When To Stay The Course, When To Change Directions

Make the commitment today. Create a real vision, with a real plan -- then put it on your calendar. Find an accountability partner, someone who also wants to make important changes in their life, and commit to supporting each other.
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When to Stay the Course, When to Change Directions

It can be very challenging to know when to stay the course and when to switch lanes. As I've taught, one of the most important things to do as a creator and entrepreneur is to pick a lane and to stay with it until you reach a specific result -- no matter how challenging it is.

This level of commitment and focus brings up all the unconscious limitations that need to be healed, released, or integrated -- and leads to building real soul stamina, resilience, and character. When we follow every shiny object and switch back and forth when things get difficult, boring, or unsure, we thwart our evolutionary progress.

It's like circling the runway -- we never get liftoff speed or escape velocity. In other words, we have no momentum. And without momentum, it takes all of your existing energy just to keep things moving. There's no leverage, no capacity for deep creativity and innovation.

I struggled and suffered from this syndrome for many years until I understood the power of picking a lane and sticking with it with total commitment, no matter what, for a certain period of time. The result was that my work took a quantum leap -- going from barely nothing to a global business in just over a year.

In order to succeed, one must develop the capacity for sustained focus. This is a key distinction that separates achievers from non-achievers. Non-achievers stop when things get hard, when they get bored, or when the results aren't forthcoming. Achievers stay the course until they reach the finish line, no matter how hard it is.

This isn't easy. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "God will not do His works through cowards." Making real chance, making a real difference, and fulfilling your potential requires courage, strength, and a willingness to buck the trends of human thinking. That's why so few ever do it!

You have to be willing to challenge and ultimately transmute limited beliefs and conditioning. You have to be willing to do what must be done, even when you don't feel like it, even when people and conditions seem against you. But the result is a life worth living -- a life where you are living on the emerging edge of possibility.

As the saying goes, "If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much space!"

Now, a common question around staying the course is, "How do I know if I'm meant to keep going or change directions?" This is often accompanied by sayings like, "Things are so hard, it must be a sign from the universe that I'm not meant to do this."

Let me make this very clear: things being hard is NOT a sign from the universe that you're meant to stop. If that was the case, just about every person who has ever made a significant difference in their life or the world would have quit!

The only sign from the universe that you might be meant to change directions is that you no longer desire the thing you were striving for. But even this can be tricky. Often, after much effort, the dust and grit of the journey can cover up your burning desire, to such an extent that you can barely feel it anymore, if at all.

To check this, just ask the question, "If I was guaranteed success, guaranteed to be brilliant at this, and to be well received, and I could do it in a way that truly fulfills me, would I still want this?" This helps to override the ego's threshold and the weariness that the journey has built up. If this sparks your desire again, stay the course. This is a sign of what's trying to emerge...

You might discover along the way that new insights, new inspiration, new vision, new capacity and new opportunity starts to show up in your life. Before you know it, you're getting hired somewhere or you're doing something unexpected. That's not an accident, that's emergence. You just couldn't have pictured it or imagined it from where you were before. This is a result of staying the course.

The key is to remain mindful, because if you're a creative entrepreneurial type, you can have all kinds of new ideas and possibilities arise that tempt you to change course. You must stay vigilante. Ask yourself if you're just tired, scared, bored, frustrated, and wanting relief...or if things have really changed and it's time to make a different move.

Most likely it's the former. The fact is, most people are just not willing to develop the inner fortitude it takes to stay on track long enough to get real, sustainable results. The main reason is that it requires real change, not just cosmetic makeovers. You have to actually become a different, more expanded, better version of yourself -- if you want to keep creating better results.

To the ego, real change is equivalent to danger or death. So it will bring out all the heavy artillery to try and make you back away from the border of change. It's had a long time to master this process -- and it really thinks it's protecting you. But if you want to make real progress and create real growth and success, you need to challenge this part of yourself and see through its coping mechanism.

Bottom line, you need to make a choice and pick a lane -- then stick with it for a specific period of time until you get a specific outcome. And you need to do this no matter how hard it gets. If you're willing, you will not only make real progress -- something most people never do -- but you will become an evolved version of your previous self!

Make the commitment today. Create a real vision, with a real plan -- then put it on your calendar. Find an accountability partner, someone who also wants to make important changes in their life, and commit to supporting each other. This could make all the difference.

Listen to an in-depth podcast on this subject, where we break it down and talk about how to put it into real-life practice TODAY. This will be a real game-changer!

And remember, self-help is shelf help - you have everything you need already!

Stay inspired!

Derek

Other powerful free trainings in the podcast library:

Why ALL Your Beliefs Limit You (And What You Should Do Instead)
Why Going With the Flow is Wrong
Why You Can't Get What You Don't Have

To get these trainings now or see more episodes available, CLICK HERE!

PS - Like this episode? Please share it! Want more advanced training? Join my Emergence Academy.

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