Is This Your Life?

By Craig Ballantyne

You wake up.  For one brief moment, after you rub the sleepiness from your eyes, you smile at the thought of a new day. 

But then reality hits you.  Your mind jumps from worry to worry.  There are bills to pay, deadlines to meet, and conflicts to solve.  Suddenly, you feel like the day has already spun out of control, even though you haven’t climbed out of bed yet. 

Ten minutes later (you hit the snooze button), you start a battle against the clock that you never seem to win.  The race won’t end until you slump into bed (forty-five minutes later than planned, of course) that night.

After you get up, you start going through the motions: get in the car, you endure the commute that gnaws at your soul, then you get to work and try to tackle the most important matters. But time vampires and busy work consume your day. 

Fueled by caffeine you make it to lunch, where things only get worse as you inhale a meal of sugar, salt and fat at your desk.

Time seems to simultaneously speed up and slow down each afternoon.  Your co-worker’s problems comically become your three-alarm emergencies while irrelevant meetings drag on forever. Time literally seems to stall when you check the clock in anticipation of returning to the sanctuary of your home. 

Doesn’t it seem like there just isn’t enough of anything in your day?  Time. Money. Energy. Love.

Frustration weighs on you.  It gets worse as the day goes on and piles up during the week.  Even your beloved weekends barely give you reprieve.  Instead, you struggle to use your time off to catch up menial errands as you try to keep your head above water.

Is this your life?

It wasn’t supposed to be like this, was it?

We plan. God laughs.

We all start out young and hopeful, but who among us has really achieved their dreams?

Why do people fail? 

Why do people get distracted? 

Why do people get off track?

It’s because they have not yet conquered their Inner Demons. 

Your inability to have it all – the career, family and life of your dreams – can all be blamed on this internal struggle. These Inner Demons sabotage your success in every area of your life. 

But it’s not your fault.

The “Well-Meaning” Folks Who Poisoned Your Thoughts from Kindergarten to This Very Morning

Otherwise known as self-limiting beliefs, your Inner demons poison your thoughts about money, success, health, personal achievement, and relationships. 

Your parents, your teachers, your friends and many other “well meaning” people planted these harmful thoughts in your head. 

For some, Inner demons are a nagging cough – omnipresent – pulling the rug out from under us just when we think the tide has turned and started to make progress in our life. 

For others, Inner demons are much more destructive, leading to addiction and robbing them of a decent life.  I witnessed this first-hand: these Inner demons destroyed the ambition and potential of my father. 

Even worse, the deeper you go into this demon spiral, the harder it is to escape.  Failure becomes our default state and so we avoid progress (and criticism) by doing nothing, saying nothing, and being nothing. 

Fear of failure paralyzes us. 

But there is hope. 

The good news is that you can win the war against your Inner Demons, overcome your self-limiting beliefs, and get exactly what you want in life.  But to do this, you need to harness the power of the four Pillars of Success:

• Accountability
• Social Support
• Incentives
• Deadlines

Research proves that each of these pillars bolsters better behavior and helps to use the power of habits to successfully change lives.

The 4 Things You Can Do in the Next 7 Minutes to Change Your Life and Build Bulletproof Success Habits

Accountability from peers and professionals helps you stick to your healthy behaviors so that you move closer to your goals every day. 

Social Support gives us something to lean on when things get hard.  Research shows this even works in online forums to get results.

Incentives are a proven “trick” to boosting the power of accountability, and these internal rewards motivate us into action.

Deadlines are “man’s greatest invention,” as John Carlton once said.  Nothing spurs us to take action like the power of a deadline charged with consequences.

These Four Pillars are your Weapons.

With them, your Inner demons can be destroyed, you bad habits can be eliminated and your life changed for the better.  You can have exactly what you want in life.  You can reach your peak potential.  And you can do so almost automatically, when you have the power of the Four Pillars supporting your Transformational Change. 

When you put these pillars in place, decisions are easier and success becomes virtually automatic and practically guaranteed. 

This is the Life You Could Be Living

You wake up well rested and peaceful. 

You have a lot to do today but you are in control.  You know that you can go to your mentor for advice and accountability.  You’ll lean on friends and colleagues for positive social support.  You’ve set challenging, but manageable deadlines for your work, and you will meet those deadlines because you’ve put important incentives in place for doing so.

As a result, life is good. It’s much smoother, and less stressful than it was in the past. Sure, it’s challenging, but the difference is that now you’ve chosen the challenges and you control the stress. All because you’ve harnessed the power of the Four Pillars of Success.

Within every ETR reader there are two people: the person they are now, and the person they could become.

In the unfulfilled person, a lifetime of negative thought-patterns, bad habits, and self-imposed limitations united to block progress and put up a wall of frustration.

Resolutions fail, success is sabotaged, relationships are ruined, and inner peace disappears, all because of the inner demons.

What separates one day from the other? What stops someone from reaching their peak potential and living the life of their dreams?

The difference between your current life and what can be is simple. It’s change. And it’s up to you alone. You can’t rely on others, your family or the government. No one is going to look out for your best interests better than you. At the end of the day, for better or worse, we all do what’s best for ourselves. And that’s why you can’t depend on anyone to fix your life.

It’s up to you, and you alone.

When you choose the path of personal responsibility, then and only then will you be on the road to real, significant, and long-lasting change.

It all starts with you.

This is your life.