The 3 Phases of Growing

Why is growing so difficult sometimes?  Whether you are trying to grow in your business or even a relationship, it can be challenging.  It can sometimes feel like you’re running on a hamster wheel and when you get off, you end up where you started.  There are three phases of growth you have to go through in order to continue to the next level.  The first phase of growth is being effected by circumstances.  So, if you’re surrounded by negativity, you’re going to be effected with negativity.  In this case, you are relying on the circumstances to fit what you’re committed to.  The next phase is learning how to separate yourself from the circumstances.  You do not allow distractions to throw you off the path of getting the results you’re committed to.  The circumstances will no longer dictate how you perform.  The third phase is learning how to influence yourself, and figuring out what motivates you, what inspires you and how to get into a place where you’re unstoppable.  You can become your true authentic self.

Why is growth so dang hard?  I mean, isn’t this whole personal development thing and this whole idea of me getting better every single day supposed to be fun?  Isn’t it supposed to be exciting?  Why do I feel like it’s constantly a grind?  Why do I feel like I always have to work harder than normal?  Like, I get to another level, and I’m like, “I’m trying to get here.  Now I’m here, and this is all there is.”  It’s harder than it was before.  Like, what is that?  Why is growth so difficult?  I mean, are you at a place where you’re trying to get to the next level, maybe it’s in your business, maybe it’s in your relationship, maybe it’s in your life.  You just can’t seem to get to the next level.  Or maybe you get to the next level and you think, “Wait a minute, you don’t even recognize it.”  Right?  You thought the next level was going to be flowers and roses and it was going to be nice little clouds and everything was going to be easy, and then you got to the next level and you realized, dang, this is hard.  What is that?  Like, why do I continue to try and grow, but sometimes I just feel like I’m on a hamster wheel.  You ever felt like you were on a hamster wheel?  Like, sometimes you’re just going and going and going, but then you get off your hamster wheel, and you’re in the same spot that you started?  What is that?  I mean, I’ve come to realize having trained over 15,000 people, and done over 2,000 coaching sessions, I’ve learned is this process of growth isn’t always what we think it is.  What I’ve discovered is this, there’s really three phases of growth that you have to go through if you’re trying to get to that next level, and consider that if you’re at that next level, and it’s really hard, consider that you’ve just bumped up a level, and you just haven’t figured out how to operate there yet.  It’s all good.  You’ll figure it out, and everything will -- the dust will settle, and you’ll be able to go to the next level.  But there’s three phases of growth that I want to share with you right now.  Maybe you can figure out where you are in this growth phase, and I’ll specifically give you some strategies about how you can get to the next level. 

The first phase of growth, in my opinion, is where you kind of show up and you’re effected by the circumstances.  Where you show up, and you’re at the effect of the various circumstances that are around in your life, and various forces and such things like that.  I’ll give you an example.  You walk into an environment that is distracting, has a lot of distractions.  You get distracted.  If you’re around negative people, you become negative too.  If you are in a place where everybody’s energetic, you become energetic too.  The problem with that is, you have to depend on the circumstances to fit what you’re committed to.  Most of the time, I don’t need to tell you watching this video, most of the time, that is not the case.  Most of the time the world and other people don’t really care about what we’re up to.  They don’t care about the goals that we’ve set for ourselves.  Matter of fact, some of you watching this video, you tell your environment, you tell the people in your environment that, “Hey, I’m going to go for this,” and they’re like, “Whatever.  You’ll calm down in a couple of days.”  That’s because we’re at the effect of the circumstances.  We’re the effect of the conditions in our lives.  And if we’re at that place, that’s a tough place to grow from.  A lot of people are trying to grow into the next phase in their life, and get to the next phase of their business, trying to get to that next level, but they haven’t understood that it’s the circumstances that are keeping them where they’re at.  Now, I know that kind of sounds like, “aren’t you blaming other people?” And yes, because people haven’t taken on -- if you want to get out of that phase, the way you get out of that phase of being affected by the circumstances is, you start to own up.  You start to man-up, woman-up.  You start to take control and responsibility for everything that happens in your life whether it is your responsibility or not.  That’s the big one.  You take responsibility for the communication with your spouse.  You take responsibility for your communication with the client.  You take responsibility for the actions that you have for creating the conditions that you need.  You start to take responsibility for every action that you take, and how you respond to everything that happens.  And when you start to do that, you transcend that phase, and you start to move into the next phase, which is you learn to separate yourself from the circumstances and the conditions, and that’s a great place to be.  When you learn to separate yourself from the circumstances and the conditions in your life, now you’re -- the chains are off.  They break off, and you’re able to bust through and go to the next level in an effortless fashion.  When there’s distractions, you don’t even see them.  Boom, you stay focused, you’re on your game and you do that once you take full responsibility for everything.  Once you start to own stuff, because you know what happens?  When you decide that it’s up to you, when you finally decide that it’s up to you, and you’re going to make it happen, you don’t see the distractions.  You don’t see the circumstances.  All you see are the results you’re committed to.  That’s where you want to get.  You want to learn to get to a place where, if it’s early in the morning and it’s dark outside and you committed to getting up at 4:30, 5 o’clock and the suns not up yet, and it’s really tough.  The conditions don’t matter.  You get up anyway.  When the times get tough, you’re prospecting and you’re doing your thing, maybe you’re in sales, and you’re prospecting and you’re doing your thing, and it’s really tough and you’re dealing with a lot of rejection, it doesn’t bother you.  You keep moving forward because mentally, you have learned to separate yourself.  Emotionally, you’ve learned to separate yourself from the circumstances.  The circumstances no longer dictate how you perform.  And when that happens, you start to really accelerate and go through this journey of growth, extremely fast and then the third phase, once you learn how to do that, once you learn how to separate yourself from the circumstances, there’s a third phase of growth that is really really cool, and that is where you show up and the circumstances are affected by you.  Where you show up, you show up to a certain party that everybody’s negative and you show up and BAM, everybody -- you’re the life of the party and everybody is all of a sudden inspired and all that kind of stuff.  You show up on a presentation or you show up for a business meeting, and people are a “no” and you show up and BAM, they’re a “yes”.  How does that happen?  How do you get yourself to a place where all of a sudden, you show up, and the circumstances are affected by you?  Well, I gave you a few tips.  Number one is you take responsibility for everything, but the next one is you start to learn how to influence, and when I say influence, when people are usually like, “Well, does that mean selling?”  No, that doesn’t mean selling.  I know a lot of people.  I got a really -- one of my best friends, Don, is an amazing, he’s ridiculously influential, but he’s in the studio industry.  He doesn’t sell anything, but gosh, can he influence you to do stuff and get everybody in a good mood.  He’s just amazing at it.  So, when I’m talking about influence, I’m not necessarily talking about your ability to get other people to do stuff, because that is good, and what I’m about to tell you right now, is the effect of your learning how to do this, but I’m not talking about you influencing other people.  I’m talking about you learning how to influence you.  How good are you at influencing yourself?  How good are you at taking yourself when you’re in a negative state, or you just don’t feel that good?  How good are you at taking yourself and lifting yourself out of that with your language, with your self-talk, with what you’re focused on, with remembering what you’re committed to.  How good are you at putting yourself in a state when you’re silly and playful?  How good are you at putting yourself in a state when you’re ready to go?  I played baseball most of my life, and I was fortunate enough to play some professional ball as well.  What I realized was there are certain hitters that the way they get into the zone is they learn how to influence themselves.  Some people would be -- they played really really well when they’d get really mad.  Well, I gotta get mad, and they’d do really well, but you know what?  When I put myself in that state, and most of the time, I wouldn’t put myself there, although if we’re taking responsibility, I guess I did, but it felt like I would just be put there.  Right?  The manager would do something I didn’t like.  I would be affected by the circumstances, so I would go up, and be affected by the circumstance because I’d be in the state of I’m going to be mad.  I’m going to get them, and that did not work well for me at all.  What I discovered later on, it wasn’t until my last two years of playing was that I play really well when I’m in a goofy free, let everything go state.  It’s going to be all good.  Let’s joke around, let’s have fun.  When I’m in that mode, I’m lethal.  I’m so effective in everything I do.  Effective in everything I do.  All of a sudden, I get in this zone.  I’m super focused.  I’m focusing on the right things.  All of the things that used to bother me just drifted away.  When you learn how to influence yourself, when you find out what motivates you, when you find out what inspires you, when you find out how to get yourself into a place where you feel good, you feel confident, you’re ready to take on the world, that is when you show up, and the circumstances are affected by you.  That’s the last phase of growth, because when you master those three phases, you can virtually go into any area of your life.  You can go into a relationship where if there’s little things that annoy you about the things they do, you’re like, “Oh my god, the way she twitches her nose.  That’s annoying,” or “My gosh, it really annoys me how he just sits around the house like that sometimes.”  When there’s circumstances are there, and you’re affected by them, you lose your power.  There’s no growth to happen, but when all of a sudden, you can start to accept that and say, “You know what, I’m going to take responsibility for the communication.  I’m going to take responsibility for us having us a good time.  I’m going to take on the responsibility.”  Then you start to transcend that, and you move into, I’m not affected by the circumstances anymore.  I can be my true authentic self, and when you learn how to do that, that’s when you learn how to influence yourself, and that’s when you go to the next phase.  Now, you show up and things occur, so I don’t know about you, but that kind of stuff has happened in my life where I’ve gone through this growth process, and also what I’ve found was if I’m trying to go to the next level, and I don’t understand these three phases of growth, I get stuck.  I have to -- look, I’ve done it too.  I’ve tried to go to the next level and kept hitting my head on the ceiling, like, why is this happening?  Because I wasn’t aware that A) I’m responsible for everything, and B) if I learn how to influence myself, influencing the situation and other people is a piece of cake.  So, I hope you got a lot of this video.  If you got something, leave me a comment.  Maybe like the video, that would be cool if you shared it too.  If you think there’s somebody who could use this video, and I look forward to seeing you in future videos.  For now, make sure that everything you do is you operating at your full potential, and learn to unlock that full potential that you have.