Unlimited: How to Build an Exceptional Life (26 page)

This pyramid of goals will also help you build motivation and self-assurance. As you achieve some of the smaller goals, those successes will inspire confidence in your ability to do more. Don’t forget, success begets success.

Another way to stay motivated is to reward yourself for knocking out the smaller goals. Now, let me be very clear: these rewards are to be life affirming, not self-destructive. In other words, if your goal is weight loss, you’re not to give yourself a weekly reward of pizza with Coke and a sundae. Instead, get yourself a manicure and a pedicure. When you hit your monthly goals, maybe splurge
on a massage. When you hit your long-term goal, maybe indulge in a beach vacation or a new wardrobe.

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Giving yourself these healthy treats is also a great way to learn how to be more loving to yourself. So few of us take the time to be good to ourselves in the right ways. Scheduling these kinds of nurturing activities so that they correspond to achieving your goals will do wonders for your self-esteem and help you cultivate a healthy outlook on life.

I used to struggle with this issue personally for years. I felt that pampering myself was indulgent, excessive, and self-serving. I told you I had issues from childhood, remember? Anyway, one day I was in therapy and was feeling particularly lonely and empty. I was complaining about how I do everything for everyone else and no one does anything for me. Then my shrink, in all his wisdom, shined a light—aka dropped the smackdown—and once again changed my life. “It’s not other people you resent. It’s you. You are giving all the things you desire to other people. You buy them flowers and presents. You get them massages. You take them out for a night on the town, but you never do these things for yourself, and you wonder why you feel unfulfilled. When you give yourself these things and treat yourself in this nurturing way, you won’t feel a lack in your life, and what everyone else contributes will be an exciting bonus.” In addition, he pointed out that I expected people to read my mind ’cause I was too insecure to ask for what I wanted, and so I also needed to work on clearly expressing my needs—which we will cover in
Chapter 12
.

I digress, but regardless, pampering yourself and rewarding yourself through nurturing incentives can go a long way in helping you achieve not only your goals but also fulfillment in your life overall.

Once you have your goals organized, the next step is to organize your life. Literally. The best way to facilitate your goal pyramid is to make sure you have the ordered mental and physical space to do so.

CLEAR THE DECKS

This is about as self-explanatory and straightforward as it gets. You don’t necessarily have to become neater, cleaner, or more punctual, although those things certainly don’t suck. Rather, you need to arrange the things in your life so that you are ready for all the great opportunities life has to offer.

Disorganization hampers us by creating chaos in our lives and obstacles that make it difficult for us to jump at opportunities when they come along. Keeping your environment at home and at work organized can benefit your mental and physical health in any number of ways.

It’s essential for time management, because it allows you to do and accomplish more in your day. Think about it: how many times have you been late to something because you couldn’t find your keys, your wallet, or the shirt that went with your outfit? Chaos costs you time that you can’t afford to lose. If you live in disarray, doing simple chores like paying bills and cleaning the house is going to take you at least twice as long. Without a system you likely won’t be able to find the tools you need for the task at hand.

Honestly, how much time do you waste by being scattered? Think of
all
the things you could do with that time! You could hit the gym, squeeze in some extra sleep, spend a little quality time playing with your kid, get to work early and pull down some overtime to save up for that vacation … and on and on.

Studies have shown that people who live in a cluttered environment show mental signs of distraction and are quicker to become overwhelmed and stressed. By streamlining your life, you streamline your thoughts and become able to focus your energies in a more proactive, effective way.

Organization also enhances self-esteem. How you keep your living environment is a direct reflection of your relationship with yourself. For example, how you keep your kitchen is a clue about whether you are giving proper attention to your own nourishment. When we were shooting
Losing It
, invariably every family
whose home I invaded had a filthy fridge, overstuffed with food to the point that much of it had gone bad and the family didn’t even notice. The shelves would be sticky with old soda. The vegetables would be shoved in a bottom drawer covered in mold. The pantry would be overflowing with processed garbage that had been opened, spilled, and left unsealed. In some cases mice were
nesting
in the cupboards.

These were people whose physical health was in a total state of ruin, which was evident just by the way they cared for, or didn’t care for, their kitchens. The same thing goes for every other area of your home, your workspace, or wherever you spend time; you have power over your surroundings.

The reverse is true, too—your surroundings have power over you. When your office is a mess, you are often distracted and unproductive at work. When your bathroom is a mess, you are most likely neglecting your hygiene. I could go on. By keeping your life and your surroundings organized and well looked after, you are making a statement that you value yourself, a statement that reaffirms itself to you whenever you look around.

And last but not least, by clearing things out and organizing your life, you are declaring yourself ready to let go of all the superfluous crap you’ve been needlessly hanging on to and ready to be open to new possibilities. Every magazine and piece of paper you recycle, every book you give to the library, and every knickknack and item of clothing you release to a new owner creates space in your life for new insight, energy, joy, and experiences to come in! It is amazing to witness the transformations and the freedom that you gain by being organized.

If organization is a particular problem for you, take a good, honest look at your life and ask yourself what being disorganized is costing you in terms of achievement, productivity, health, relationships, and self-esteem. Your answers may help motivate you to make changes. Stop thinking of clutter-clearing as some tremendous chore, and start thinking of it as one of the most effective self-improvement tactics at your disposal.

———

Here are a few tricks and exercises to get you on track:

Schedule time to de-clutter
. Put in fifteen minutes every day to straighten up. Do your dishes, make your bed, put your clothes in the laundry, and so on. By breaking this stuff down into small daily tasks, you won’t be overwhelmed with a huge mess by week’s end.

Set an example
. If you have a family, lead by example and use positive incentives with your kids. Many parents (moms in particular) get overwhelmed when trying to wrangle the family to keep things clean and tidy. Although draconian measures might seem like your only option, they seldom work and will leave you feeling even more depleted and defeated. Your best bet is to set the tone for your family by keeping yourself organized. Then you can establish some positive incentives, like offering them a small allowance or the privilege of an extracurricular activity like cheerleading or hockey if they keep their rooms clean, take out the trash, or wash the dishes. Kids crave structure, and giving them healthy boundaries allows them to feel secure and helps prepare them for the real world. Once you establish these ground rules, be sure to remain firm in your resolve. If you backtrack, you jeopardize your authority and your ability to maintain the rules of your house.

File it away
. Make an action file, to sort all the different paperwork in your life. Each day sort mail and other paper into the appropriately labeled file. Have slots for bills to pay, appointments to make, errands to run, and things to concentrate on at work or at home—the different elements that your life contains. Then take ten minutes over the weekend to manage the business that came in over the past week so you can jump into the new week with a clean slate and no unresolved issues nagging at you.

Don’t forget your pyramid
. Create a daily to-do list from your goal pyramid. This will help you prioritize your time. At the beginning of the day or before you go to bed each night, take a moment to think about what you need to accomplish immediately in order to move your life forward and get closer to your long-term goal. These little actions in the present can lead to big results in the future.

Time to be smart
. Be smart and manage your time properly. Don’t be afraid to ask for help or to delegate chores to loved ones or coworkers. A smart person knows they can’t do it all and has the ego strength to reach out when necessary. When you want to squeeze in a workout, try asking your friends and family to watch the kids. Instead of resorting to the drive-through, take turns with your spouse so that one of you can watch the kids while the other prepares a healthy meal.

You might have everything organized and planned out to a T, but unconscious actions can creep in and erode even the best intentions. Which is why it’s crucial to create an environment that is geared as much as possible toward your success. And that’s what the next chapter is all about.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CREATE THE RIGHT ENVIRONMENT

O
ne thing that is paramount to your success is gaining some control over your immediate surroundings. Ever heard the saying, “You are a product of your environment?” Cliché? Perhaps. True? Hell, yes!

So you need to create an environment that will promote vital behaviors rather than self-destructive ones. Yes, there are a whole lot of things about the world you can’t change. But in your immediate, personal environment, it’s a different story. We all actually have a lot of power over our surroundings. While you can’t single-handedly stop pollution and heal the planet, for example, you
can
install an air purifier in your house, use natural cleaning products, install energy-efficient lightbulbs, and generally green up your home and lifestyle.

You can learn how to use your proactive focus to manipulate the aspects of your environment that you
do
have power over, so that your surroundings are geared as much as possible toward helping rather than hindering your efforts.

There are two parts to your environment: things and people. Obviously, you can control things, but you can’t
control
people. Dealing with people falls largely under the umbrella of communication,
which I’ll get to in
Chapter 12
. So let’s start with things, by far the easier part of your environment—not only do things not talk back, but once you change them, they generally stay changed. So what kind of changes am I talking about?

Whether it’s objects, space, sights, sounds, or smells, everything around you sends you messages and affects your thoughts and behavior. Environmental things, cues, and conditions can sabotage you or support you. So how do you create a supportive environment? It takes two simple actions: attending and pruning.

ATTENTION!

More often than not, powerful influences in our environment are invisible to us. This lack of awareness can destroy our good intentions. Unknown to us, these environmental cues can affect our thoughts and behaviors. Work procedures, office layouts, checkout counters at supermarkets, vending machines in schools, super-size meals, commercials on TV, supermodels on every magazine cover and in every ad, and so on—these things have a dramatic effect on what we think and what we do, yet we may fail to recognize the potency of their influence.