You know, for a long time I was bitterly frustrated with myself. I had so much ability in so many things and yet it was all going to waste. This was happening because I didn’t have my whole game together and a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. I was beefing up the links in my chain thinking that it was finally going to carry the load that I needed it to carry.
But it never worked because there were links that I never worked on. They were difficult for me to deal with. I couldn’t see them and so I couldn’t figure out what was breaking. Or sometimes I avoided them because I feared them and just hoped for the best. But the chain will never work unless all of the links can carry the load.
It took me over twenty years to figure this out. Twenty years of continuous disappointment. Twenty years of frustration. In the end, the solution was fairly simple. It’s not always easy to implement but it is at least simple.
I’m still amazed at the turnaround that I’ve been able to create in my life. I used to encounter such incredible resistance within myself to doing the things that I wanted to do - and truly needed to do - to make my life go well. It seemed that self-sabotage was my habit. I used to dread creating any new plans, or creating any new To Do list because my immediate reaction was, “I never follow through on my plans. I never get my To Do list done. I’m tired of making them. It just seems hopeless.”
I immediately felt massive resistance and yet I was attempting to do things that would be good for me. I was confused. Life just seemed so unbelievably hard.
That fear is now disappearing for me. I feel the ghost of it from time to time. I sit down and plan things out and create a list of things to achieve and I might get uptight about how much there is to do and how difficult it might be. In the past that would have been enough for me to avoid the issue, perhaps for days on end, or else I’d have to willfully force myself to do things.
I don’t get that anymore. My systems for understanding and controlling my mind and for taking all of the steps necessary to turn an idea into a physical reality just make the whole thing incredibly easy.
Let me tell you about a day that I had recently that really underlines how well this system works:
I had some technical problems recently with a couple of different services that I use. I spent the best part of two days messing around trying to get different systems to talk to each other and get the job done. I had a commitment to meet and was feeling bad because I thought that I might not make it.
Rather than battle on with what seemed a fruitless pursuit. I stopped and did a Root Cause Analysis of the problem. This is something that is covered in Week 6 of the Personal Operating System. Doing this showed me that the solution that I was working on was not necessary for me to achieve my objective. Wonderful! I could stop persisting with the wrong idea. I changed tack and quickly got my problem solved.
Next, I wanted to create a report. It was a difficult kind of report to create because it required a lot of detail work and it needed a lot of intense thinking. In the past I would have procrastinated like crazy on such a thing because I would have created the whole thing from scratch.
I didn’t suffer from that this time. Fortunately I had learned from my last effort and I had created what I call a Repetitive Creative Process. It’s a device where you look at something new that you’ve battled through and finished and you work out the structure of the task. If you want to create such a thing again you can extract the bits that repeat each time and use them to make a template.
Then when you want to do something similar, you just pull out your process and work on the unique parts - the bits that you have to be creative on. It means that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time. It’s a massive time saver and it takes away a lot of the headache of doing difficult things.
This time I got the report done to a higher standard and quicker than ever before. I was delighted!
Next, I needed to create a new video and I wasn’t looking forward to it because it needed a lot of different visual aids, it needed a lot different filming set ups and it needed a lot of image manipulation, file transfer and general detailing. This was the kind of thing that I used to avoid like crazy usually because I would just have this item on the list ‘Create New Video’ and that would be it. Just to look at those three words would immediately send me off into doing something easier (and wasteful) instead.
But this time, although I felt some doubt and, in truth, I did momentarily think to myself, “Man, I wish I didn’t have to do this,” I didn’t let those thoughts get the better of me. Instead I used the Mind Manager tool. This is a device that I use whenever I’m setting out on a day of activity. It’s designed to make it easy to remove the resistance that we all feel when doing difficult things by recognizing that those factors exist and then bringing them out into the open. This means that I can face them and deal with them before they happen. It means that I can set my mind at ease and be fully prepared to accept difficulty and frustration.
When this is combined with the How To Do list that I use whenever I’m doing a difficult task the two tools combine to bust through any difficulties, whether its mental resistance or practical difficulties.
So I listed in great detail all of the things and all of the steps that I would have to take to go from start to finish with the new video. I then worked out what my resistance was. I had some doubt and fear about whether I could achieve what I wanted to do and I came up with solutions to deal with those fears. I looked at where things were likely to go wrong or prove frustrating and I accepted those difficulties. I took a relaxed attitude knowing that this was just going to be something that I had to go through, so no need to get uptight.
I felt annoyance at all of the changes in studio set up that I would have to go through - setting up lights, moving cameras, doing sound checks and so on and I could feel my impatience growing. I simply countered this by saying, “Ok, at this point, I’ll just take things easy. I won’t expect myself to get instant results. I’ll just prepare bit by bit. I’ll move this lamp here and this one over here. Yeah, it’s not so bad when I think it through.” By doing this I removed my impatience.
I still felt some small resistance to doing the actual filming but in the meantime I just got on with all of the preparation, step by step, bit by bit until finally everything, and I mean ABSOLUTELY everything, was prepared. At that point I thought, “Oh…, well…, there’s nothing to stop me now, so I might as well get on with the filming,” and I did.
I got the video finished a day ahead of what I anticipated. In fact my whole day was going so well - I was achieving successful result after successful result and feeling great about it - that I just decided to keep on going.
I edited the videos, I created the web pages for them, I uploaded them to the server and I got every single thing on my list done. I did 11-hours of productive work and in the end it was easy and enjoyable. I even fitted in an afternoon nap and watched a movie online. I felt cheerful the whole day and it was a shock when I got to the end of my tasks and found out it was 11pm. I was still buzzing and didn’t want to go to bed.
Not everyday is like this for me, but I get more and more and more days like this. It is such a turnaround from the way that I used to be: uptight, anxious, fearful, struggling with motivation, lacking in confidence (because I kept letting myself down) and procrastinating like crazy to avoid my difficulties and to escape from my immediate pain.
It’s all down to the Personal Operating System. It guarantees that I create the whole chain and that each link can carry the load that is needed of it.
It’s changed my life. It’s turned things around for me after many years of pitiful struggle.
It can do the same for you. Try it out today for just $1.