Coach LaSota's Formula for Success!!!

There's something strange in the air this morning, feels like it has to do with the way the rest of the day is going to fall, and I don't mean the heat pouring off the Yankee season going down in flames.

With that in mind I need to refocus my energy, which I've needed to do for some time anyway, and what better way to to that than to give you....

Coach LaSota's Formula for Success!!!

As with everything else in life, this is a work in progress, and there's much more to it, but this is a solid start...
So here we go....

Have a clear idea of what's important to you.
The biggest problem that most people have is that they don't really know what it is that they value in life. Then the things that they do, which seem like they're helping, actually pull you away from what it is that your heart really wants. For instance, if the most important thing to you is being a good father, but then you go and gamble away all of the rent money, you're not living in congruence with your values. But how can you live in line with what's important to you if you don't know what that is? Most people don't, then wonder why they're priorities are all screwed.

If you did nothing else, make a list of the 5 things that are most important to you in life and in what order. For me its:

1. Respect
2. Acting Right
3. Stability
4. Family
5. Love

Be Passionate about what you're doing.
Lets face it, anything that's going to work in your life is going to take a lot of doing, long hours, and getting passed road blocks. Its going to take facing tough challenges and putting your balls on the line, usually against some pretty scary odds. If you aren't passionate about whatever it is that you're trying to find find success with there's no way in hell you're going to put in those long hours or push passed those obstacles.

Believe its something worth doing and that you can do it
I've already spoken in great length about the power that even a small amount of belief can have and what can be accomplished because of it in my post "Facebook - The High School Lunch Room, and the power of BELIEF!!!". What is confidence but believing you can do something plus the faith that it will turn out the way you want it to? On the flip side to that, what is hopelessess but losing every sense of that very same thing? And there's nothing more crushing than hopelessness. You can know what you want and be passionate about doing it, but if you don't believe that you CAN do it you'll be stopped in your tracks quicker than a horse with no legs. And a horse with no legs will never be able to run now will it?

In fact, beliefs, whether right or wrong, are the table legs that hold our entire lives above the ground. You have to have this power working for you rather than against you.

Build a concrete plan to get the goal accomplished
I always like to use the analogy of the road trip to the Alamo. Remember the Alamo! Seems like a place everyone should visit, right? How can you remember something if you've never seen it? Not the point of the saying, I know, but whatever. Its a good road trip.

But there are many ways to go to get to the Alamo through this great big country we have here. You can map out a bunch of different things to hit along the way, make it a great trip, and be sure to end up at the Alamo. But what do you suppose would be the chances of getting to the Alamo if you just walked out your door and started wondering around out there? Not very good are they? Sure, you can go in a ton of directions, see and do a lot of things, but your chances of getting lost along the way are enormous.

Yet most of us live our lives like this. We go out there without a map, stumble around for a while and expect we're going to smack right into the Alamo, and how? By sheer luck? Then we get upset or confused when we end up in Cleveland with no money to get back home. At that point you're stuck there.

Do you want to be stuck in a place in life where you never intended to be without knowing how you got there or how to get out? Most of us are. Having a plan prevents this from happening. Or can get you back on the road when you make a wrong turn.

Have the energy to ACT, the mental energy to think clearly, and the positive energy to attract positive results
This is probably the single most important thing on this list, yet amazingly, its the one that's most neglected, and the very first thing that's sacrificed in the name of everything else in life. Let's face it, every single other item here takes a certain amount of energy to do. And if you feel like crap, you're not going to do ANY of it. Hell, even if you could do it anyway, you're not going to feel like it, so it's not going to get done. Or if it does, it'll be a half assed job.

This requires getting enough sleep. Eating right, exercise, and maybe most important, relaxing and spending time with friends and doing things that are fun. What good is any amount of success if you're too busy to feel good. And if you feel good, that's what its all about baby, you're already a success. Feeling good is the name of the game. I've got a good personal trainer if you need help with this here.

Always communicate perfectly what you want and what you're willing and able to do to get it with everyone, ESPECIALLY yourself
Its important that people know where you're coming from and what you want. How many of life's conflicts are over something simple, but come because we just aren't clear on how the other person see's things. The messed up thing about this is that the person we offend the most here is ourselves. You might not realize it, but you're talking to yourself literally every moment of every day, even while you sleep.

When you do this you're actually programming your subconscious mind, and your subconscious is a powerful Jedi, it's the engine that makes everything go. Yet ever single time you tell yourself you can't do something, it rattles around back there until you begin to believe it. Every time you tell yourself you want something that pulls you away from your values, it creates a jumbled mess in your mind that clouds your vision of what's important. As the saying goes, you can lie to me all you want but you can't lie to yourself. Its a sure way to an unhappy life. Except that most of us are pulling the wool over our own eyes without even realizing it.

Just as with the Alamo, if you're not clear on exactly what you want, how is anyone (including yourself) ever going to be able to give it to you?

Build strong connections and relationships with others to help carry you through. Especially with people that make life enjoyable. You're only as good as your support system.

Anthony Robbins always says the quality of your communication is the quality of your life. And according to Dale Carnegie, 85% of success comes from how you communicate with others. It truly is who you know, not what you know, and that goes for the people in every aspect of your life. Sometimes it's the person that gets your foot in the door, gets you that business meeting or job interview. Sometimes its the people that pick you up when you're down or believe in you so much it makes you believe in yourself. At others it people that spread the word for your cause.

I go into this in full detail in the post "The KEY TO SUCCESS IS RIGHT IN HERE.... if you read it... "

Even if you're not ready to take all these steps at once, be sure to take care of that very first one. If you know what's most important to you in life, and have your own 10 commandment, your Knights Code to live by, and you always stick to those guns, then you're ahead of the game already.

Later People!

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Coach LaSota

The KEY TO SUCCESS IS RIGHT IN HERE.... if you read it...

I wish I knew who had left that first anonymous comment on last Friday's post. It seems as if a friend of mine is in pain and I can't see who it is. If I can't see it then there's nothing that I can do to help, and they don't feel they can go to anyone with the issue. That is my failing.

One of the basic premises that the work I'm now getting into is built upon is that we all already know the answers that we're looking for. The problem is that we either can't see it because we're asking ourselves the wrong questions, or we're too scared to answer those questions. Very often all it takes is someone talk to, someone to bounce things off of, and we reach the conclusions on our own. I had witnessed that very thing with a friend of mine just this weekend, to beautiful results.

Isn't it a shame then that so often we can't find anyone to sit and listen long enough, or that we feel comfortable enough with without fear of being judged, to allow us to do that? Most of the time most of us are so in love with our own voices, or the importance we feel by doling out advice, that we're thinking of our answer before we even listen to what they're saying. Take a second right now and consider if you do that. I know you have before; I've caught myself doing it too.

My "job", when it's done right, is to simply do that, sit back and keep my mouth shut and just let you vent. Then, when you hit a roadblock or don't want to push passed a barrier in your thinking I give a little nudge in the right direction. There are a lot of techniques that I had to train in, sure, a lot of different ways to get you there, but ultimately we all have to figure it out for ourselves.

Another of the presuppositions of my field (heh, my field), the very first one, is that communication is constant. Every one of us is literally communicating with everyone around us everyone else every single moment. We just don't know it. Hell, half the time we think we're saying one thing while our body or our energy is saying another. Then every one else in the room is picking up a completely different message based on whatever madness they're afflicted with.

Have you ever complimented someone and they flipped out on you? Then you had to step back and look around with a stupid look on your face and all you could think was WTF? Yeah, I know you have because people are nuts. And I know you've done it to someone because you're nuts too. We all are. Well... that's why.

Another thing we all do, or have done, is to get overly self conscious when we think we've said or done something embarrassing. When we're nervous we swear everyone in the room knows it, like they smell it or something. How the hell do you not see my hands shaking? This exact thing keeps so many of us from saying or doing or trying the things that we really want to do, because of that paranoid sense that "they know!".

The flip side to that is that we also think that everyone should be able to tell when there's something going on with us. And if they don't we grunt, whine, fidget, cross our arms and huff, pout, and all manner of other business to call attention to ourselves. Then if that doesn't work we get angry or hurt. We think we're alone or no one cares about us. Often, if this goes on consistently for long stretches, we get trapped by that, w begin to feel we have no one we can turn to, or we lock it away so tightly that we can't or are afraid to let it out.

And even when they do notice somethings off, what do we do? "Forget it! You should know!" How many times has someone done that to you? How many times have you done it?

We're constantly caught between that rock and that hard place; between the assumption that everyone is noticing our insecurities laid bare before them and the frustration and sensitivities that they don't. But they never do.

And why don't people ever notice? Because 99% of the world is thinking about themselves. And even when we think of others, its in terms of what we want or how it affects us. That's not to talk bad about people, I do it too, and so you if you're honest about it. Its human nature. It's survival instinct. Its also why 1% of the world has most of the money. Which 1% do you suppose that is?

Our only real option then is to come right out and say it. Then, of course, you have the issue I always did, as my dear mother always said, "it's not what you say but how you say it."

Anthony Robbins has made a career on the premise that "The quality of your communication is the quality of your life". And according to Dale Carnegie's "How to win friends and influence people" 15% of success is based on talent; 85% is from how well you talk to and get along with other people. Its not the guy who has the best idea or does the best work, its the one who gets that idea across to other or gets people behind them, to lift them up, that gets to the top of the mountain.

Its those people that raise us up, that believe in us, our support system, that gets us to where we're going. Those are our ambassadors, the ones who spread the word for us, in turn get their people to believe in us too without our having to ask them. That's mostly because they can't help but gush about us.

Here's the irony of it all; you know how I said 99% of the world is always thinking about themselves? If that's true then why would they gush about us? Because the people who drip with excitement most thinking about us are the ones that WE gush over the most... to them!

Of course, the key is that you can't be full of shit. You can't do it geared towards what you're looking to get out of them; people smell bullshit from a mile away. But if you show genuine enthusiasm for someone else and who they are, what they do, then you fill them with a sense of importance. And every time they think of you thereafter they associate you and what you're doing with that same sense of importance. The more you matter, then the more they matter.

I'm famous for rubbing people the wrong way. It happened again just Saturday night, and so I've begun to look back and review all the ways to communicate better. You who read this know my heart better than most, but if you were to meet me in public without having done so would never know that this is how I really am. You would believe the exact opposite of me, that I'm a horrible human being. And that's the challenge facing us all.

You good people have taught me though that its in bearing my soul and making myself completely vulnerable that I show my true strength. But many of you have yet to learn that for yourselves, and fear can trap our souls behind a wall of pain.

Most of us are wrapped up in our own shit, too much to notice yours. But that doesn't mean that we don't care. So please, please, to my anonymous commenter, and everyone else, don't be afraid, come right out and say it. Tell me what's up and free yourself.

Or in the immortal words of Ronald Reagan
"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

Later people!