Life is Good - When success comes easily

I was always surprised when seeing some people who are in great shape saying it comes to them “naturally”. I wondered how some people can build one business after another and make it look so easy and effortless.

How can a basketball player score 40 points without even breaking into a sweat?

How do some people cook a five-course meal with such apparent ease that it is mind-boggling to a person that can not even fry an egg if his life depended on it?

It is a fact - when you do not need to force it and you have FUN while getting really good results, LIFE IS GOOD! When success comes easily, it feels great.

However, it is puzzling to see an incredibly fit person with awesome six-pack abs and amazing discipline with his diet and workouts who struggles to have any success as a business person.

Or the other way around. When a business person can easily do 16-hour workdays, but can’t spend 45 minutes in a gym or stick to a healthy diet.

Why is that?

It is a combination of a couple of things, I believe. Here is my “3 steps formula to success”.

Step No.1: It is not about affirmations, it is about environment

When I first read this in a book called 24 Assets, by Steven Preslifeild, I was astonished.

It is not about how motivated you are. It is not about discipline. It is not about affirmations and mantras and watching motivational videos.

No - it is about building an environment where you can thrive without thinking about it.

“When a flower doesn’t grow, you change the environment, not the flower.”

When you see a person in a great shape, you realise he is spending very little time “motivating himself” to go to the gym or beating himself up to eat healthy. He just does it. He built an environment for himself when his entire day is structured in a way that ensures he never misses his training, he has his food plan organised, and everything set up in a way that he does not even need to think about it.

A business man also is not trying to “motivate” himself to DO THE WORK. His entire environment is set up in a way that ensures he takes care of his employees and his family; they push him just as he pushes them. He has his day structured around this, and his only concern is keeping his working environment meticulously organised, without any additional need for motivation to do his work.

So, the first step to success is to build an environment where you can thrive without thinking too much about results and without the need to motivate yourself unduly.

Step No.2: WU-WEI and do not THINK ABOUT THE PINK ELEPHANT

What do you think of when I tell you that not to think about a PINK ELEPHANT? All you do is think about it. The same goes for LAZINESS, JUNK FOOD, CONTENT CREATION, MEETINGS, or anything else that you really don’t want to do, but need to.

The more you think about NOT EATING JUNK FOOD, the more you will think about the junk food, and the stronger the desire will be to eat it. The more you think about how you NEED TO WRITE AN ARTICLE, the more you will think about HOW HARD IT IS, and the less chance is that you will actually knuckle down and write it.

If you wish to MAKE A LOT OF MONEY, and put a lot of stress on “I NEED TO MAKE MONEY”, the more stressful it will be, and harder to actually make money.

And this brings us to the concept of “WU-WEI” - which, in Chinese, means “effortless action”.

And this brings us back to Step No.1.

You should build your environment in a way that it is effortless where you DO NOT THINK ABOUT THE OUTCOME or the HARD WORK or WHAT YOU NEED TO AVOID - instead, you actually think about the ENVIRONMENT YOU WISH TO BUILD, and focus solely on that.

A fun example: let's say you live in a forest where in the dark all sorts of night creatures are coming out to eat you, but you need to survive.

All you do the whole time is think about these creatures - you think of numerous ways you will fight them, how you will stay awake the entire night, build weapons...you put on loud music and “motivate yourself” for a fight. You do this for 14 days, and then the one time you fall asleep, the bear eats you. All that worry and stress didn’t achieve your goal - to survive. Quite the reverse.

An alternative would be to just build a house (environment), and take good care of the house. When you take care of the house, you forget about the scary creatures - you don’t even think about them. You are fearless, you are relaxed, and you can sleep soundly without anxiety about being eaten. You know your house will protect you from any invaders of the predatory kind.

The fight against bears becomes easy, effortless, with no stress, and uninterrupted sleep.

And every week you make your house stronger, safer, bigger, better - which makes your life good (and keeps you from being eaten).

Step No.3: Create your environment

Goolets company has been operating since 2005, and my wife and I never had any problems or felt the need to motivate ourselves to go to work, to think about growth, to put in the hours, or make sure we were performing at the highest level. We just do it without thinking about it. And we love it.

We have created an environment with fantastic people, where we enjoy working, where we really enjoy all the projects we undertake, and will easily carry on like this for the next 50 years.

Retirement is an outdated concept; I hope we will both work until we are 100 years old, as we do not consider it as work - it is our passion and we enjoy doing what we do. We have created an environment where “motivation” is not needed - it is innate.

So no matter what you wish to do, be it:

Losing weight
Building or expanding your business
Meeting new people
Becoming more spiritual
Doing yoga or martial arts or dancing or golf

Think how you can implement this into your life in a way that you do not think of it as “work”.

If you wish to lose weight, you should not think about dieting, rather, how you will effortlessly organise your day around delicious healthy food, then plan your day - without even thinking about junk food. Effortless.

If you wish to network and meet new people, don’t try to force it. Enroll in a business club, join a few groups on Facebook, and have lunch with some of your interesting friends a couple of times a week. Effortless.

If you want to learn golf, do not push yourself beyond your capabilities and get stressed about it - simply join a local golf club, block out some time on your calendar twice a week, then stick to the schedule.

It sounds like common sense, but most people do it the other way around.

They write down lofty goals. They repeat positive affirmations. They read “The Secret” every day. They watch motivational videos. Hype themselves up. Go “all in” for 14 days. And then - they give up. Motivation dries up; they quit; and it is game over.