Blog.

You Are NOT the Average of the 5 People You Spend the Most Time With

The famous quote by Jim Rohn states that “You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with”. While I understand that Jim Rohn meant this to be a quote that would encourage you to surround yourself with successful, motivated people who can help you achieve your goals; I believe it can also be used as an excuse for someone who hasn’t reached the level of success they are striving for.

As a life coach I am in the business of busting limiting beliefs and this quote can definitely be interpreted as a limiting belief, depending on how you look at it. For those of you who don’t know what a limiting belief is, it is basically a belief that you have about yourself or the world that can prevent you from achieving specific goals or results. By that saying you are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with it can be very tempting to blame your failures or lack of success on the people around you, instead of taking responsibility for your own results.

Now let’s take a look at some of the holes in this argument and get into them one by one.

The People Around You Will Influence You

Of course the people around you are going to have some influence over you, but only as much as you allow them to. Like we talk about all the time on this site, you control how you react to your environment. Whether you decide to take to heart everything that the people around you say or you decide to listen and use the information that you think is useful, it is your decision, not their words that will influence you.

Does this mean that it wouldn’t help if the people that you surround yourself with were supportive of you? Of course it would help. But even if the people around you don’t understand why you have chosen the path you are on, it will only affect you if you aren’t sure about why you chose your path in the first place. If you are committed to making something work and you know why it is important to you, then it really doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks as long as you believe in it.

You Don’t Have to Do What They Do

You have your own brain and you can make your own decisions. If the people around you want to go out to a bar on a night that you have to work late, even if they try to persuade you to come out, you are the one who makes the decision of whether to work or go out. If you know you need to get something done, then choose to work on it and get it done. If you think it can wait and you want a night out, then choose to go out. Sometimes taking a step back and letting loose can be the best thing to get your creativity flowing again anyway.

Would it help you become more successful if your friends spent their time looking for networking events instead of bars or nightclubs? Maybe. But if you and all of your friends went to a networking event, who is to say that you would leave the security blanket they would provide you with to go talk to other people? You can make an excuse for almost anything, but at the end of the day it is you who controls your decisions and your success, not anyone else.

Social Media/Technology

With the increased popularity of sites like Twitter and Facebook, especially when it comes to business, it is so easy to get in touch with just about anyone in an instant. This means that you no longer need to spend your time physically surrounded by successful, motivated people, because you can get in touch with them on a daily basis through twitter or any other social media site.

On a daily basis I communicate with a number of amazing coaches and bloggers that inspire me and make me want to continue to improve myself. We even share strategies and new resources to help each other become more effective at what we do. So even though only one of my close friends is a coach, I still have as many resources available to me as someone who surrounds themselves with coaches all the time.

No More Excuses

The bottom line is that you have no excuses. If you are not yet where you want to be, look in the mirror, not at the people around you.

If you want to make more connections and gain more resources then take the time to research your field. Follow the authorities in your industry on Twitter, check out their blogs and email them any questions you have.

There are more than enough resources out there for you to be able to surround yourself with whomever you want and continue to succeed.

Believe in what you are doing, own your decisions and be proactive. If you do these three things there will be no reason why you can’t accomplish anything you want, regardless of your environment!

Eyes on the Rise: The Full Story Behind Why I Started This Blog

There are two questions that I get a lot about this blog.

The first is why did I start a blog like this for young professionals?

The second is how did I come up with the name “Eyes on the Rise”?

The two go hand in hand, but let’s tackle these one at a time.

Why I Started It

I started Eyes on the Rise for a number of reasons, but the most important reason is that a few months ago I was completely miserable. Not only did the marketing business that I started in college fail after two years of hard work, but I was also working at a job that I hated. I wasn’t taking care of myself physically, and emotionally I was feely pretty damn lousy for no reason that I could think of. Luckily I did not want to accept the misery that I was stuck in and I was determined to find a way out of it.

I Google searched things like getting happier, finding meaning and a number of other things that I thought would be relevant, and Google took me to a book by Tony Robbins called Awaken the Giant Within. I started reading the book and it made a lot of sense to me.

I remember one part in particular where it said to imagine your problem as a physical object and try to move it. I closed my eyes and pictured a giant black anvil next to me and in my mind I tried to move it just an inch. I couldn’t. I kept opening my eyes, closing them, and trying again. Then something crazy happened when I closed my eyes one last time. The anvil had transformed into a baseball-sized ball and it was in my hand. I simply pictured myself throwing it away and watching it bounce until it was out of sight.

When I opened my eyes I felt a lot better and I had absolutely no idea how it worked. The more I read the more I began to realize that the “problem” and bad feelings that I created were in my head and that I controlled them. I then began to think about how many other people do the same thing on a daily basis and I wanted to figure out how I could use my personal experience to help. Just as I was getting out of my funk I started taking the “Live Off Your Passion eCourse“(affiliate link, I will get paid a percentage if you sign up for the course) by Scott Dinsmore, which helped me realize that my passion was to help others to take control of their lives and I decided to become a life coach. (More about this in my post about How I Escaped My Job and Found Meaning in My Career)

When I decided to become a life coach I threw myself into it fully. To date I have read too many books to count, attended a number of seminars and received three different certifications in technologies that allow me to help people to control their realities by controlling their thoughts and emotions. Some of the techniques I that learned were pretty remarkable and others were very simple but just as effective.

Which brings me to the title of the blog…

Why Eyes on the Rise?

One of the things that I learned in my training was how our physiology can have a HUGE impact on our emotions. We talked about how people who are feeling depressed are constantly looking down, slumped over and you can pretty much recognize how they are feeling just by looking at them.

When they find their way out of the depression they usually say something like “things are looking up”. I never realized it until one of my training seminars, but when someone says, “things are looking up”, they mean that literally. They are no longer looking down or slumped over, they are now looking up and standing up straight. If you don’t believe it try to imagine someone who is really excited and check if they are slumped over and looking down, doesn’t really fit does it?

I liked the idea that something as simple as looking up could really make a big difference in how someone was feeling in an instant. Is it the most effective and longest lasting way to help someone to feel better? No it’s not. But it’s a start and for some people that is a huge leap forward. The strategies that I learned now allow me to help people go from feeling bad to feeling good, and go from feeling good to feeling great and beyond!

When the time came for me to name this blog I played around with a lot of different titles and names that I thought would sound good and could rank on Google. Then I read something on Corbett Barr’s “Start A Blog That Matters” course about how a blog name should reflect something that has had a huge impact on you or that conveys a major belief of yours. When I began to think about the simple concept of looking up to feel better and combined it with my personal belief of improving a little bit everyday, I finally came up with the name “Eyes on the Rise”. It reminds us to keep looking up, feeling good, and to stay focused on the goal of improving a little bit each day.

Where Do We Go From Here?

So now that you know the full story behind Eyes on the Rise, where do we go from here?

I will be here providing you with the most valuable content that I possibly can, every day, for free! Access to my blog posts and strategies are absolutely 100% free to you and I would be honored if you would share them with others who you think might benefit from them too! Sharing can be as simple as a tweet, like, or you could even email an article to someone that you ‘d like to share it with.

You don’t have to be a young professional to benefit from these strategies, I write to young professionals because I am one myself, and my writing style reflects that. The truth is that these strategies are meant for anyone who wants to live a better life.

I am working on launching an online coaching program to help empower you to become wildly successful in any area that you choose, which I will have more details on soon!

For now you can SUBSCRIBE by email below and receive my blog posts for free in your inbox. There will be AT LEAST one life strategy in each post that you will be able to apply to your life and gain instant value from! I would not waste your time with fluff posts.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this, I know that your time is your most valuable asset and I am truly honored that you would spend some of it here

How I Escaped My Job and Found Meaning in My Career

“There has got to be more to life than this”. This was a statement I made not too long ago when I was at the beginning of yet another 60-hour workweek at a corporate job that I had absolutely no passion for. When I got home it was about 10:00 PM and I knew I had to be up at 5:45 AM the next day but I didn’t care. I didn’t want to feel this way anymore and I was determined to find an answer.

I began to search for work-life balance on Google, looking for anything that I might be able to do outside of work that would wash away the negative energy from my workweek. I was frantically clicking on every article looking for something that would give me the magic answer I was looking for. All I found on the first few pages were suggestions such as “work out” and “maintain a healthy diet”, and to those articles I replied out loud, “no shit”.

It wasn’t until the 4th page on Google that I stumbled upon a site called zenhabits.net, and an article written by Leo Babauta about work-life balance, that I found what I was really looking for. One sentence in particular seemed to slap me right in the face and wake me up, “The first thing to point out is that work isn’t separate from life — it’s a part of it.” When I read this I immediately realized how ridiculous what I was trying to do was. I was telling myself, “It’s ok to be miserable at work, just find something fun to do outside of it and keep it going for the next 40 years.”

Finding Passion

I knew I had to take action but I didn’t know what action to take until that same site, zenhabits.net, directed me to a course about finding your passion and finding a way to turn it into a career. I was directed to liveyourlegend.net, created by Scott Dinsmore, and a course called “Live off Your Passion”(affiliate link, I will be paid a percentage if you sign up for the course through this link).

I watched the intro video which notified me that “the sleep walking was over”, a perfect description of what it felt like I had been doing. I was sold and I immediately started getting to work. In my spare time it was all I did for the next few weeks, I even took it on the bus with me.

From the beginning I knew I wanted to help people and that I enjoyed personal development, it has always been a driving factor in my life, but I didn’t know in what way. For one of the “Passion Actions” it was suggested that you ask 5 people from different areas of your life a number of questions about you, (one of which was “what is something they have always thought you would be good at?”).

This was when it hit me. Four out of the five people suggested life coach/counselor and the fifth simply had “coach”. As soon as I read this I knew it was what I had been searching for and I knew I had to take action on it.

Taking Action

After deciding that I wanted to become a life coach I started to research the career as thoroughly as possible. I wanted to find out if there were certification programs offered, what the best way to build a business as a Life Coach was and what kinds of seminars and resources were available to improve my skills as a coach.

I recommend researching anything before you get started in it, because often times the way we think something will be and how it actually is are two totally different things. After researching a few different places I found one certification course in particular that seemed to fit my style best and I registered for the course. I dove in headfirst and spent all of my time on it until I completed it and passed my certification exam.

Other things that I did to improve myself and my skills as a life coach include attend seminars for coaching, become a certified practitioner of NLP, read as many personal development books and coaching books as I could get my hands on, attend Tony Robbin’s “Unleash the Power Within” and walk on fire, took multiple courses on how to help me build my blog as well as my coaching business, and worked for free to practice my skills.

The reason I am sharing all these things that I have done in order to get to this point, is to let you know that it does require some hard work to turn your passion into a career, but it has been totally worth it. When you find what it is you really want to do I highly recommend immersing yourself in it fully in order to become as knowledgeable as you possibly can, and to give yourself the best chance for success. I also recommend joining the community and sharing your story with me

This is what led me here, to build Eyes on the Rise and become a Life Coach. I have decided that working with young professionals and helping them find what really matters to them in their careers, relationships and in life in general is my true passion.

Everyday is now a gift where I get to do something that I love, and my hope is that I will make the world a better place as a result of it. I highly recommend checking out the links I have attached, as they have had a huge impact on my life. At the very least I recommend that you find what life is all about for you and start living it every day, you won’t regret it!

If this sounds good to you then I need you to join this community! Sign up below to become a part of the community and ensure that you don’t miss out on any of the action

5 Question Quiz: Are You a Quitter?

We give up too damn easy. In relationships, in our hobbies, in our work, on our goals, the list goes on and on. Too often we make excuses for ourselves about being tired, being sick of it, losing our motivation. When did we become such a bunch of whiners? Anything that is worth doing will knock you down, test you and extinguish your fire, but since it is worth doing, it is your responsibility to get back up, remember why you started in the first place, and reignite that fire.

The problem that a lot of us face is that we don’t understand how passion really works. We somehow think that our passion is just supposed to automatically remain, or some outside factor is supposed to keep it going for us. The truth is that we control our own passion; therefore we are responsible for keeping it going.

The Mystery of Losing Passion

Have you ever been in a long-term relationship where everything got really comfortable? You decide not to go out as much, you see friends less often, you don’t keep up with your hobbies anymore, and then maybe all of a sudden you find it hard to even leave the apartment or change out of your sweatpants? I wonder how that relationship could ever lose its magic!

How about a job that you’ve had where you became very comfortable with your boss and you learned what you had to get done in order to keep them happy. After a while you allow complacency to set in and you decide to do the bare minimum that is expected of you and never exceed it. It is a real mystery why this job lost its luster!

See a pattern here? The problem in these situations isn’t your significant other and it isn’t your job. YOU are the common denominator in this equation and it is you who controls the level of passion you contribute to these things. What if you surprised your significant other by making dinner, took a trip, or if you just told them how much you love and appreciate them? Might that add a little more passion to the relationship? How about if you took the bull by the horns at work and asked your boss permission to work on a new project that excites you? Do you think that might make your job a little less boring?

The Questions

We need to stop wasting our energy pointing the finger at all of these outside influences and start looking inside of ourselves to figure out what we can do to make things the way we want. Is it possible that you are ready to end a relationship or quit your job? Absolutely, but the only way that you can really know that is if you are giving your absolute best to the situation. Answer these questions to gain a clearer understanding how you got to this point, use your answers to help you rectify the situation and make a decision. They will help you answer the question, have I been a quitter?

1. Am I giving my absolute best in this situation?

2. What can I do to improve my effort?

3. If I put in maximum effort, how might that change the situation?

4. Will that change be for the better or worse?

5. If that change occurs, will that change my mind about wanting to give up?

Decision Time

By answering these questions it will become very clear whether it is time to move on, or time to put in more effort. If you have been giving your absolute best and you are still miserable, it may be time to move on, but if you haven’t, you may want to look in the mirror before blaming someone else. The most important thing to take away from all of this is that before we decide to blame an outside factor for our unhappiness it is crucial to first look to see if our own actions might be the cause of it. If you believe that outside factors control your happiness, they will, but if you believe that you control your own happiness, you absolutely can!