Achieve more by doing less

 

via Jo Pole

You can achieve more in your life by doing less! Why slave away like all the other chumps out there? You are really special and deserve more than life is giving you. All you have to do is apply my 4-easy-steps program to totally revolutionise your life. It’s virtually effortless! Start TODAY, with 4 easy payments of $29.95 directly to me and by tomorrow you’ll start to feel the difference.

If you think I’m lying, you would be…correct.

Just like all the other scam artists, magicians, hack self-help gurus and attractive informercial hosts out there who want you to believe that you can do as little if not less than what you currently do and have:
Abs
A clean house
Financial security
Nicer hair
A job you love with every inch of your soul
Productive work habits
A smooth hairless body
Complete.and.constant.delirious.happiness.
Instantly!

Sometimes I think the only truly honest product out there is the snuggie. It promises only what it delivers: the ability to watch TV, holding a remote and a baby, while staying warm and fashionable.

Why do so many of us keep buying into this rubbish? Are we so overwhelmed in this crazy world that we’re desperate enough to believe that happiness, peace, sanity and the golden calf of Productivity are just 4 easy steps away? Are all the things you want are just one affirmation session a day away.

The one that blows my mind (and that is grossly misrepresented on the internet) is the idea that you can use subliminal messages to change your behaviour (ie. lose weight, make more money, stop smoking etc). If we are so susceptible to dramatic change purely due to subliminal messages, wouldn’t someone, like say the government or multi-national corporations, use subliminal messages to control our minds? “Look away.” “Vote for me.” “Give all your worldly possession to me.” “Max your credit card out on this luxury car.”  ”Feed your children saturated fat and an obscene amount of sugar packaged in this delightful meal box.” And yet we have the ability to choose… or do we…

We are not robots people, we have free will and no amount of secret messages are going to change the make up of our brains. Lots of people report GREAT outcomes from programs that promise the world in subliminal messages and affirmations. However, people who achieved things through these programs most likely had other things at play; such as a fresh resolve, increased will-power, a clear decision to change things. The “subliminal messages” simply made them more aware of the area that they want to work on. That is, if you are listening to or watching something daily that reminds you that you want to lose weight, you have a good chance of making choices that help you to lose weight – i.e. not rummage through the kitchen like a possessed person until you find that packet of chocolate-chip cookies and then consuming it all, and the bag of chips you found, in a comatose state on your sofa.

I’m not knocking visualisation and affirmations as a practice – I think these habits are a great way to make your mind more productive. However, if you’re just visualising and not doing anything else about it, you are kidding yourself.

It’s not just 4 steps away. That’s just marketing. It takes hard, brutal, sacrificial work to succeed at most things. It’s dozens and hundreds of steps. Everyday.

Okay, okay I admit I have a penchant for melodrama – it’s not that bad. But it’s not easy either. If you expect to achieve results by only doing the things you like when you feel like doing them, you will be disappointed. Talking about it is not enough. Thinking about it is not even hardly close to enough. The greats that went before us and the giants amongst us now work tirelessly doing what they love and doing what we all hate to achieve success.

Now here’s the good news, at last!

You can achieve less than you think you can in 1 month (I know, this is REALLY positive stuff) but you can achieve more than you think in 10 years. Still not impressed? That’s because you’ve been conditioned by our society to believe that if you don’t get it tomorrow or the day after that it’s not worth sticking at.

That belief is what’s making you depressed, it’s what eats away at you, making you feel like you’re not good enough, like you can’t do anything right, like you are potentially the weakest, least talented person on the planet. That’s what’s driving you to quick-fix solutions, that frankly don’t work if you don’t put in the effort and won’t work if you don’t address the deeper mess you’ve got going on.

If you would just lift your head from focussing on all the things you haven’t achieved yet, you would see how unhappy your crazy expectations are making you. Better still, if you gave yourself a break, you could begin to notice what you have achieved so far.

Look at the last 5-10 years of your life. Can you count the good things that have resulted from your decisions and your hard work? Can you remember them? There must be at least one thing you’ve got right. What if you doubled or tripled or quadrupled those achievements in the next 10 years? You don’t even have to work much harder than what you are right now – depending on how much you want to achieve. If you stay consistant, committed, pure hearted and open to improvement, you can and will do so much more than you think is possible.