Improve Your Quality of Life

One of the most challenging things to understand is that only one person is responsible for the quality of your life, and that is you. In order to be successful and fulfill your dreams, you have to take 100% responsibility. This is a foundation principle that you must embrace in order to have success. This isn’t always easy because many people are accustomed to blaming events for their lack of success. In other words, you blame the economy, the President, racism, your lack of money, your lack of education, etc.

Instead of blaming events, you need to change your responses to those events. There are many examples of successful people who’ve experienced terrible events in their lives. Robert Kiyosaki, best selling author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad was once homeless. Frank Bettger, best selling author of How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling, was a top insurance salesman during the Great Depression. Gurbaksh Chahal, best selling author of The Dream, dropped out of high school, but he went on to become a millionaire by age 18. Tyler Perry, who has written, produced, directed and starred in many plays and movies like “Madea Goes to Jail” and “Diary of a Mad Black Woman,” once lived in his car.

In the movie, “The Pursuit of Happyness,” it tells the true story of Chris Gardner, who was once homeless. Chris and his 5 yr old son slept on the streets, in homeless shelters, and in metro station bathrooms. However, today, Chris Gardner is a millionaire.

All of these people became very successful. They didn’t blame their lack of money, lack of education, homelessness, or the Great Depression. They responded to those events with determination, and they never lost site of their true purpose in life. Without a purpose in life, Tyler Perry may have thought: I have no money – I’m living out of my car – I’m never going to make it. Aren’t we glad he didn’t think like that? We would’ve missed out on all of his wonderful plays and movies.

Also, in times when the economy is bad, not all businesses slow down. Some businesses actually flourish. Did you realize that you can actually choose not to participate in a bad economy/recession? In Jack Canfield’s book, The Success Principles, he tells the story of a friend of his that owned a Lexus dealership in Southern California, and when the Gulf War broke out, people stopped buying cars. Normally, they would place ads in newspapers and wait for customers to come in to buy; however, now with this new event, The Gulf War, they needed to change their response. So, they decided to take the cars to where the wealthy customers were (country clubs, marinas, polo grounds, etc). They let these customers test drive the cars. After the test drives, many people bought or leased a new Lexus. So, if you don’t like a particular outcome, you need to change your response to the event. This involves simply being a little bit creative and coming up with some new ideas.

I can definitely relate to this concept. Several years ago, I had a dance business that I eventually had to close. Business started to slow down, and instead of changing my response, I thought there was nothing I could do. I should’ve developed some new marketing plans and ideas, but I didn’t. Now, you can learn from my mistakes.

Always remember that you can‘t control other people or events like the weather, the economy, etc. There are only 3 things that everyone can control – the thoughts YOU think, the images YOU visualize, and the actions YOU take. That’s it.