It probably feels like something is missing from your life right now. It might be time, money, freedom, appreciation … or perhaps you’ve just lost sight of who you really are. But fear not, there is a secret method to get whatever you want in your business and your life …
if you’re prepared to step out of your comfort zone to get it.
My whole life, I felt like I was chasing something.
First, it was independence. Next, it was confidence. Then, it was money I pursued, followed by love.
Yes, it took me a while to realise my priorities were a little messed-up at that point in my life.
Still, the never-ending race continued. Next up on the wish list, I sought success, followed by respect and recognition. Finally, I realised: I was just chasing time.
But while the chase is thrilling, it is also exhausting.
I was always stalked by that feeling of not being enough. Not good enough. Not fast enough. Not successful enough. Not having achieved enough. Not having slept enough.
When we feel something is missing from our lives, we usually have one solution: work harder.
But we do not realise that the harder the work – the faster we chase – the more the thing which we seek evades us.
This is why all the emotional things we desire – success, happiness, confidence – are illusory: the more we chase, the quicker they escape our grasp.
But there is a way to escape the unstoppable treadmill of desire. You can hit pause on the chase. Even better, you can stop altogether, and let the thing you desire come to you.
Sound too good to be true? Not if you know the secret to getting whatever you want.
Lightening the load
For your entire career, you have been lied to. You were told success was about accumulation. You had to obtain the right experiences, qualifications and connections.
If you were ever going to get the things you wanted, then you’d have to collect the long list of attributes that you supposedly needed.
The result? You become a hoarder of knowledge. Because you believe your career is a long process of collecting and obtaining, you always believe you need more knowledge.
Want to make more money? Get more valuable skills. Want more capacity for your team? Get them some time management training. Want to be a better leader? Get in a leadership coach (let’s face it, there are enough of them to go around).
But what if obtaining more isn’t the answer?
Because if you want to really get what you want, there’s something you need to understand: what you obtain is not as important as who you become.
Having a bucket-load of knowledge, and not putting it to good use has the same impact as being ignorant. Except the ignorant person didn’t waste months, or years, ‘obtaining’ that knowledge in the first place.
That’s why the process of hoarding and obtaining is not the answer. The answer lies in removing almost everything.
The removal company
Success comes from subtraction. When my clients want to transform their businesses, teams or lives, they begin by insisting on ‘more’.
First they want training. Then they want the courses. Then the guidebooks. Then the seminars.
But if you really want to get whatever it is you desire, then the first thing I recommend is this: Get out of your own way.
You don’t need another strategy, training plan, 5-step-process or blueprint. What you need is to remove everything that’s tripping you up. Hint: The single biggest factor that’s getting in your way is … you.
So stop overcomplicating it. Quit waiting for things to be perfect. No more endless searching for that final piece of the puzzle or the elusive ‘breakthroudgh moment’. Stop creating a plan and start taking action.
What action do you need to take however?
You only need to do one thing:
Ask the impossible question
If you remove everything that’s holding you back, you can have whatever you want … if … you’re willing to ask 1,000 people for it. Ask them, in-person or on the phone. One at a time.
Of course, the problem arises when you’re not willing to do that. You might pluck up the courage to ask one or two people, but then you’ll stop asking.
It’s a crazy paradox of life and business that we stop asking for what we want in life, even if we don’t get it.
You’ll stop asking because you’ll tell yourself a lie about ‘getting too busy’, but the truth is: you don’t want to be hurt by any more rejection.
But rejection isn’t reality. It is not a physical thing. It’s a feeling we create. Rejection is a story we make up, based on some words somebody else said. We cause ourselves a load of pain just because someone said, “No thank you”.
Whether it’s the sale, the date, the job, the project, the client – we are afraid that we won’t hear “yes”, so we would prefer to hear silence.
It’s true, you do need to hear “yes” to get what you want. But you also need to hear “no”.
You can’t have one without the other. It’s like saying you can’t have ‘up’ without ‘down’, or you can’t have ‘north’ without ‘south’, or you can’t have ‘heads’ without ‘tails’ – you can’t have “yes”, without “no”.
Stop hanging so much weight upon a tiny, two-letter word.
“No” is good. Every “no” is a step closer to getting what you want. So, embrace the secret to getting whatever you want … by asking for it.
Go make some outrageous requests. And remember that ‘yes’ lives in the land of ‘no’.
Related: The business of happiness
