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Today’s podcast notes is from School of Greatness with Lewis Howes. The guest is Rory Vaden, author of the book Take the Stairs: 7 Steps to Achieving True Success
In this podcast, Rory Vaden shares 7 principles that will help you overcome procrastination to achieve success in every aspect of your life.
You can watch the original podcast here
The Paradox Principle of Sacrifice
We are constantly avoiding inevitable challenges. For instance, avoiding the hard work to lose weight, avoiding the difficult conversations, etc.
Problems that are procrastinated are amplified.
Our natural reaction to problems is to run away. But in fact, we need to face them and resolve them, so they won’t become bigger problems in the future.
Easy short-term choices lead to difficult long-term consequences. Difficult short-term choices lead to easy long-term consequences.
Pain is something we cannot avoid. We can delay it, but can’t run away from it. If we delay it, it will come back and it will be more difficult to deal with.
The things you see as sacrifices are not sacrifices, they are short-term investments so you can have a better future.
If you don’t pay the price today, you will pay it forever later. You need to ask yourself this question: Do you want things hard now or harder later?
The difference between underachievers and ultra performers is underachievers will say “That’s hard, I won’t do it”. Ultra performers would say “That’s hard, but if I don’t do it now, it will be harder later”.
Principle of commitment
Human brain is designed for survival, not for success. Survival is about conserving energy and success is about doing things that are uncomfortable. To experience success, you need to rewire your neural pathway.
When we make a commitment to do something, our emotional energy starts questioning this commitment. For instance when setting a goal to go to gym 5 times a week, you will start questioning this by asking yourself “Should I go to the gym?”, “Can i manage it 5 times a week?”. These types of questions will pull you away from your commitment.
We need to switch the question from Should to How. How can I do this? How can I commit to it? How will I lose weight? How will I save this marriage? How can I resolve this problem?
Intentionally create the question HOW, so you don’t create the question SHOULD. Should will pull us towards not doing things.
Principle of Focus
You need to focus on what you need to go after, what you need to achieve in your life. Until you achieve these things, everything else is a distraction.
The deluded focus will create deluded results.
If you focus on multiple things and try to achieve multiple goals, then everything will bounce off the wall (Shehan Wall) and create lots of discouraging and overwhelming noise in your head. But if you focus on one thing and be good at it, you can break through the wall and later focus on other things.
Principle of integrity
We often underestimate the value of spoken word.
Creation has a certain pattern; You speak it, you act and it happens. If you have integrity through the entire process, it will accelerate and it will become reality. If you don’t have integrity, it won’t come true.
Words are the first manifestation of our ideas into reality.
Our integrity affects how the work around you responds to you. If you are true to your words, they will follow you, they will support you.
What you believe is not necessarily the truth. We believe what we hear most often. So whatever you tell yourself again and again, becomes true and you start believing it. You will have to rewrite the stories you tell yourself and be more caring and gentle with yourself. Your brain is happy to do what you tell it to do. So you have to say the right things.
Harvest Principle
Balanced life is impossible. We cannot do an equal amount of things. You can sleep 8 hours a day, but you don’t have to workout 8 hours a day. You don’t have to spend 8 hours a day with your spouse, because a meaningful few hours, even a few minutes, would be worth a lot more.
Great results are not achieved through balance, they are achieved by short seasons of intensive imbalance, like a harvest. Spend minimum amount of energy on maintaining everything else and maximum amount of energy on the things that you want to achieve.
Perspective principle of faith
This is about how ultra performers respond to failure. Faith allows you to think, whatever is happening right now is for greater good later on. It prevents you from judging the moment and allows you to widen your view. For instance you might get mad because your car broke down. But if you look at it from a different perspective, that breakdown might be the reason you didn’t get involved in an accident.
Pendulum Principle of Action
Success is never an accident. It is deciding to move forward every day. It is the trajectory of choices that compound over time.
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