Unlimited: How to Build an Exceptional Life (13 page)

THE ART OF FAKING IT

Your self-image is the crucial factor in where your journey takes you. And it is never neutral; it either moves you forward or holds you back. If you believe yourself to be a worthless failure, the decisions and choices you make will come from that belief, and you will probably end up failing. Believe the opposite, and yes, that too is what you will get.

Once you understand this fact, you are free to find new attitudes and beliefs about yourself, which will in turn change the choices you make and the results you achieve. It’s going to take time and practice—you can’t change your self-image overnight. But keep working the steps of this program, and it will get easier. The small victories and successes that you achieve through educated, determined diligence will dramatically help you to redefine your self-image.

On
Biggest Loser
, when I take a contestant who thinks she is lazy and weak into the gym, put her through a grueling two-hour workout, and maybe get her to run her first mile, she instantly becomes a new person. (It’s true for male contestants, too.) In that moment she experiences a new reality, one where she is strong and accomplished. In that short time her backstory is shattered, and a world of possibility opens up to her. She realizes that if the belief that she is weak and lazy isn’t true, then other self-defeating ideas and beliefs that she has been holding on to may also be untrue. From this place of possibility the sky becomes the limit.

Now, presuming that these small successes and victories will take time to manifest and germinate, you’ll have to “fake it till you make it.”

You must’ve heard that one before. Try it. The reason it works is that if you keep taking positive action, before long it becomes habit, and eventually you will believe in it. It’s sort of a cart-before-the-horse thing, but it WORKS. With the right course of action—education, time, practice, and patience—you will be successful. And confidence in success begets success. But more on that action front later. We’ve dealt with your inner ’tude—now it’s time for a look at your view as you look out.

CHAPTER SEVEN

OUTER ’TUDE

W
e’ve been talking a lot about your attitude toward yourself. But what about your attitude toward life and the world around you? How do you handle the curveballs life throws you? When something bad happens, do you choose to learn from it and gain depth and insight? Or do you allow it to crush you, seeing the defeat as validation that you do, in fact, suck?

Learning to transform your negative attitudes doesn’t stop with your inner view—you also have to be honest about how your attitudes about the outside world are holding you back.

It is possible to take an adversity and turn it into an opportunity for success. And I’m not talking “glass half full” crap. I’m talking about literally rewiring your internal circuitry and shifting the way you see the world, so you are resilient and programmed to survive any failure, blast through every obstacle, and overcome any setback.

Let’s address some of the most common pitfalls we can stumble into as we navigate and interact with the world around us: worry, fear, and failure.

QUIT YOUR WORRYING

Anxiety is
useless
. It serves absolutely no purpose except to rob you of valuable energy that could instead be channeled into
creating your new life. Seriously, you tell me what good can come from worry and stress. I don’t know about you, but I can do without sleepless nights and high blood pressure and sweaty palms and tension headaches. They just make everything worse. I’ve struggled with anxiety my whole life and have learned a few things about how to knock it out.

PRESENT!

Root yourself firmly in the present moment. Often when we flip out, the thing we’re flipping out about is something we fear will happen in the future. Anticipation is scarier in many cases than reality. Very often the thing we’re so worried about never even happens, and if it does, all the advance worrying in the world won’t make it any better.

So when you start to stress out, ask yourself how things really are right now. At this moment, do you have a job? At this moment, are you healthy? Are you getting by financially, and is there a roof over your head? Are your loved ones alive and well?

Sure, bad things might happen. I’m not saying you should go into major head-in-the-sand denial about that possibility. Nor am I saying you shouldn’t plan ahead and take necessary precautions to safeguard yourself and your loved ones. What I’m getting at is that you can’t let problems that don’t yet exist ruin your life. Remember the old saying “Cross that bridge when you come to it.” Or better yet, as my company’s producing partner Ellen Rakieten always tells me, “Don’t bleed until you’re shot.” If and when a bad thing happens, you will manage the situation as productively as possible, but until then, stay present and deal with the task, and moment, at hand.

BE A RESOURCEFUL MOUSE

When a problem arises, it’s important to focus on the solution, not the problem itself. There’s a great book you may have heard about called
Who Moved My Cheese?
The title comes from an experiment conducted with mice in mazes. Every day for weeks the mice would run through their mazes and find a piece of cheese
in the same place. Then one day the researchers moved the cheese. Some of the mice had little mouse freak-outs. They went to where the cheese had been and scratched at the walls and paced around in circles. Because they were so busy freaking out, they never found the cheese in its new location. In real life this would have meant starvation and death, otherwise known as
exactly the thing the mouse was freaking out about
.

Now, some of the other mice reacted completely differently. When they didn’t find the cheese where they expected to, they took a beat and then retraced their steps, sniffed around, and experimented with alternate routes until they found it.

Which mouse are you going to be?

Are you going to stress out and shut down? Or are you going to use your skills and resources to find a solution? The second one is the right answer.

Your first step is to reduce the problem to its simplest form. If you’re worried about catching swine flu because you have a chronic disease that puts you at greater risk for it, then Google it and research the measures you can take to protect yourself. Stay out of Mexico, where this flu originated, for one. Don’t fly unless you have to do so, and take natural supplements to boost your immune system.

If you’re scared you might lose your job, focus on doing better at work. Or if that part is out of your control and layoffs are abounding at your workplace, then start searching the want ads and hitting the pavement and filling out job applications.

Being proactive is a major stress buster. If you really think about it, there are small steps you can take to keep the bad things from happening, or to deal with them when they do. Once you have exhausted all your proactive options, you can look for ways to calm your mind.

GIVE YOUR BRAIN A BOOST

Find activities that relieve your stress, behaviors that release mood-enhancing serotonin. They’ll help distract you so you don’t
turn the situation over and over again in your head. ’Cuz that’s what obsessive crazy people do. I know—I was one. I spent years as a congenital worrier—and I always worried best between midnight and four
A.M
. It was not fun or remotely productive.

There are lots of things you can do to temporarily take yourself away from your stress. Exercising. Deep-breathing techniques. Any activity that you enjoy and that is life affirming: gardening, knitting, working on your car. If you love it and it calms you down, do more of it! Whenever I get super-stressed, and I’ve already done everything I can to proactively attack the situation head-on, I go for a ride on my horse or take a spin on my motorcycle. Find the activities that nurture your soul and occupy your mind, that take you to a “happy place,” so that you can prevent your anxiety from crippling you.

If this isn’t enough to convince you, then ask yourself: if a beloved friend or family member came to you stressed out, scared, or beating themselves up over something, what would you do? Most likely you’d tell them everything’s going to be okay. You might suggest they take a long hot bath. You might give them a massage. You might send loving texts and reassuring e-mails throughout the day. You wouldn’t emotionally beat the crap out of them. (At least I hope not.) So why the hell wouldn’t you do the exact same thing for yourself?! For some reason a lot of us think it’s soft or self-indulgent to be kind to ourselves. Actually, learning to be loving and nurturing toward yourself will help you come through every hardship stronger and wiser.

GET A SECOND OPINION

I bet you’ve heard the old saying “You can’t see the forest for the trees.” (I just love clichés. They remind us just how obvious and simple most of life can be—if we let it.) Well, very often when we’re stressed out about a situation, we are too close to it to have any real perspective. It helps to get a second pair of eyes to look at the landscape. Reaching out to someone for advice is beneficial emotionally as well as strategically. Not only will you feel supported and not
alone in your predicament (we can all use that from time to time), but you will also get a calmer, cooler picture of your situation from someone who is not attached or engaged the way you are.

When we are too emotionally fired up about a situation, we can’t assess it realistically or take rational, productive action. If you reach out to someone who isn’t personally involved in or attached to it, you can vent, process, weigh options, and basically get your head straight so you can decide on a course of action—even if that action is to be still for the moment and do nothing.

A quick caveat: be mindful of whom you approach for this second opinion. If you have a friend who agrees with everything you say, that’s probably not a great person for you to mull things over with. Be thoughtful about whom you seek advice from. We will discuss this in greater detail in
Chapter 9
, but for now seek out someone you trust who has a calm, cool head, preferably with some knowledge of the situation you are mulling over.

These are a few ways to help you release your worries, anxieties, and inner conflicts, so you can stop them from sapping your energy, and free yourself for things that are much more productive and rewarding. Worry is begotten by fear, and fear is one of the biggest saboteurs out there, so that’s what we’re going to tackle next.

USE YOUR FEAR TO MAKE YOU STRONGER

There are hundreds of books out there that tout “fearlessness.” The word alone conjures images of human beings defying the laws of nature, doesn’t it? It just sounds so cool! Well, you can forget about becoming fearlesss—don’t even bother trying! Every living thing, from the smallest insect to the most powerful CEO, feels
fear. It’s at the very core of nature, so if you think you can escape it, think again. The trick is not to escape your fears but to confront and use them to drive and teach you. Only by getting to the bottom of your fears can you find their valuable lessons and move forward stronger than before.

Fear can lead you straight to panic and confusion, or to clarity and meaning. It can paralyze and destroy you, or it can be your greatest source of motivation. I’ve seen it bring out the very worst in people (myself included!), and I’ve also seen it drive people to overcome the most extraordinary obstacles (I’m going to include myself here, as well). Quite possibly one of the greatest achievements in life is to learn how to let your fear guide you to clarity rather than to madness. Believe it or not, it’s entirely up to you.

Here are two examples from my own life. In the first one I let fear motivate me negatively, and in the second one I let fear motivate me for the best.

In the past, relationships were
not
my strong point. I have struggled with intimacy issues my whole life, and I’m still working them out. But looking back I realize that there was one relationship in particular that I sabotaged out of fear. I was a lot younger than I am now, and I was dating someone who was older than me. I was intimidated by that and acted immaturely in the relationship. I would stop communicating and become cold, because I didn’t want to seem weak or needy. I was constantly afraid that this person would hurt me, so I shut down. And ultimately that brought the relationship to its end. If I had been brave enough to voice my feelings of insecurity, to communicate my needs, then it might have worked out differently. But I didn’t see that then. I know now that to find happiness, you have to open yourself up to let it in. As I’m sure you know from your own life experiences, fear that is not handled properly can shut you down and keep you from finding the happiness you deserve.

Now for the positive example.

When I was in my twenties, I had a handful of friends whose parents continued to support them years after college. I was so
jealous, thinking how lucky they were not to have to worry constantly about paying rent, buying groceries, or putting a little gas in the car. These friends now, though, have achieved almost nothing with their lives. They are apathetic and unmotivated because life has been too comfortable. They were never forced to work, so they’ve never had to think about what their purpose is, what fulfills them. They never learned the social skills to forge connections and put together careers. They didn’t build the mental stamina and physical endurance that comes from a strong work ethic. Now they’re all in their midthirties, and still wondering what the hell they’re about.

On the other hand, I was pretty much on my own from the age of seventeen. My mom gave me $400 a month toward rent till I was eighteen, and she paid for my therapy until I was twenty-four. (I’ve already made it clear: she thought that was pretty important, God love her.) But that was it. So I was
forced
to deal with my fear of having nothing. I had to hustle to find work, cope with rejection at job interviews, and learn the skills of communicating and establishing relationships. I had to try different things because my livelihood literally depended on it. Did I get myself into some tough spots? You bet. But I learned how to get myself out of them, too, and now I see exactly what my mother was doing with her tough-love approach.