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10 minutes a day keeps the crazy away… :-)
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Mindset work is one of the most important things you can do in your business when you really want to grow, push the needle, try something new, and really set a new reality. We're almost at the end of this year. A lot of you are going to do goal-setting, and thinking about what you want to do differently next year, so let's make sure it works. What I want to propose for this month is getting ready for that, gearing up for that, building that muscle.
This is all about changing the focus of what you want to create. Here's the shocking thing. Some of you may know this. Humans think about negative stuff at least 70% of the time. It might actually be higher than that. Think about that. 70% of the time most of us focus on stuff that's not resourceful, that's negative. What do you think, what kind of action comes out of thinking negatively? What you focus on grows…
We want to make sure that we change our thinking, our mindset, our focus on what we actually want to create. I know that's easier said than done. What we want to do is come up with a practice for doing that successfully. Not just for a day or two, but doing it consistently, because that's the only thing that actually works, is when you do it consistently.
We all know about 21 days of forming a new habit. What's actually true is that it's more like 30 days to form that new habit, and then it takes another 30 days to really implement it into your lifestyle so you do it without fail. We actually want to do this thing so that it's not just promoting failure.
The brain is a muscle. What's important is that you have to realize you want to build this muscle of focusing on the good stuff rather than the bad stuff. You have to build this muscle. It's just like when you're going to the gym. You can't lift that 100-pound kettlebell the first day. You're going to have to build up to it. It takes a consistent practice.
What I want to propose is doing a challenge, meaning let's all get together and commit to this thing that I'm going to talk about. Then, we can have accountability with each other, because this is another really cool fact. When you do something with a group of people, you are going to be much more likely successful than if you're doing it by yourself. There are some amazing studies about that.
One of my favorite books, Do or Die, talks about this. What the guy basically talks about is when you try something new by yourself, especially when it's a radical change, you're 90% likely to fail. Think about that. You're more likely than 90% to fail.
Now, when you add community, and you add support and accountability, it changes that to a shocking 78%--just by adding community, you add another 70-something percent likelihood that you're actually going to succeed at this thing. What I want to propose is, let's get together and do this challenge. It's only going to cost you 10 minutes a day. I've been doing this with my mastermind and seeing massive successes happening all over the place, just from committing to 10 minutes a day to changing your reality to something that's actually going to be much more supportive and resourceful to you than anything else that you have done.
30 days is what we're going to try, here, because we have a little bit more than 30 days to the new year. It's 30 days of doing your mindset work every single day for 10 minutes a day. The group that I'm proposing for this is our fantastic Facebook group, Fearless Women Entrepreneur Network. Join us and do this with us.
In the Facebook group, we're going to post a thread, and you just need to go in once a day and say, "Hey, I did it," or post an emoji. Nothing outrageous, just a quick, "I did it, I'm on it. We're all in this together."
Here's what I'm proposing to do. 10 minutes a day, ideally at the same time every day, you do this practice. It's super easy. It doesn't take much of anything. Start with meditation. Meditation, or chant, or whatever else works for you, but a peaceful, quiet practice that helps you center and focus on your body.
I'll show you one that my friend, Harsimrit Kaur Khalsa taught me. Very, very simple. You put your hands like this, fists together, thumbs together. Put it against the sternum of your chest. You just really spend three minutes breathing. What a novel idea, right? You're going to breathe, which is going to increase the oxygen in your brain, which means you can think better, you can focus better, and you're actually in your body, and centered and grounded.
The way you do this is, like I said, the mudra, your hands against your chest, and then you're going to do a deep inhale through your nose, and then just exhale through your mouth. Inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth. Every time you inhale, I invite you to think about the things you want to create. Just visualize the things you are creating, see the things that you want in your life, like you already have it.
Breathing in all that possibility, all of that amazingness. Then, exhaling all the stress, all the tension, all of the disappointment that happened this year. Whatever it is that's negative for you, let that go. As you do this for three minutes, you're going to notice that your breath is going to get slower. That actually means you're dropping in, you're getting more energized, you're feeling more positive. Literally three minutes of breathing, that's it. Inhaling through the nose, exhaling through the mouth. Inhaling possibility, exhaling stress and whatever else is negative that you don't want to really focus on.
That done, that's three minutes. The second three minutes is a visualization practice that I do every day, and also connecting to your goals. In visualization, the way I do it is kind of like a gratitude practice. I use it like a prayer. I thank the universe for all the amazing things that I already have in my life. There's so many of them, like my dogs are in it every day. I'm so grateful for having these amazing, amazing spirits in my life, and my wife, and my friends, and my awesome business, my clients, my mastermind, my peers. I just go down the list of all the people, all the things that I have to incredibly be so grateful for.
That gets me into a really happy, and elevated, and incredibly grateful state. There's no suffering when you're in gratitude. That's one thing that you can always go to. I spend a few minutes with that. Then, it's a little bit of a transition, where I start visualizing all of the things that I don't have yet. The way I am thinking about them is as if I already had them. It's visualizing the things that I am creating like I'm already living it.
The cool thing about this is, when you do that, your brain actually doesn't know the difference between reality and visualization. When you start with the things that you're already grateful for, that your brain knows are true, these are the things that are true, and then you move into the things that you're still creating, and you're stating them like you already have them, your brain does not know the difference. This is actually a really powerful way of giving your subconscious new orders to creating new things.
Spend three minutes with your gratitude and visualization practice. You're at six minutes right now. Everybody has that time. Then, the last three minutes, it's getting really confident and certain about how great you are. This is your brag practice. I invite you to do three minutes of journaling. I have this great journal that I love and I have this roll of pens, and I just start writing down all the things that I know about myself that I am amazing at, that I appreciate about myself. This is just where you get to be grateful for who you are, and really stepping into who you are, and emphasizing all the great things about you. Spend three minutes doing that.
Right now, there's nine minutes of your life spent on focusing the stuff that you want to create, focusing on how great you are, focusing on the contribution that you're giving, focusing on everything that you're grateful for. Ideally you do this in the morning, or maybe before you go to bed, so you set up your day great, or you end it great so you can create all this cool stuff while you're sleeping. Just think about how different the trajectory of your day, your week, your month, your year is going to be if you start this now.
Now, this is a huge leg-up move for 2018 that I'm giving you right now. Then, go into our Facebook group, Fearless Women Entrepreneur Network, and post that you did it. Join us in there, so we can be accountable and do this together.
That's about it. As always, be bold, be courageous, and dare to do and say the things others won't.