What is Your Vision for Success? (Hint: It’s What’s Behind the Money.)
What is Your Vision for Success? (Hint: It’s What’s Behind the Money.) Think of two musicians. One is a talented man who is playing on a busy mall on a Sunday afternoon. He has gotten the correct permit from the right authority. He has his business card and CDs (that he created himself). He runs a few social media channels himself and posts updates about upcoming performances, how good his last performances were along with teasing new songs and material to his small but passionate fanbase. These are all the skills he had to learn himself. He unpacks all his gear from his van and wheels it to his favorite spot, making several trips and running back and forward to get it all done quickly. Then taking half an hour to set up and do a sound check. He plays for a few hours, smiles for photos with some fans and gives out a few business cards (with QR codes to his social media channels). As the sun starts going down, he checks his hat, which now has a few hundred dollars cash in it and his Venmo account, which also has a couple of hundred dollars in it, starts to pack up his collection of speakers and instruments and then heads home. He had a great day playing music for his audience on a local main street corner. He will now spend many hours this week updating his social media, responding to new comments from audience members and getting ready for his new album launch. All of which he will do himself. Learn more about my keynote speaking engagements where I talk about life lessons I learned from being a professional stuntman. Another musician is a lead guitarist. That’s all he does. He plays in a well known band and travels the country and sometimes to other countries six to nine months out of the year. He is paid a reasonable salary and his schedule is booked out months ahead for him. While he has little control over where and when he needs to show up for performances due to his contract, he does enjoy traveling and being in a new city multiple times per week, while meeting fans and hanging with friends from far away places. He does miss his family and friends back home who don’t get to see him too often. As show time rolls around, tonight is a larger performance than most, at one of the biggest cities on that side of the country. He goes through the same pre-show routine, double checking with his technicians and managers. Everything is good. His system, as well as the band’s, is flawless. He contributed to creating such a tight and perfect routine and now just has to show up. He and the whole band crush it to a sell out crowd like they do every night, playing the same songs in the same order, using the same jokes and “We love you”s. Afterwards they all go backstage for beers and an after party with a few local celebrities, VIPs and competition winners and receive pats on the back about how good they were and answer the same questions (like “where do you get your inspiration?”) that they do from fans every night. He had a great day playing music for his audience. He then heads to bed in the tour bus while he gets driven several hours throughout the night to the next city, before he wakes up to do it all again. He has four more months of this until he will return home. Which one of the above would you rather be? Does one sound like hard work more than the other? Does one sound more easy, rewarding and inspiring? Success can come in many forms. Money is not the only metric and the impact we have on others and the value we receive to ourselves can be measured in many ways. And the beautiful thing is that we get to design our life the way we want. Onwards and upwards, my friend, as you design yours the way you want. ~ Brett Solomano
Are You Struggling to Change Your Behavior? Here’s Why It’s Hard and How to Succeed.
How can you find the motivation or the flow again? Is it just like being struck by lightning? It can feel like you are either graced from above with inspiration or you aren’t.
Motivation is a myth. Waiting for motivation is the externalization of responsibility for you moving toward your dreams.
How to Overcome Jealousy in Your Relationship
How to Overcome Jealousy in Your Relationship. Having jealousy consistently plays a role in your relationship can quickly be the demise of your once healthy and loving relationship. It sure is a big weight for you both to carry! A great example of a common argument in a relationship can stem from your partner spending more of their free time with their friends or deciding to work longer hours than before. The sudden shift may lead your mind into a dark rabbit hole of “what-if” type questions. “What if they no longer love me?” “What if he wants a younger lover?” “What if they want to be with someone else?” Side Note: A separate conversation here is if a partner is operating outside the bounds of the rules that you’ve set in your relationship. There will be another blog on this. Make sure to check it out. By asking yourself questions about the emotion, you can discover the reason why you’re feeling jealous in a relationship. Start here to learn what jealousy is and action forward tips moving through the heavy emotion. You can learn more about the problem by asking yourself these questions: What do I fear losing? Why do I fear losing this? Why would this be so bad? Why would that be so bad? (And the answer to this question can be then questioned with…) Why would the answer to that be so bad for me? (And again, ask the same question for the next answer) Repeat these questions until you find a deeper answer. Some common answers that may come up as you answer each question might be: Because then I’d be alone. Because I’d be unseen. Because I’d be unloved. Phew… *Sigh*… This can be tough to read out loud at first so be kind to yourself as you explore and observe this. While much joy in life can be found through relationships and other people loving us, it’s important to cultivate a sense of wholeness within ourselves as well. This inner strength can act as a buffer against jealousy. Once we find what it is that we are expecting to receive from them we can ask: While I thought that that person or situation was unique and the only way to receive that thing I wanted (e.g. love, significance, connection, variety, stimulation, income etc) how else can I get that for myself from other places? Is It Normal to Be Jealous? Yes, it is normal and common. But the question is, is it acceptable? And, if it is acceptable, what does it bring value? All emotions can be treated like gauges on a dashboard giving you a reading on your current state in relation to the world around you and your connection between your conscious and subconscious beliefs. The few times I’ve felt jealous I’ve been able to transmute it with the questions above. Somehow, I’ve always been rather rational and logical with certain emotions but as I write this blog I’m beginning to realize why I haven’t experienced too much jealousy in my life. Sadly, that’s because from a younger age I’ve always been fiercely independent, and bitterness and resentment are slightly more common for me in the history of my emotional ledger. Instead of believing I want something from someone or that they owe it to me (defensive fear – jealousy), in the past I have gone straight to the emotions of either bitterness or resentment (dismissive aggression or avoidance) with a voice in my mind sometimes appearing at worst as “How could they do that to me?! I’ll show them!” On a positive note, since I’ve started working on myself this has helped change my perceptions and actions now blossoming into a stable healthy place and calm loving balanced perspective. So to answer my own questions above, yes, all emotions are acceptable and bring value IF we listen to them and treat them as gauges on the dashboard. Is it ok to have a low gas tank? Yes. Is it ok to run around all day with a low gas tank, the fuel light on and blame others for your current situation? I’d say no. There is far more power and love and in taking action from the feedback that our emotions give us and by diving in to explore them. How Do You Know if You’ve Finally Overcome Jealousy? Once you start to observe and deprogram your mind by sitting with yourself and asking these questions on a daily basis as your emotions pop up, you’ll begin to see how rigidly attached you are to certain things and outcomes. Attachments bring expectations. But the harsh truth of reality is that it doesn’t always comply with our expectations. We need to show up as we are, where we are for whoever is right in front of us… Even if it’s no longer our partner or the team we wanted to be promoted to. It may take time to learn to live from a place of abundance and feel the love and power coming from inside instead of outside, but the effort to break the hold that an emotion like jealousy can have and navigate it differently can change your life. Keep the famous quote in mind, “If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it’s yours. If not, it was never meant to be.
Jealousy: What Is It and How to Move Past It
Jealousy is a heavy emotion experienced and felt by everyone. While we all feel it differently and not all to the same degree, jealousy can be extremely tiring on those we love and others around us as it can feel like an insecurity blanket smothering the life out of what could be a thriving relationship.
The Benefits of Developing Persistence and How to Keep It.
The Benefits of Developing Persistence and How to Keep It. Persistence can be a difficult journey, especially when starting! But we need it to succeed, unfortunately. Persistence takes a true love of the process, which is why it can be so difficult! Suppose we’re doing something for extrinsic motivation, or external validation of some kind. In that case, it can be tough to proceed and persist when the validation or positive results we desire may not come every time or even for a long time. Especially in darker, tougher times. Anyone can run a business and call themselves an entrepreneur when the money is rolling in, but what about when you have to pivot and have to follow through on difficult decisions? This can be many decisions such as: Delegating time-consuming tasks knowing they’ll get done: Do you love it enough to keep going or are you just doing it for a paycheck, the praise and success? Are you enjoying the process and striving for perfection as you create and watch with joy what is unfolding? Are you excited about doing the hard work because it allows you to do the fun work? When I achieved my world record for the longest distance reversing a semi-truck 55 miles or 89 km in four hours! I knew I had to complete 120+ laps of the track we had set up to beat the previous record of 39 miles (62 km). How was I able to sit in a truck for four hours going in reverse? I made a game of it! Every lap I had marks on the road at numerous points to hit. I knew if I kept hitting them I would be driving a smooth fast lap. As soon as I had hit one marker on the track with my trailer tires I kept going and looked for the next one. Yes! Got it too. Next one. Hmm, not quite. Just missed it. Now I’ve got something to improve on the next lap. Now I’m getting rough with the truck. Ok, easy Brett… Smooth it out Next marker… Got it! And to me, this was one of the coolest games I could have created for myself. Hit enough marks on the ground and you get a world record, Brett. Drive a big truck in reverse for four hours? Sounds like fun to me! It can be difficult to do anything consistently for any length of time but if you enjoy the process it becomes easy. Driving big trucks probably taps into a childhood excitement for me. I used to play with little toy trucks. As an adult, I get paid to play with big ones in movies and for truck work driving across the country. What do you enjoy? What gives you a deep sense of fulfillment? You may have forgotten about it to do more “adult things” like pay bills. Go back to when you were last working, building, tinkering, creating, or serving without any reward and doing it just because… There’s probably something in that. There’s no need for you to be on this journey alone. Let’s connect to create a game plan to get you started on the right track.
