Monday Motivation | Creating an environment that guarantees success

So you want to change something about your life and create new results?  Where's the first place to start?  Write down your goals? Sure.  Visualize your desired outcome? Absolutely!  Work on your beliefs?  You bet!  All of those are wonderful steps that will point you in the right direction.  But, unless you have this necessary component, you might experience frustration and disappointment.

Once you know what you want, the very next step is to set up the infrastructure needed to guarantee your success.  And what is that infrastructure? It's your environment.   Lemme tell you a story.  Years ago, I heard the story of how Nobel Prize winner Alexis Carrel kept the cells of a chicken alive in a test tube for 34 years.  Chickens in general have a lifespan of only 3-5 years.  So how was Alexis able to create such an impossible outcome?  Simple, he created the ideal environment.  He learned that the cells would continue to live if they were immersed in mineral rich water that was changed every 48 hours.  When the water wasn't changed, 34 years later, the cells died.

Your environment dictates your outcomes.  And many of us tend to forget about this part of our reality creation.  Surrounding yourself in the right environment is an absolute must!  Let me give you a few examples.

Once upon a time I joined Planet Fitness.  The gym was close to home and very inexpensive.  Several times a week I made the short drive to get a work out in.  Then I realized something.  Often times, I was the the seemingly most fit person at the gym.  This may not have been the case, but it was my perception.  As the weeks went by, I noticed that I didn't push myself as hard as I should have.  Then my husband recommended I joined another gym further away and cost nearly 3X as much.  When I visited, not only were the amenities great, but it seemed like everyone was on their game when it came to their fitness levels.  That's when I realized that I wasn't as fit as I once thought.  I joined immediately.  Within a couple of months of going regularly, and pushing myself harder than before, I had the body I always wanted.  Just a shift in the environment made all the difference.

Sometimes I'm really unproductive when I work from home, but at the coffee shop I suddenly have the ability to focus and knock tasks off my list.  If I clean my home in the morning before starting work, I have a much more successful day.  Authors will sometimes retreat to secluded places to create their novels.  If the environment remains the same, so do the results.

Yesterday, I watched The Biggest Loser for the first time.  That show is the perfect example of how a different environment can create radical results.  Transformations were able to occur simply because they created the ideal environment for weight loss.  Maybe you can't confine yourself to a ranch for months at a time, but here are some tips to help you create the right environment for success.

• Find places where others are doing what you are doing (or want to do) and go there!   When I go to a coffee shop, I'm surrounding myself with others who are focused on their work. It makes me want to do the same.  When I wanted to experience financial freedom, and freedom over my time, I would visit the wealthy part of town on my lunch breaks for motivation.  

• Connect with people that align with the outcome you want to create.  When I worked for a company, I didn't know anyone who worked for themselves.  Worse yet, all of my coworkers were perfectly content with their jobs.  So I invested lots and lots of time online finding people online who achieved what I wanted.  I din't know them personally but I knew their stories intimately enough to feel as if it were my own.  And when I got on my own,  my first priority was to get around people who lived in the manner that I wanted to live. 

• Do whatever it takes to transform your current physical environment.  If you want to release weight, you've got to adjust your environment to align with that.  Whatever it is that you want to achieve, your first move should be to alter your physical environment in some way, shape or form.  

Think of your environment as the air that your dreams need to survive.  Kinda like how the flame of a candle will not sustain with out oxygen.  The new results you want to create can not occur within the current environment.  Something has to shift.  You need a new, mineral rich environment that supports your ideal outcome.  Our job is to identify the elements that are currently missing and inject them into our day.  Your survival depends on it.