“You become what you think about most of the time” – Brian Tracy
Changing your life is an inside-out process. This means you must firstly know your internal patterns that are ruling your life, that are stealing greatness from you.
Traveling around and talking to different people about this subject, trying to find out where the blocks come from led me to discovering the following major blocks – patterns that run in the system that we carry from year to year. People put vision boards, write goals and do kinds of things and yet are carrying this bag of rocks so to speak that are our patterns. These patterns are:
- Poverty Pattern
I don’t have any money. I’m so poor ,I can’t even pay attention. I’m broke. I can’t afford this and that… You are taught to say, “I don’t have enough money.” You see, no matter how much money you have or don’t have, it’s not ENOUGH. This is what you grew up seeing and hearing. So, this poverty pattern pervades us. This scarcity of resources and so you get tricked into thinking that really you are at the limit of your resources. It’s mostly not about our resources but our ability to tap into our resourcefulness. It’s about our ability to find the funds. People who are trying to raise money get resourceful. You are not the victim of your resources, you are the beneficiary of your untapped resourcefulness. So, change that focus on the fact that you don’t have money for a resourcefulness. How can I be more valuable? Start focusing on the ways you can be more resourceful.
- Busyness Pattern
I’m so busy. I don’t have time to do this and that, I’m so busy. Too busy to respond to important calls and emails. Too busy to even get out. Oh my goodness, I’m so busy, I don’t have time. Busyness doesn’t equal progress. This is busy being busy. So, we are constantly in this trap that we think of, we are busy! We reward busyness. You feel guilty if you find yourself not being busy because it’s in your system to be busy. The truth is, you have the time to do anything you absolutely committed to. We all have the same amount of time but some people are much more productive than others, why? Re-evaluate you commitments and busyness. What do you want for your outcomes. What areas of your life are you going to stay committed to?
- The Blame Pattern
It’s not my fault, you know whose fault it is, president’s, etc. Many people specialize in fixing the blame instead of fixing the problem! Fixing the blame doesn’t help you progress in life, but fixing the problem does! This blame pattern makes you blame everything and everybody under the sun but you. My weight is about my genes. It’s my parents, my company, my children, etc. my husband, my wife. As long as it’s not us then it’s fine. We don’t like anything that will make us look bad. What happens when you blame is, you move into a space of EMOTIONAL IMPOTENCE – HELPLESSNESS. When you blame, you take whatever power you have to change the situation and you hand it to whatever it is you’re blaming and you step back and how is it my fault, it’s that person’s fault. I encourage you to trade in this big rock pattern of blame for something that I call LEADERSHIP. Asking what can I do now? Whenever you are looking for the blame, you’ll find one. There’s plenty of opportunities. But asking yourself, ‘What can I do now to make a change?’ Then, you are taking a LEADERSHIP ROLE and it’s completely different.
- Procrastination Pattern
Procrastination kills your better, bigger and more beautiful life. Your beautiful life gets killed every day because you’ll get to it later, ‘I’ll get to it later.’ How many things have you always wanted but still you haven’t gotten to do them. You’ve always procrastinated on them. Get used to NOW! Write this word everywhere possible to remind yourself of its power. The Power of NOW! Whatever you want in your life, go for it NOW! Stop delaying. The most complicated ones of us don’t like the word procrastination, we don’t fancy that term so what we do is we create something a little bit more soft – we call it PREPARATION. I’m preparing – I’m getting ready – I’m not ready yet. But if your preparation is really about procrastination, you need to trade off that procrastination and take on ACTION. You need to adopt the mentality that you are a PERSON of ACTION.
- Delusion Pattern
The delusion pattern is – I’m working on it. Working on something for five years without seeing any results surely is an indication of ineffectiveness. When someone feels backed into a corner about why they’re not getting results, the number one thing they’ll say is, hey I’m working on it! What that does is it acts like an emotional credit card. An emotional credit cards says, “YOU FEEL BAD AND YOU NEED TO BUY YOURSELF SOME GOOD FEELINGS BUT THERE’s nothing good going on right now, so you swipe that emotional credit card and you say, I’m working on it and suddenly you feel better. Trade in that for an immediate response. You need to be honest about where you’re at, when you’re totally honest about where you’re at, you can call it like it is and you can start to do something now because if you’re not honest, you’re going to continue saying, I’M WORKING ON IT! THE BEST THING TO DO IS MEASURE THE RESULTS, GET ACCOUNTABLE TO SOMEONE.
Veli Ndaba is a NeuroEngineering Leadership Effect Speaker and Trainer, Brain Coach and Author of four books (You Are Born to Win, Your Dream is Calling You and SWITCH ON! And Set Your Soul On Fire!) and Newspaper Columnist. To book him to speak at your next event or to help you and your team unleash your greatness, contact him on veli@velindaba.com, www.velindaba.com or +27 83 304 9773