Feeling Stuck? Try This Amazing Book!

Happy Wisdom Wednesday, everybody, and happy new year. So this is the first book review of 2019, and I've got a great one for you, especially for those of you who have set new goals and new ambitions for your life. More importantly, maybe some of you are a little bit down in the dumps. Maybe you lost your job. Maybe you've gone through a hard time earlier this week, and I'll leave a link to the post I talked about the time that I was laid off and I didn't know quite what to do. And at the time, a close friend of mine, Sorelle Naimi, she's a co-founder over a fantastic organization called We Over Me, um, who focuses a lot on innovation and helping teams become more creative and more importantly, work towards goals through alignment. She recommended this book called Afformations by Dr. Noah St. John. And the idea behind Afformations versus affirmations— affirmations are things you tell yourself. And a lot of times people get it confused with positive thinking, which part of it, it is. The interesting thing I found about this book, and it helped me in a time of need, again, when I was really down in the dumps, I lost my job, I had bills to pay, a mortgage, and I didn't know what to do. And in reading this book, it made me realize that human thought is really the process of asking questions and then searching for answers to those questions. Now, if you pay attention, people who tend to be poor financially, um, in bad moods, very negative, what do they usually focus on? They focus not only on the negative, but they ask questions such as, why am I so poor? Why does this keep happening to me? Why am I not making more, more money? And the thing about the way the mind works, especially the subconscious, is that when you ask it questions the mind, very much like a computer or like a search engine, will look for ways to affirm those beliefs and give you answers to those questions. So the idea behind this book is that you should learn to ask questions of yourself that you genuinely want the answers to. So how did this affect my life? So at the time I was jobless. I never consulted before. And so I started asking myself questions that I genuinely wanted the answers to, such as, Why am I so good at my work? Why do I have all this business coming to me? Why does every company want to work with me? Why does everybody want to hire me? And anytime I started to have really negative thoughts that produced questions I don't want the answers to, I immediately overrode those thoughts by speaking the words. In order to think, you have to be able to speak. By, by speaking and articulating, that's what causes thought process to happen. That's why, uh, things like compelled speech laws about what you can and can't say, are very dangerous. And so through this book, it teaches you this art of asking questions that you genuinely want the answers to. And what I love is that in the back, it gives you many, many pages on great questions to ask yourself for life, healthy spiritual habits, business practices. And I'll give you some, some examples. And let's go to, you know, some beliefs about yourself. Why am I safe to say who I really am? Why is it okay to like myself? Why am I so great? If you look at, let's see, you know, beliefs on life. Why did everything work out better than I thought it would? And the reason why this works is that it's not necessarily positive thinking. More importantly, you're asking yourself positive outcome-based questions. Questions whose answers you genuinely want, and subconsciously your mind will go to work on a daily basis to look for ways to validate those beliefs. So rather than having a limited and negative mindset, you're making yourself have a growth mindset. So you look for answers that positively influence your life. So of course, when I asked myself these questions, and I had to do this continuously for more than a month, constantly just to override the negative thoughts. And I, and you'll be surprised how negatively you, you speak to yourself. It allowed my mind to look for opportunities. It allowed me to creatively find ways to pitch companies on services, ways I can consult, you know, and this not only led to me starting consulting business at the time, but more importantly, it got me one of my, you know, what I consider one of the best jobs in my career, which is currently, uh, being the director of growth over at Potrero because I asked myself those questions and I'll never forget the day that I actually got the call to start working with Potrero. I was in my car and I was driving and my wife was with me and I looked very down and it was because I was concerned. I had negative thoughts going on and she said, hey, are you okay? And immediately the first thing I said, and I told her later on, I was like, I was kind of lying at that moment. I was like, I'm just worried about all the opportunities that I have and what am I going to do when I have to make a decision as to where I'm going to do my work. Definitely a fantastic book. I encourage you to buy it. More importantly, get it so you can start reversing and aligning your thought process in the right direction, which is to ask questions whose answers you genuinely want. And more importantly, life is short. Why focus on the negative? It's okay. This doesn't mean that you should be head in the clouds and not realistic, but more importantly, To have a growth mindset, why not ask questions whose answers you genuinely want? And more importantly, as you ask those questions, you make sure to take physical action. You put in the hard work, you do what you have to do creatively to manifest those questions and get the answers that you want. So that's the book of the week. Again, happy new year and leave a comment below. What are some positive questions that you like to ask yourself whose answers you genuinely want? As always, happy Wisdom Wednesday, and I'll see you next week. Boom! Done.