Rising To The Occasion

I’ve been catching up on my Tony Robbins on YouTube.  Even things you’ve heard before can be just as inspirational the next time you hear them.

A thread runs through a lot of Robbins’ stuff.  He calls it “emotional fitness.”  He says that these days we’re a pretty emotionally unfit country (in the U.S.) and in many other parts of the world.

We haven’t been tested by a world war, a great depression, or many of the things past generations had to rise to.

This recession is the closest thing to the great depression our generation has had to endure.  And the wars in the middle east the closest thing to the old wars.

When everything is running just fine, meaning we’re fat, rich, and happy, we go soft.  Really soft.  It is only with adversity that much of what we human beings accomplish really boggles the mind.

We as individuals can do a lot of hard work when we’re emotionally fit and hungry.  We tend to slack off when things are merely a bit uncomfortable.  And forget about getting anything done when things are going just fine.

Can You Place Yourself In A State of Hunger?

If you want to accomplish something, like growing a profitable internet business, but things are sort of o.k. for you personally and financially, chances are you are not too happy with your progress thus far.

So you have to make yourself hungry and you have to work on that emotional fitness which allows you to conquer demons that hold you back from getting anything significant to happen for your business.

It’s more than goal setting.  We are very accomplished at letting goals fly by without being fulfilled.  Especially if they are goals we don’t tell anyone else about.

It’s more than “challenging yourself.”  Like goals, we’ve gotten pretty good at justifying poor performance under self-imposed challenges.

It’s really about the kind of hunger and focus you get when things seem desperate.  When there’s nothing you can do but lay down and die or do something about it yourself.

How I Get Hungry

Under adverse circumstances I shine.  With not the best insurance in the world, my son’s C-section birth cost $15,000.  I didn’t have $15k on hand and the hospital wanted to be paid for giving me a helpless, pooping, screaming baby we’d have to pay even more money to feed and care for.

I got hungry and brought up my liquid assets by taking serious action in getting consulting gigs and selling more courses and training.  The hospital bills cleared my mind and focused me on what I could do that would get them paid as fast as possible.  Everything else disappeared.

But that was more of a “hunger pang” compared to what you can do under far more serious challenges in life.  I actively avoid being actually poor in order to capture the hunger and build my emotional fitness.  That’s not a good idea for anyone.

So I’ve figured out some things that motivate me to stay hungry and emotionally fit.

1.  There’s a war on.  It might not be the BIG one, but the world is a dangerous place and economies are being squeezed.  Without basic assets, like gold, everything we consider walth is just “on paper.”  That kinda scares me.  So I am going to do more gold investing in 2010 and that requires I up the ante in my business to get the capital to invest.

2.  I’m not a “cash millionaire” yet.  My sources tell me that’s going to be something pretty important for lots of reasons.  Until I can say that I can write a check for $1 million and not bounce it, I am hungry to get there.

3.  It’s not about me.  It’s about the kid.  Legacy.  Giving him the tools and resources he’ll need to brave this new world he’s inheriting.  In the fat years (most of my life) you could graduate college with a paper sack full of belongings and get along just fine.  Not so anymore.  Not so evermore, I’m afraid.  I have to leave something behind to the boy.  Something significant.  Something good.

4.  Robbins talks about how helping others helps you.  I like helping people.  In the last year I haven’t been able to do as much for my family as I wanted.  The recession hit my sisters hard and I wanted to do a lot more to help them.  But we were working to keep the lights on around here too.

The lifestyle of the years previous, in my business, wasn’t the lifestyle we lived last year by a large margin.  I am hungry to help again and I have to be emotionally fit enough to do what it takes to expand my business enough that helping financially can be added to helping in other ways.

5.  A foundation would be nice.  I’ve always wanted to start one and then travel around the world meeting people doing extraordinary things for the planet and each other.  People who have 100% heart and 0% capital to keep their organizations going.  Takes a lot of cash and fund raising to build a good foundation that can make a difference in as many places as possible.

Those are some of the things I think about.  On the darker side I even ponder how my little family would fare if ever a war would come to our shores or our economy really tanked.  How would I lead my family to safety and keep them from going hungry if the bank lost all my money?

Sounds dark, I know, but I even have a plan to cache as much “stuff” as I can in the event of such a thing.  Maybe a safe house in the country somewhere that is self-sufficient and where we can protect ourselves and live without relying on electricity, internet, cars, and Wal-Mart.

This kind of thing makes me hungry because I am nowhere near able to do some of the stuff above at this point.  I raised the roof on my needs by putting things into perspective outside the immediate and daily needs of the family to include other things that will be a challenge, and mostly necessary in the coming years.

I get hungry for more success when I realize that I never wanted my life to be just comfortable in the moment.  Stepping back and assessing how we’d fare in adverse situations with our present resources scares me back into work mode on a level I can’t achieve when I let myself believe I’ve arrived at my destination already.

So when you think something is hard…

…like a new business or SEO or writing good content and doing it all with life pulling at you 24-7 from all directions, you don’t need to blame anyone or anything for your predicament.  You just need to get hungrier.  More focused.  More warrior-like and less domesticated and lazy.

Even if there is someone that you can legitimately blame for a situation you find yourself in, it does nothing to resolve that situation unless you take action and change the situation yourself.  There are no real safety nets in life outside of the ones we build for ourselves.  If we stop thinking in terms of someone else taking care of certain things, we begin to realize we’re not all that prepared to deal with anything life throws at us outside the norm.

That should be concerning enough for anyone to become hungry for more in their business.  It’s not about being able to simply pay bills.  That ever-pending future is out there.  Uncertain and unpredictable.  Can you and your family presently handle anything it throws at you should it decide you deserve a bucket of cold water in the face?

There’s your hunger!

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Tagged as: business success, emotional fitness, online business, staying hungry, wealth creation