinese bamboo tree? Or you have heard of bamboo, right?

 

The Chinese bamboo trees… there is a weird way that they grow and you have to have faith essentially when you initially plant the seed. 

 

When you plant the seeds you have to constantly water it, you have to constantly make sure that you know it is getting enough sunlight and you have to do this for 4 years without any result.

 

It won’t actually break through the ground for four years so you have to do it in good faith that you are doing this on a daily basis. Finally, on the fifth year, it actually breaks through to the ground and in six weeks it’s able to actually grow…

 

It grows to 90 feet in 6 weeks.

 

The question now becomes

 

“Did it grow ninety feet in six week? Or “Did it grow ninety feet in five years?”

 

The answer is it took FIVE years.

 

It took all four years of watering and sunlight.

For you to get to your dreams,

-       It is going to take you reading hundred of books,  

-       You are going to do hundreds of homework assignments. (They were high school students after all)

-       You have to talk to the right people

-       You have to nurture your own art.

-       You have to figure what you really want to do

-        You have to set these goals.

-       You have to fail

-       You have to succeed

-       You have to do the 100,000 things before you actually get to what you want

  

All that time is necessary. That entire five years is necessary.

 

If you miss like a day of watering or if it did not have enough sunlight, that seed would die and it would just stay in the ground.  (Inc. a picture of bamboo somewhere)

 

It would never be ninety feet, it would never even be one feet.

 

You have the have faith when you are pursuing your goals.

 

If you are going through a tough time right now, it is ok. Whether it is in your relationships, your job, your business, whatever it is, it is ok.

 

You are exactly where you need to be.

 

Have patience. Have faith.

 

Jay

We Are Our Habits – (Video plus scientific research)

The other day of filming…

To give you guys up a bit of behind the scenes here, we actually shot the same video (above) earlier, but at the beach…

The camera ran out of battery - we forgot to bring the extra battery.

The sound of crashing waves overpowered my voice  - we forgot to bring a mic 

....solid day of filming right? 

I failed to remember bringing these simple little pieces because I started filming on the go only a few short months ago. In other words, I have not built my habits long enough to be able to facilitate this new behaviour of filming when inspiration strikes. 

 

How long does it take to build a habit?

Some speculate 21 days, other says it has to be longer. In the latest study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, Phillippa Lally and her research team decided to figure out just how long it actually takes to form a habit.

The study examined the habits of 96 people over a 12-week period. Each person chose one new behavior or habit for the whole 12-week period and reported each day on whether or not they did the new habit and how automatic the behavior felt.

Some people chose simple habits like “drinking a bottle of water with lunch.” Others chose more difficult tasks like “running for 15 minutes before dinner.”

Just to mention before we get to the results, depending on the complexity of the habit, more time is needed to hardwire the new behaviour. (Ex: Drinking a bottle of water is easier than running before dinner) 

At the end of the 12 weeks, the researchers analyzed the data to determine how long it took each person to go from starting a new behavior to automatically doing it without thinking.

The answer?

On average, it takes on average more than 2 months before a new behaviour becomes hardwire into your brain, 66 days to be exact. 

And how long it takes a new habit to form can vary widely depending on the behaviour, the person, and the circumstances. 

In other words, we all have the wrong expectations of habits. The truth is that it will probably take you anywhere from two months to eight months to build a new behaviour into your life.

 

Let's see how far the rabbit hole goes....

How do we actually reverse engineer-building habits though?

Habits are an accumulation of the daily actions that we take. Our actions are an accumulation of our thoughts and our thoughts are an accumulation from our beliefs.

 

Habits ---> Actions ---> Thoughts ---> Beliefs

We are really creatures of habit if we think about this. We love having various subconscious routines.

 

“ Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately so is losing.” – Vince Lombardi

 

 Therefore, if we want to build towards anything and we want have a greater success in our life, we must make sure that we build the right habits to facilitate that type of process. 

 

Going back to the filming

This morning we were at the beach and we were fascinated with the size of the ocean. What is an ocean anyways?

The ocean is nothing but a multitude of drops and each drop counts towards building that ocean. 

The same can be said about your lives. You are nothing but a multitude of your actions, your thoughts and your beliefs.

 

Do not be carless with any of your thoughts or actions. They ultimately build up to the whole image and fascination that is your life.

 

Live with passion, live your dream and live it now! 

 

Jay 

 

PS. Got any feedback? Agree or disagree? I love to know. Comment in the section below and let's have a conversation about habits. 

PPS. Stay tune for my upcoming "Redefining Goal Setting" course... it's going to help you not only crush your goals, but to start operating at high levels of productivity. Subscribe at the bottom for more updates and weekly videos. 

 

Extraordinary to Ordinary

Dan Sullivan says "The mind cannot do extra-ordinary things, the mind can do only ordinary things" 

This has always stayed with me when it comes to goal setting and being able to manifest your own desires into reality. We believe it is far too obscure, so we never dare to ask for it. 

If you want to achieve any extraordinary goals, this is a crucial step. You have to make it seem normal to yourself so that you can visualize success in your life and start to believe in the actions necessary for your goals to happen. 

Do you agree? Love to hear your feedback 

Live with passion, live with your dream, and live it NOW! 

Jay  

The Questions We Ask Ourselves

It is a common philosophy these days that our thoughts and our beliefs create the perception in our lives, but I want to take it a step further.

I purpose that it is the internal questions that we ask ourselves that create our perception. 

The other day, I was walking home and I saw this man sitting outside of the subway holding a sign.  This sign read, “I lost my job, I am not a thief, please give” 

This sign really struck me because it showed me that this person decided to create a certain perception around his scenario and he ended picking more of a victim mindset.

It made me wonder though, what kind of questions did he ask himself to get there? 

Perhaps “Why me?” or “why did this have to have happened?”  

How many times in our lives, do we use the same type of questions on seemingly trivial matters?

Maybe you are just a little clumsy or you got locked out of the house or someone spills a cup of coffee on you. We tend to jump to conclusions and perceive ourselves in a negative light.   

Our brain is such a powerful tool that when we ask these “low quality questions” it has no choice, but to pull from our past experiences and our passed references to answer our request. It highlights for us all the times that we have been clumsy or all the times that we have been unlucky.

Therefore, if we are aware of this process, why do we not in turn ask higher quality questions?  

Instead of asking, “Why me?”  We can ask “Why am I so lucky?” “Why did this opportunity present itself to me?”

Instead of asking, “why did all this happen” we can ask, “How do I survive this?” “How do I survive this and have fun doing it?”

By applying these little tweaks in our internal questions, we can stop lingering in the victim mindset and we start being proactive in finding a solution to our problems.  

The quality of questions we ask ourselves can make a world of difference.  

Question of the day: What has happened in the last week that has made you feel lucky?

 

Please comment in the section below wherever you are reading or watching this. I reply to everything myself when I see it.

 

Live with passion, live your dream, and live it NOW!! 

Little Wins add up to make a BIG difference

The concept of “Little Wins” can highlight to yourself how awesome one's life really is. 

A quick story: 

Just last week, my friend and I were invited to attend this conference a few hours outside the city.  It started pretty early, so we consequently had to wake up even earlier; about 5:30a.m. 

We were driving along this empty highway when we noticed the sunrise creeping out of the horizon. 

Now, here is something that I personally take for granted every single day. (For the record, I love sunrises, just not the best morning person) 

I started thinking about all these little things that happen in our lives. All these little subtleties that are awesome, but we take for granted on a day-to-day basis.  

Advice

One of the hardest pieces of advice that I have ever heard is “to want what you have” 

That is so difficult given we live in an age of social media and it is so easy to create a perception of one’s life. We slowly develop these bad habits of wanting what other people have. 

We start feeling as if we are not good enough or we are not cool enough and ultimately, we reach the conclusion that our life is simply not as awesome.  

By acknowledging the little wins that happen throughout our day, we are able to show ourselves how amazing our life really is.  

Just think about it… 

When was the last time you went out of your way to see a sunrise or sunset?

When was the last time that you allowed yourself to sink into that cup of coffee or that cup of tea and you did not have to run off for a trivial reason?  

When was the last time that you acknowledged your lover's smile ?

These little wins though subtle are ever so present. 

New Challenge: 

Try it out! Before you go to sleep every night, try to pick out three to five little wins that you had throughout your day. 

It could be things that you are thankful for or things that you are grateful for. By doing this exercise, we are starting to build more of a positive mindset and begin showing ourselves how to live in an abundant fashion. 

I really believe that at the end of the day it is the little wins that add up to make a big difference. 

Question of the day : What are some of your favourite "little wins" ?  Comment in the section below! 

 

Live with passion, Live your dream and Live it NOW! 

 

Jay 

How To Get Over Frustration

We all experience frustration from time to time.  

There is not enough time in the day.  The "to-do list" is getting longer and longer.  We feel overwhelmed and stressed towards the world.  

As Jim Rohn famously said "do not wish it was easier, wish you were better" 

I believe the answer is in our emotions.  Change only happens when we hit that turning point. 

6 week goals can make you accomplish more

What have you accomplish in the last three weeks?

I launched a video “the six week goal challenge” a few weeks ago,  challenging people to pick one goal that they can commit to and try to achieve a specific result in a six week time frame.

The response has been pretty amazing.  Goals have been ranging from traveling , to students finishing their exams, to  even people getting businesses and projects ready to launch.

 At the same time, I got questions on "why" the six week time frame and is this effective?

Is everything art?

I have always been fascinated with this idea that everything in one’s life can be art.  From the way you carry yourself, to the way you treat others.  There is an unspoken artistic manner behind it all. 

At the highest level of any profession, one finds artistry.  They see beyond the numbers and the analytics.  Programmers call it “plugged in.”  Athletes refer to it as “in the zone.” No matter what one names it, no one can deny it. 

The BEST way to overcome fear is….

Taking Bold Action!

Every time you boldly take a step towards an end  goal, you start stripping away a piece of  what holds you back and start demystifying what you believe to be possible.  The more action you take, the more fear turns into confidence. 

Tip : What you focus on is what you will get more of.  Focus on taking bold action, and forget fear.