Are you building your business right now?  Do you have a big goal you’re trying to achieve? Today we’re talking about the “Common Enemies in Your Head” that hold us back from achieving our big goals in life and business.

You could call them mental blocks… or gremlins… ?  And I’m going to give you the training on how to get rid of these mental blocks. It’s one of my secret hacks.

Vision – Plan- Priority 

The hierarchy of decision – what is it? 

In the context of making decisions, there has to be a hierarchy of how something in your head is driving all decisions. 

Vision and plan are at the top. What is your vision? What is your plan? 

That is going to help you most if you use that as your fallback position. Without a compelling vision and plan, you’re not living life by design, you’re living life by chance. 

Imagine that you’ve got a vision and then something comes up, for example somebody says, “Hey, you want to go grab a six-pack of Bud and go to the tractor pulls?”

If you say, “Well, I ain’t got nothing else to do,” it’s because you don’t have a vision and a plan. 

I’m giving this example because I remember when I was in the military, and somebody asked me to do that one time and I said, “No, I can’t do that.” That was that. 

Also keep this in mind that you always want to be functioning off of a plan. If I’m going to be heading to Houston, I want to get turn-by-turn directions. I generally know I would be needing to go south and east, but the likelihood of me nailing it and getting there is probably nil. I want turn-by-turn instructions.

A plan is a sequence of projects to accomplish a goal. That’s the way that I look at what plans are.

Priority-based decisions. You’re making decisions based upon priority. 

Priority is my secret hack. One cannot make good decisions without the compass direction of vision, plan and priority. 

There was a gentleman named Hyrum W. Smith who wrote a book a while ago, and in it he said that when you go to write your to-do list, and something pops up in the middle of your head, you write it down. So to this day, I have one of these long pieces of graph paper in a book. It sits right next to me. When something pops into my head, I just reach over and write it in my book. 

I always write A, B or C, next to it, which is the priority. How do I make that decision? Is it an, A, B or C? It has to do with vision and plan. 

Way back in this series, I talked about writing up your vision and what you really, really, really want most of anything. Then you create your non-negotiables. For example, your family, your church, etc. That is life by design. Now all decisions are made in the context of vision-plan-priority. 

This is the way that I do it. You can do it any way you want. You can write 1, 2, 3, or something else instead of A, B, C, but it’s just my secret hack to break that indecision point.

You’re going to come up with two things jammed. Why do you have two things jammed? You can’t decide between two things. They’re too similar. They’re too close. You’re going to have to put some sort of weighted average on one of them. You’re going to have to weigh one more than the other. 

When I write A, B or C, I’m already using this concept of vision, plan, and priority. I’m using that here as I write it. I know it’s a C item, but I still have to do it at some point. It’s not going to be during golden hour, platinum hour or any of the other time blocks that I have. 

All the way through here, I’ve been trying to explain to people: try to drill down to the one thing you want, not the five things you want.

The one thing you really, really want. 

What am I trying to do there? I’m trying to get you to make a decision on the one thing. Most people can’t make the decision on the one thing. Fine. Do two. But it’s going to be more and more complicated because you have more and more decisions to make. 

The key is the number of decisions that you can make per minute, because you’re always doing it in marketing, you’re always doing it with the prospects. Which prospect is worth calling right now? Where’s that person at? 

Common Enemy: Confusion, Indecision, Overwhelm 

• Confusion 
• caused by no vision or non-compelling vision

That’s one primary thing. If a person’s confused about what they should do, that tells me right away: they need a compelling vision. That’s what they need. 

• caused by no plan 

If you have a vision, but you don’t have a plan and know where you are in that plan, you’ll be confused.

• caused by not or poor prioritizing

Now you can see where this decision tree really comes in. 

• caused by indecision 

If you’re sitting there confused about something, it’s because most likely you’re indecisive. 

• caused by overwhelm 

When you have a whole lot of things, and life is just spinning around you, and you’re sitting still with everything whirling around, it’s indecision. Decide on one, even if it’s wrong. 

That goes into another reason that people are confused: they just can’t be wrong. You can be. I’m wrong all the time. 

The thing is that I’m not afraid to be wrong. I’m going to be wrong. I know it’s all right. I’ll make it up. That’s the way. 

You can’t resolve confusion without vision, plan, prioritizing, and decision. That is the key on confusions.

The other thing is, I want you to step back a minute. In another video, I described this a lot more.) I want you to step back and ask, “What is the identity of confusion? Where is this identity?” 

Is this the end state, this thing that you want, this desired goal, is that where confusion comes from? 

Or does it come from the current state identity who’s got a rope hanging on your neck, who’s saying, “This is confusing. Let’s let’s go back to watching TV. That’s easy.” 

That’s what is going on a lot of times when you’re in confusion. 

My secret hack when I’m trying to do something and I get a jam of ideas that come in, is I say, “Whoa!” and I just go straight to a whiteboard or Jamboard.

I write in the center what I’m confused or overwhelmed about. I just start. I lay it all down so that I’m looking at it solidly. I look at it so that I can dismiss all of these things until it comes down to two things, and then I just choose one of them.

That’s my secret hack. 

Learn to Distinguish These Two Identities

I want you to always look, yes, you’re confused, but also say, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Let me find out which one of these identities I’m really dealing with: the current identity or the new identity.” 

With the first one you’re going to feel held back. No confidence. A “I don’t know” feeling. 

This second one is trying to pull you through it.

What do I do? As soon as I’m overwhelmed, I write it down on a piece of paper, or put it on a board, and then sit there and look at it and run through the decisions. Because the vision of the new identity is what you are going to feel like doing. 

With the current state identity, you think, “I wanted a break anyway.” You’re going to run from it. 

No, don’t bail out. No, don’t bail out. You just have to stay there. 

If you’re not used to talking with this concept of identities, and you think you only have one, I just want you to imagine Valentine’s Day, and you want to get a gift for a sweetheart.

If you want to get something for your boyfriend or husband, or your wife or your girlfriend, what do you have to do? You have to get into his or her identity. You have to become his or her identity, in a way, to say, “Would they like that? Would they not like that?” 

Or I watch my dog and become that identity for a minute to say, “I wouldn’t eat that either, buddy,” and go get him something else. 

We’re always doing it. A lot of times, we don’t recognize how frequently we’re shifting. We get in a car and we know we’re driving, but we don’t know we just took the identity of a driver. We’re now in the identity of driving. 

Have you ever tried to do other things while you’re driving? When the car in front of you stops all of a sudden, you see how quickly you come into that identity: “Whoa! Right now I’m a driver. Yeah. That’s what I’m doing. That’s all I’m going to do.” That’s the way it works. 

I just want you to feel that when you’re in that moment where you’re in that confusion. 

More Common Enemy Actions or Identities 

• Hanging onto old habits and routines 

That’s very common. You have a morning routine, you have an afternoon routine, you have an evening routine and they are carved in stone. 

• Yearning (urgent, longing for old days) 

“Do you remember?” I said this to my wife, like a month or two ago, “Do you remember when we used to eat popcorn and watch movies every night?”

She said, “Oh yeah, right!” 

That was before we realized the effect that causes on the human body, and got our act together. 

Hanging onto old habits and routines is one of the common enemies.

• Playing victim 

You and you alone are responsible for your circumstance or condition. I know you could blame it on somebody. I could blame mine on somebody too, but it doesn’t do any good. Until you own it. That is called taking ownership. I’m going to do a whole lot of training on that a little bit later on, not today, but in other videos. 

Playing victim is something that is absolutely in current state. You cannot have this desired thing over here and be playing victim. 

“Well, I don’t have any money.”

“Well, I don’t have any time.”

“Well, I don’t have any…”

Knock it off. You are responsible for your circumstance and condition, whatever it is. I know it’s hard. I had to suck it up, too. 

• Procrastination, caused by:
• Lack of ownership of your actions 
• Lack of accountability (I’m not talking about somebody else I’m accountable to, I’m talking about me saying that I’m going to do something and doing it.) 
• Lack of discipline 
• Fear of failing myself, another or others. (I’m not really worried about failing, but I would worry if my wife thought I was failing. Fear of failing causes procrastination. It causes delays. It causes these lags of time.
• Lack of clarity (clear vision and plan) 
• Lack of motivation
• Lack of implementing and executing a new routine. 

You’re hearing this one when people say, “I don’t really know how to get this all to work!” 

I do weight loss with older guys. I remember the first time I told them what they needed to do. They were going to go and pull all these things out of the kitchen, cupboards and refrigerator, and they were going to put it on the table, take a picture of it, then put it in a bag and throw it in a garbage can. And man, that was tough for people.

They said, “Man, that’s a lot of money I’ve got in that.”

I said, “Yeah, it makes you fat. It’s an enemy. Get rid of it.” 

They said, “Man, oh yeah…” 

You could just see that squeeze. 

It’s procrastination, lack of implementing and executing. As soon as they did it, what did they do? They carved out the space. They carved out the bad stuff, threw it away and now they’re going to put good stuff in there. 

• Hesitating due to desire or obsession to be perfect. That causes procrastination. 

Those are the ones that are most common. 

Another one’s a good friend of mine that is very much an enemy: 

• Distractions 
• Chasing shiny objects. “Well, I wonder if this would work better.” 
• Disorder of my desk, computer browser tabs, etc. (I don’t know how those things add up so fast.) 
• Weak accountability to self 
• Weak commitment to self 
• Weak ownership of your own circumstances and vision 
• Time wasters, useless actions 
• Failure to decide priorities 
• Failure to put lower priorities in buckets, out of sight 

What I mean by that one is when you go through your seven-day reveal, you pull out stuff and either delete it or get somebody else to do it, or you’re going to put it in a “someday, maybe” bucket. 

If you haven’t made those buckets so that you can just quickly slide something into them, then they don’t work. 

Let’s say something pops up on a related video of something. I might be watching my own video, and I see something else that looks interesting. I’m just going to grab it and put it into the bucket. I’m not going to watch it now. That’s what I meant by failure to put lower priorities in buckets, out of sight.

Lack of Motivation 

Now I’m going to expand on a common enemy I mentioned above: lack of motivation. 

This is caused by: weak vision (you wrote a vision, but it’s not compelling, not driving you), weak health, weak in the moment (you’re just not showing up in your A game, you slouch around, and you’re not getting that morning routine that fires you up so that you’re blitzing through your day), weak accountability to yourself, weak commitment to yourself, weak ownership, and weak capacity to change. 

“Capacity” means that the muscle to change is very weak. If you’re changing all the time, then your capacity to change is robust.

It’s the same thing with commitment. It’s the same thing with ownership. You just didn’t do a lot of things differently, therefore you don’t have confidence in breaking into barriers. You have to get in the habit of changing, even if they’re just small changes. Get into changing small, then you’ll change a little bit more and a little bit more. You’re going to build this capacity and ownership. You’re going to build that capacity, commitment, accountability, and being strong in the moment. All of that happens, but if you lack motivation, that typically is the scenario. 

Lack of Resources (Time, Money, and Knowledge)

If you have lack of resources, you’re not economizing on wasteful or useless actions and finance. 

What do I mean by that? 

You’ve got a resource of something, let’s say time. Well, you’re probably squandering it somewhere. Because if you have that desired state sitting over there, and your current state here, then all resources are to be moving toward that desired state. Economize on everything else.

When I said in another video that I sold everything in my garage, why would I do that? I wanted to gain resources. The golf clubs were worth something. The bicycles were worth something. I used that money to run ads to generate leads. 

If you have lack of resources, you’re not economizing. If it’s time, then you’re not time-blocking. 

Time blocking is a simple concept, but few people do it. You’re just going to block off a section of time to generate leads, and block off a section of time to contact people. There’s a sign on the door, and your doors are closed, etc. If you have to get a babysitter, or whatever you have to do to get that block of time clear, you have to get that in. It doesn’t take that much time. It takes a whole bunch of effort to start, but once you get in the habit of it, it’s really quick. I used to just do it on my lunch hour when I was working full time in the military.

Hoping Instead of Doing Actions

You’re hoping, and so you’re thinking luck is a way to achievement. If you ever wish for luck, or put the responsibility onto luck, it simply means that you’ve lost control. You don’t believe in your actions. You don’t believe your actions can succeed. 

Those are the common enemies, for right now. 

You Know You Must Grow to Get What You Want

We’re back to this again. I want to close out with this because this picture is something that I want to continually put in front of you because it says it all. 

Step One: To become the desired you, remove all enemies of becoming the new you – anything that is against becoming the new you. 

I’m not saying get rid of your family. I’m not saying get rid of your church. No, I’m saying that’s part of this vision. When you write up your vision, write up all the things, including them. 

This current identity is holding you back. Of course he or she has already established the old routine, and is very happy with it. “Why are you changing stuff?” 

You’re changing because you want more, and this person is tugging you back, but it’s actions that are going to get you there. You have to get loose and break away from that identity and move to the new desired identity. Be this identity. 

Step two: Be the desired you and drive in actions that advance you to your vision. 

This new identity is trying to pull your body to make the change. This guy here is trying to get you to do it. Let him. If you say, “Oh man, I feel uncomfortable,” let him or her pull you. 

This current one’s trying to hold you back. When you say, “I don’t know,” feel the choke in the neck. That’s what he or she’s trying to do. Let the desired identity pull you. 

Final Thoughts

Have you experienced any of these common enemy actions or identities? How did you handle them? Have you had other actions or identities trying to stop you? 

There are a lot of people who have opinions about network marketing. I’ve spent 34 years now in the network marketing space, made many, many millions and assisted many other people in making millions.

This is a group. It’s an industry of people. What I’m trying to do is write up everything that I know. I’m trying to write it all up so that other people can have the freedom that I’ve been able to have for 34 years. 

Let’s change the industry from an industry where the up line is by and large saying, “I will pretend to train you if you pretend to work,” and the down line is by and large saying, “I will pretend to work if you pretend to train me.” 

That’s what’s been going on. Nobody’s gotten down into the roots of this industry. I want this industry to be as beautiful to others as it has been to me. Need help with your message? Here’s my training for what to say and how to say it. If you don’t have a team or haven’t recruited anyone (or less than 10 people), this is THE course you should get – Network Marketing Training Course