Looking Back – Reframing “How” To Win – Part Two
In Part one of Looking Back Reframing “How” to Win – we took a look at how our perception of our journey can be totally demolished or boosted by how we view how far we’ve already come.
If you haven’t read Part One yet, you can read it by clicking here.
If you want to build and maintain the energy you need to stay on your path you need to change how you view the world, but first you need to be aware of how you’re thinking.
Are you looking only at the summit, or are you looking back down the mountain to see the progress you’ve made so far?
Awareness is a key tool in our optimization. To be better men, we need to recognize where we are right now, we need to stop ourselves when we see we’re headed down the wrong path, and we need to re-adjust our thinking to better serve us.
This leads me into a simple yet powerful tool to transform overwhelm and paralyzing fear, into something constructive.
2. Switching “How Can I” to “How Will I”?
The trick then is to switch your questioning.
Instead of asking How Can I Even Do That…. you ask: How Will I Do That?
It may seem trivial, but when you ask the question in this way, you’re opening yourself up to a world of infinite possibilities. You’re opening yourself up to an abundance mindset.
You’re thinking of possible solutions instead of getting lost in your fear of a future you’re imagining. You get to make a plan.
In the book Never Split the Difference: Negotiate as if your life depended on it.. Author Chriss Voss says that when you’re presented with a situation where you need to negotiate – like dealing with a hostage-taker, or the dude who’s selling his truck – you can stump your opponent by continuing to ask them a question like “How can I pay you $25,000 for your truck if all I have is $20,000?” – OR – “How can I pay you $200,000 ransom if I don’t know if Susie is alive” – Or – “How can I even get $35,000 to pay you what you’re asking if I have no money?”. Every time getting the hostage-taker or car salesman to try and figure out a solution for your problem.
These are all questions that lead directly to lack. I don’t have what you’re asking so how am I supposed to do what you’re asking if I don’t even know how to get it?
It’s not about offering a solution, it’s about giving your opponent a question that they can’t answer.
So what happens when you are the hostage-taker and the negotiating team, asking yourself those questions? What happens when you give yourself a question that stems from lack and doesn’t actually lead you to any kind of meaningful solution?
I’ll tell you what – but you may already know the answer…
You end up doing nothing, you get confused, and you ignore the problem. You feel like you die a little inside, you become a little bit weaker, and you wait until a problem rears its head again. Each time feeling like more of a failure.
What happens when you flip the script and change your question in a way that allows you devise a meaningful solution to your problem?
You’re now tackling your problem from the frame of abundance. When you ask “How will I get enough money to afford the new truck, the 5th wheel camper, and time off for a vacation this year” you give yourself permission to start coming up with a plan.
You start listing out all the ways you can make what you want a reality. Of course this isn’t just for material things, it’s for everything.
Say your relationship with your wife is shit. You’re not getting the love and attention you think you deserve. You’re turned down for intimacy. You’re sleeping on the couch, or she’s sleeping in another room and you’re both barely talking to each other?
By asking How Will You…
You start making a plan. Instead of asking, “How can I get her to love me if she won’t even sleep in the same room as me?”, you can ask, “How will I show her the love she needs, even if she won’t sleep in the same room as me?” Then make a list of all the ways.
- Date your wife once a week.
- Learn to be a decision-maker
- Get physically fit
- Learn how to control your anxiety
- Get your anger under control, so you live a more stoic life
- Help out with the kids 10% more.
- Help out with chores 10% more.
- Get stuff done around the house you’ve been putting off.
- Tell her you love her more often.
- Have fun and tease her playfully
- Get rid of your expectations and kill the covert contracts.
You start coming up with a solution to your problem.
In your business.
In your business if you see that your competition launched a new advertising campaign and it looks like they’re killing it, and you ask yourself “How can I even compete with that, they have more money, more exposure, and a better message?” – You reframe your question to be – “How will you compete with that?” Then list all the ways you can compete with them, or list all the things you need to do to learn to compete with them, if you don’t already know. It may mean that you have to go out and educate yourself on ways that you can advertise and grow your business?- It might be something like:
- Talk to someone who knows how to rock local marketing for a small business.
- Learn how to set up google adwords
- Create door hangers and leave them at houses near our projects.
- Send out mail pieces to every home in town
- Research what other companies like mine are doing in bigger centers.
- Hire teenagers to go door to door handing out flyers.
Being Proactive VS Reactive
If you’re not asking the right questions, then you’re not making things happen. Which means you’re probably living with a scarcity mindset, you’re living in a reactive state. This is the default state, the “Higher Ups In the Corporate World Like Us to Be In” – Waiting around to see what happens, then reacting to what someone else does in order to fix that problem or put out the fire that arises.When you’re living in an abundant state, you see the world around you for what it is. A world of opportunity.When you’re living in an abundant state, you see the world around you for what it is. A world of opportunity. Just go for a walk, take a look at all the cars on your street. Start to add up the amount of money all those cars cost. You’ll soon hit a million dollars, you keep going you’ll hit 10 million dollars. I was just driving down the highway during rush hour and thought of this – in 2 seconds I saw enough cars to hit a million – I probably passed a hundred million dollars in cars in my 45 minute drive. There’s no shortage of what we need in this world. Especially money – if you’re willing to go out there and get it. You get to choose however, do you want to be the cause of your success or do you want to be the effect of someone else’s? By asking better questions, such as How Will I…. You start living in cause, or in proactive state. You’re taking control of your life and your future. By taking a look at where you’ve already been, you can see what you’ve already accomplished. You’ll see that you are making progress even if it’s tiny steps, in the direction you want to go. Remember writing out your success indicators.
3. Getting Rid of How All Together
Now here’s the last part.
Once you put what you want out in the universe. You tell God what you want. You tell the universe what you want. You end up making a contract with your subconscious. And once you make that commitment to what you want, you no longer have to focus on how you’re going to get it. Not the fine details anyway.
But what you must have is intention. You have to start working toward what you want.
Ever hear the phrase “You Get What You Focus On – So Focus On What You Want”.
The only problem is that most Men focus on the wrong thing. If you’re struggling financially and your focus is on how will I get more money (without making the list) OR I want more money, I want more money, I want more money – then your focus is still on your lack or the scarcity of money and not on the actual things you need to do in order to get the money. Which is simply putting one foot in front of the other and making progress toward your goal.
One of my Mentors Jesse Elder says – What is the BEST NEXT thing you can do. Not the NEXT best thing, but the BEST next thing. What is the one thing you can do next that makes the most sense, the lowest hanging fruit that you can pick, the best next thing that will move you forward in the direction you want to go in your life.
When we focus on the BEST next thing, we’re working on the next thing we must do that is the best for us. On the other hand, when you focus on the NEXT best thing, you’re not focusing on the best thing, you’re focusing on second place. What is the next thing I can work on that is after the best thing I can work on.
It’s a subtle switch in thinking, but a powerful one.
Another thing to ask yourself who do you need to become in order to live the life, or lifestyle you want?
The secret to getting what you want isn’t about simply wishing for it, but becoming the person who does the things, and naturally gets what he wants.
The trick here is to change who you believe yourself to be, in order to get the amount of money or success in any area you want. You need to change your identity.
For example:
If you want to make more money, then ask yourself, what does the man look like who makes the amount of money I want? What does he do? How does he dress? How does he act? Then start living that way and doing the things that version of you would do.
Start making it easy for yourself.
If you want to have a better relationship with your wife, then who do you need to become in order to be the guy who has a great relationship with his wife? Start living that way.
Set an intention then start doing the things necessary for you to fulfill that role. Tell yourself, the universe, and God that:
“I am becoming the Man who makes a lot of money”,
“I am becoming the Man who women find irresistible”,
“I am becoming the Man who is a great father to his kids”,
“I am becoming the Man who is into fitness and who eats healthy”,
“I am becoming the Man who does what needs to be done, and lives proactively”
“I am becoming the Man who has fun and seeks out adventure”
I believe this is how life works. Tell the universe what you want, and it shows up. You don’t have to worry about the how when you start working toward it, it’s just there?
I’ve had this happen to me over and over again throughout my life.
When I was 22, I told the guys I worked with that my goal was to start my own company by the time I was 25. But I never forced, it wasn’t a focus. But 2 months after I turned 25, I was opening the doors to my new office. Everything fell into place. I was always learning, and always growing, and I jumped at the opportunity when it presented itself.
When I was 30, Chandelle and I decided to open a new big salon as the boutique she had opened was getting too crowded. So just by chance a few weeks later I walked into a location that was perfect on my way for lunch one day and we opened our second salon a few months later.
When we decided to move 1600 kilometers from small prairie town in Saskatchewan to Wine Country in the Okanagan valley we didn’t have to ask how, we didn’t have to save up and make a huge plan. We looked and found a house (on the beach), we booked our moving van, we packed up our belongings, we found a renter to move in after we left, and we unpacked in our new place, 1600 kilometers away, in less than 3 weeks. We didn’t focus on how, we just did and made it happen. So far it was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made.
When you decide and commit to what you want, your subconscious goes to work for you.
You are open to new experiences and opportunities that will get you toward your goal. It may not even be something you’re actively thinking about, but your subconscious mind knows what you’re looking for and alerts you to what it is you need in order to make it happen.
Now here’s the thing about your brain. You can only process about 2000 pieces of information coming at you from the outside world at any one time. However, there are over 4 billion pieces of information hitting you at ever instance. What you see, smell, hear, touch, and taste.
You subconscious mind processes out 99.99% of that information so you can actually go through your day without being overwhelmed. With that being said, once you put your focus on things you want, when you tell the universe what you need, your subconscious becomes aware of those inputs and starts filtering them for you in a way that is useful to you.
In other words, you start to take notice, and do things that push you along your path.
But if you never tell the universe, your subconscious, or god what you want, your subconscious which filters that information, never goes to work for you.
With my relationship I had to figure out who I needed to be in order to make my relationship work. I had to commit to being the Man who I wanted to be. The Man who is confident, fun, funny, strong, and attractive.
I’m still working on it. Like we all are. But a big part of that transformation is not obsessing on the “How is this going to happen”, but focusing on who you need to be in order for it to happen. To putting your request out into the universe, or in God’s hands and letting it ride.
If you never tell the universe what you want, you’ll never get it.
The Universe never goes to work for you.
- So stop asking impossible questions, “How can I even do something that seems to hard…”
- You are not a victim, you’re in control, and you alone have to take ownership.
- Start asking, How Will I reach my goal.
- Focus on what you really want and not what you don’t have yet.
- Become the Man who has those things, envision who he is, and start acting like him.
- Forget about how you’re going to do it, and just start living it with intention.
- Pick the BEST NEXT thing and keep moving in that direction.
