Are you making the progress that you want to make? Are you killing it or do you feel like you're getting run-over? We're all at different places during the week. Regardless of where you're at, I’d like to give you a few thoughts today that might help you to get back on track or to go to that next level.
I want to start with the Daily Mastermind Quote of the Day by Jeremy Anderson
“There's nothing that can happen that can take your worth and your value away.”
I think the sooner we realize that external factors or what's going on in our outer game cannot change or influence our inner game if we don’t let it, is when you become more empowered.
Are you making the progress that you want to make? Not just this week, but so far this year, or in your life. Are you where you want to be? Are you tracking that? Are you where you want to be? Do you know where you want to be? Do you have your vision and your clarity set? I will every once in a while go back to some of the key lessons I've learned from mentors in my life. One of the best mentors I've had, in fact a personal friend, partner, and mentor is Robert Stuberg. I always go back to some of the thoughts and things that he has given me over the years. He always talks about navigating through life. Let's be honest. We're here in life and no one's giving us a handbook. Nobody has told us what to do or how to do it. We just have to kind of find our own way and sometimes it helps to have thoughts or strategies, different Waypoints or milestones that you can use to get back on track for navigating through life. These are ways for you to focus your thinking or to get yourself going in the right direction. He has a certain strategy in teaching, a principle that he calls “The Pearl Constellation.” The Pearl Constellation is actually an acronym. The word “pearl” is an acronym for five different words. An acronym is the letters of the word “pearl” each spells out a word. I'm going to go through that with you today. He calls it the Pearl Constellation because he believes it's a way you can help to navigate your life. Back in ancient times, sailors and travelers didn't have compasses and navigational equipment. They used to use the stars in order to navigate across the seas. These constellations would give them direction such as the North Star. This Pearl Constellation is something I think might be able to help you.
The word Pearl stands for….
P stands for your philosophy.
E stands for your emotions.
A stands for your activity.
R stands for your results.
L stands for your lifestyle.
These are waypoints or milestones that you can use to find out if you are on track or you're not on track. These are the five areas that really sum up the experience of your life. Your philosophy, emotions, activity, results and lifestyle really sum up things that we're going to experience in life. These five areas are the ones that you can stop every once in a while and just ask yourself some key questions. Let’s ask some key questions and then we can discuss a little deeper in each area.
- Philosophy: What do I believe about myself or about life that isn't true? What's my philosophy? Ask yourself, what I believe about myself for life that isn't true.
- Emotions: What am I feeling that I don't want to feel? The reason you're asking yourself these questions is you want to find out where you are and are you on track for where you want to be.
- Activity: What am I doing that I don't want to do? What are you doing right now in your activity that you don't want to be doing.
- Results: What am I getting or not getting in my life compared to what I want to get? You're asking yourself these questions in this way in order to sort of stimulate a way that you can grow and change.
- Lifestyle: How am I living my life on a daily basis compared to how I want to be living?
All this isn't just to look for the positive but to question what you're doing and where you are in each of these areas. Rate yourself on a scale of one to ten on these five different areas.
Let's break them down. If you're not making the progress that you want to be able to make in life and that you're capable of making, the problem is probably in one of these key areas.
#1 The first one is your philosophy. This is how you think. We know that your thoughts control your life, but they don’t control everything. Your philosophy is sort of like the way you set the sail on a boat. For those of you that have sailed or know anything about sailing, it doesn't matter what direction the wind is going. It matters the directions you set your sail. You can go any direction in a sailboat just by adjusting your sail. It’s important for you to have the right philosophy because, no matter what’s happening outside, no matter what kind of chaos is going on, you can direct your life. You can control the direction of your life just by the set of your sail. The set of your sail is your philosophy. So what is it? What do you think? What do you think about yourself? Like the quote we said earlier today and is nothing that happens outside that can take away your worth or value. You need to have to have a strong philosophy.
#2The second in this Pearl Constellation is the letter E for Emotions. This is how you feel. How you feel is so important because ultimately at the end of the day we may think we are chasing things or opportunities and experiences but really all of those things lead to the emotions we want to experience in life. What do you want to experience for your emotions? Remember these feelings are what embed the changes in your life. In order to change the way you feel, the way you feel long-term, you have to look at your values. You have to look at things like do you need certainty in your life? Or do you need uncertainty? Do you need significance, connection, love, growth, contribution? What do you value in your life? There are ways that you can set the structure on these values so you can achieve the feelings and emotions you wanted at any given time. For example, do you need certainty? I will tell you right now that success is directly in proportion to the amount of uncertainty that you can live with in your life. However, if you feel like you need certainty, there are ways you can frame certainty in your life. You can tell yourself as long as I'm doing what I need to be doing, I feel like I am in control of my destiny. You can frame that because you know your daily rituals can keep you on track regardless of what's happening. But your emotions are so important. How do you feel? How are you structuring your values of how you feel in order to make sure you are feeling the way you want every day?
#3 The third letter is “A” for activity. This is how you work. How are you working? Are you working harder on yourself than anyone else? Are you working hard or are you working smart. We always go back to your activity. Are you doing the activities that you need to and want to and should be doing to get towards your goal? These activities are always going to relate to if you are functioning inside your unique talent. Your unique talent is the things that you are passionate about and you are excellent at. Anything outside your unique talent is not going to give you that fulfill. It’s not going to give you the true productivity and creativity that you need. So the more often you can operate in your unique talent, the more your activity is going to create the results you want.
#4 The fourth letter is “R” and that's the result. How are you measuring your progress? At the end of the day, life demands measurable progress in reasonable time. Life is going to demand progress in a reasonable time. You have to stop and you have to examine your results. If you are not daily measuring what you want to progress in your life then you're not going to see changes. Do you want to have different emotions? Do you want to see more money and wealth? Do you want to have better relationships? What is your wealth number? What are your health numbers? What are your sales numbers if you’re in sales? You have to be achieving in order to make progress in these areas but you define the terms of what that achievement is. You define the results you are getting. If you're getting results in areas that are not important to you, you're focused on the wrong things. So this is a time for you to check that and figure out where you need to be. It's very important that I mentioned two things. #1 What you monitor or what you track will grow. It’s very important to track your progress. But more importantly #2 It's not about achieving as much as becoming. In other words, what am I getting is different than what am I becoming. You have to learn to be able to feel content with progress and results in your growth as much as you do those tangible items. You're going to be more fulfilled, you're going to be happy, and you're going to have more success in all areas of your life, if you feel that you're growing. Growing as a key to success.
#5 The last letter in this Pearl constellation is the letter “L” for lifestyle. So many of us think about lifestyle being something you're going to eventually have. You’ve heard those terms expressions like
“work hard today so that tomorrow you can have what most people don't have.”
“work really really hard most of your life and eventually you'll be able to retire and have what you want.”
I disagree with that 100%. What I've learned from my own personal experience is that in order to have a great life, you have to enjoy life while you're living it. It's hard to say you’re going to work hard for an end result but also say I'm going to be happy with what I got. Ed Mylett talks about this and calls it “blissful dissatisfaction”. The highest Achievers are never completely satisfied with where they're at. They’re happy with where they're at. They’re fulfilled with where they’re at. They’re enjoying where they're at. But they're blissfully dissatisfied. In other words as long as you're making progress on your goal in life you could be happy with your progress and reaching and striving for more. You know a great life is living it. Life is meant to be lived and if you don't live and enjoy and take advantage of those little moments, you're letting life pass you by. There's absolutely many many ways that you can learn to “happily achieve” instead of trying to “achieve happiness”. Happily achieving is far better than achieving happiness!
The bottom line is if you are not where you want to be, I would highly recommend you stop and analyze the five core areas of your life: philosophy, emotions, activities, results, and lifestyle. If you are doing well in life then I also recommend you look at these because these are key areas you can use to step up and go to the next level.
I'm really looking forward to hearing some feedback from you. Please hit me up on the Daily Mastermind on dailymastermind.com, Instagram, Facebook or DM message me. Tell me what you're working on, what you're struggling with. I'd love to be able to give you some help, some insight, maybe even send you to some good resources. That's what I'm here for. That's why I do this. I know it's never too late to start living the life you were meant to live and you have great things ahead of you. Your best days are ahead of you, not behind you. So stop looking back. Keep looking forward. I hope this is a message that might be able to inspire and motivate you to do some extra things this week to work on you. Have an amazing day!
George Wright III
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