Overcome This Common Roadblock or Keep Struggling

One of my mentors told me that if you're going to climb the ladder, make sure it's up the right wall. You don't want to climb the ladder, be there at the top after all this work and be like, oh, shit, I just built something or committed to something that I don't even want. Zooming out and getting really honest with myself after those failures and really analyzing what is working, what isn't working, and what needs to change. I call those win reviews. I think one of the biggest mistakes that I ever made in my life early on was everyone talks about all their success stories, but I want to talk about all my failures and all of the things that I have learned from them because I have failed so many times over and over and over and over again. And I think what has set me apart is that I was relentless. And I don't see failures as failures at all. I actually see them as learning lessons. So in my book, I either win or I learn. And there's no better way to learn than through your failures. My friend and mentor, Robert Kiyosaki, actually talks to me about this all the time. Is God designed us to learn through failing. And so for me, I'm not afraid to fail because I know that every time I set an impossible goal for myself and I go after it, if I fail on paper, I learn some crazy, pretty incredible lessons that allow me the skill set and the confidence to set even bigger goals and look at what I did wrong, what I did right, and what needs to change for me to do better in the future. And so some of those failures I've had were partnering with people on business opportunities, you know, just being an opportunist, being ambitious, being optimistic, and saying yes to things that weren't actually in line with what I truly wanted. And it wasn't an integrity with who I was or what I really wanted. And I was so lost and disconnected. I was just grabbing on to any opportunity I could find that would make me money and give me this sense of freedom when in reality, I was building a prison. I was literally building my own prison that I chose to create. And so just getting into businesses that I had no passion for, no experience in or real desire to be in, like starting three construction companies and starting them with a business partner that I didn't even know and not doing my due diligence on him and not just taking his word for everything and trusting that it was all going to work out. And I learned a lot, and I'm really glad I did it. And I lost a lot of money and I had a ton of employees and I was miserable every single day. But what I learned was what I shouldn't do and what I didn't want to create in my life. And I think that, that every dollar I lost, every tear, every sleepless night, having to let down employees, having this chaos going on in the company, I'm so grateful for every moment of that because it gave me the confidence and the knowledge to go create something that was in line with what I wanted. It gave me, okay, this is what I need to set up as far as an entity structure. These are the agreements I need to put in place. These are the employment agreements with the staff. This is the insurance that I need and the liability. This is what the proper marketing should and shouldn't be. This is the structure for how I should run my team and my employees, to give them ownership, but still keeping them in line with the vision and the goals of the company. And so all those, those failures on paper, I mean, I've been engaged two times. You could count those as two failures. I said yes to things that I knew I didn't want. And I was, I had to really get honest with myself and have a reality check of like, am I that afraid of not being loved? And am I that afraid of being alone that I'm dating people that I don't even want to be with? That's not an integrity with who I am or what I want. Zooming out and getting really honest with myself after those failures and really analyzing what is working, what isn't working, and what needs to change. I call those win reviews and doing those every single day paired with a morning integrity setup. So every day before I start my day, I get myself in the absolute peak state of mind that I could possibly be in. And so I'm in a state of flow. Because when you're in a state of flow, you're five times more productive and things just really go your way. And so those two habits have really helped me make sure that I can course correct much sooner before I go spend years or possibly decades creating something that isn't in line with what I truly want. And one of my mentors told me that if you're going to climb the ladder, make sure it's up the right wall, because you don't want to climb the ladder that's on the right wall and then be there at the top after all this work and be like, oh, shit, I just built something or committed to something that I don't Even want, I don't want any part of it. And if you aren't passionate about something and you're not in the green zone and in this state of flow, you're never going to produce the results that you want. I think one of the biggest mistakes that I ever made in my life early on was, first off, not prioritizing myself. I had the wrong intentions for everything I was doing. I was coming from a place to try to love myself, to try to prove to my dad that I was worth it, to try to prove to my brother that I wouldn't amount to anything. Like he told me, I was just trying to find love for myself and approval from other people. And no matter what external success I achieved, which I always hit my goals that I had set quicker than I had set them. But I was always unfulfilled, I was always empty, I was always miserable, I was always depressed, I was always anxious. I was always addicted to everything outside of me to try to fuel. Connected whole and complete and loved inside. When I hired a mentor named William Poet, he told me that my motivation was all wrong and that nothing was ever going to fulfill me. If my intention was coming from a place of trying to love myself, my intention needs to come from a place. And your intention needs to come from a place from love. If your intention is coming from a place of love already. I go to the gym because I love my body and myself and this gift that I've been given. And I not to try to get a body that I love or I want to build a big company because I see that this life is a miracle. And I want to have the greatest impact that I possibly can. And I want to see what potential I have out there. And I want to serve people and change the world or change whatever this thing is that I'm so passionate about. Not because I feel incomplete and because I need more money and because I need more pride and status and ego. If your intention is not coming from a place of love and integrity with who you really are and your higher purpose, your outcomes are never going to be great, because the energy in which you initiated the action is bad. And Poet told me the outcome can only be as great as the energetic state in which you initiate the action. So if you initiate anything in your life from a bad energetic state, whether it's a business venture, a business partnership, a relationship, a friendship, literally anything in your life, if you initiate it with a bad energetic state, your outcome is going to be poor. And so protecting your energy, protecting your time being Aware, having self awareness of what makes you feel expansive, what makes you feel love, what makes you feel creative, what makes time go fast, what makes you feel informed, flow versus what makes you feel contracted, what makes you feel small, what makes you feel angry, bored, upset, frustrated, anxious. If you really can have the awareness, and that's what it starts with, is having the awareness of how you feel throughout the day. And when I started, I would just set alarms on my phone because I was so disconnected, I was so in this zone or doing the tasks or doing the things that to create the habit of awareness, to even know how I felt, I had to set reminders on my phone every hour to check in. How do I feel right now? What am I doing? Where am I at? Who am I with? And I started to do these energy audits on my energy and figuring out, okay, this construction company I'm in is making me feel stress, anxiety, anxious, overwhelm, confusion, and consistently not just like a bad day. This fiance that I'm engaged to is making me feel contracted and small, and he's competing with me and he's not supporting my dreams and he's not supporting my goals, and I'm not. You know, if you're feeling that from things in your life, you're giving that same feeling to the things in your life that are making you feel that way. And so being in tune with my energy, being aware of what made me feel expensive, expansive, and then simply just leaning in to the things that make you feel expansive and starting to lean away from the things that make you feel contracted, and that little tool started to help me cut out of the things in my life that were dragging me down. Because where your attention goes, your energy flows. And if your attention is sucked up by all these things that are not in line with things that make you feel good, then the outcomes you're going to have in your life are always going to be bad. And so leaning more into what made me feel expansive and happy and fulfilled and joyful and purpose driven and letting go of the things that didn't absolutely changed everything for me. And when this happened, when I hired this coach, I was on antidepressants. I was on, I mean, I had everything, ocd, add, eating disorders, insomnia. I took a pill to wake up, a pill to go to bed. I couldn't sit alone with myself for five minutes without feeling anxious and fidgety and not in a good state of mind. And so that was the most important thing. And meditation helped me do that. Sitting quiet with yourself and Losing the attachment to your thoughts and realizing that you are not your thoughts. Because I know we're all taught when we're young, I think, therefore I am. But that's not true. You are not your thoughts. The real saying is, I am, therefore I think. So if you can separate yourself from your thoughts and not let those thoughts turn into emotions, and then those emotions turn into actions, then you can just observe your thoughts and redirect your brain. And that's the nicest thing about the brain, is if you tell it to think of an elephant, it'll think of an elephant. Two seconds later, it might be thinking about my deal that just fell through. The, you know, I just lost 400,000 on commission, or this employee is suing me or whatever. But if you have the awareness, you can redirect the brain. And if you redirect the brain to what you do want, then it becomes the law of attraction. Where your attention goes, your energy flows. So if you can catch the brain, the monkey mind, and catch it trying to keep you in this state of survival, because that's what we're wired to do, is to survive and not get attached to those thoughts, then you just redirect it with love and just as an observer. And don't let that negative thought turn into a negative emotion, which will then turn into a negative action. So protecting your energy. Protecting my energy has been the most integral piece of my growth, which has been, I would say, more exponential over the past year, really. But it's been quite a journey. And I really, really hope that you do not take it lightly on who is making you feel expansive, what is making you feel expansive, and who is not.