Hey guys. Monday morning, Hey girl, guys, girls, everybody, whatever I need to say. I wanted to talk today about why we don’t do what we want to do. And I’m not talking the big picture. I am going to be X, Y, and Z in life. I’m talking like the little stuff like the … You’re going to get up and go to the gym and then a friend texts you and says, “Do you want to grab coffee?” I’m talking about the really great idea for a promotion or a product or something like that. And you have a conversation with someone and they go, “Oh, I think you should do something else.” Or, “I don’t know if that’s quite suited. Did you really think you’re ready?” That kind of thing.
So you don’t do it. I’m talking about the … Do you know what? It’s good old fashioned peer pressure, but not in the typical peer pressure sense. So when we’re the school we get the peer pressure to, “Go on, have a cigarette. Go on. You know, you want to get drunk. You know, you want to.” That kind of stuff that happens at school, which thankfully I don’t actually know happens as much anymore. I haven’t experienced it yet with Elody, I’ll just touch wood, touch wood.
But I’m talking about the subtle kind of subliminal peer pressure that we might not actually recognize as peer pressure. It’s more … A lot of the time, it’s actually just a case of people that are in our lives that kind of just want us to stick with them, and do what they do, and be at the level they’re at. And they don’t mean it in a, “I want to take you down” kind of way. It’s just comfort. It’s just comfort. And one of the great things about building your confidence muscle is that you get better at ignoring that. So you get better at being in a situation where someone says, “Oh, come on, let’s go out for a long lunch on Saturday.”
And you know in the back of your mind that you have three blog posts, a newsletter, and a newsletter that you want to go out. Or you know there’s a job that you’ve seen on Seek that you really want to apply for. And you want to spend Saturday doing your CV. And you get that invitation, and because you’ve built your confidence muscle you can ask yourself without a shadow of a doubt, “What decisions is the best decision for my future. Is this?”
And you know, I’ve talked about it before, in terms of, “Is this leading … Is this benefiting my health, my wealth, or my fitness?” Or, “Is it benefiting my family?” Or, “Is it benefiting my …” My goal is X. So you can ask yourself the question, “If I go to this lunch, is that taking me closer to X?” And it’s the same with our passions.
You know, when we know … When we have those answers, it’s really easy to make those decisions. So I want you to just to check in. It actually happened to me on the weekend, and I’m better at not saying yes. I am definitely better at it. But sometimes I find myself falling back into a habity kind of thing, going, “You know, they’ve asked me, don’t want to cause trouble, don’t want to appear rude.” You know, “So I’ll just do what they say.” And you then sit with the guilt and then like, “Oh God, I should have done this. I haven’t done this, da da da da.”
So we need to keep practicing that confidence muscle because the more we know what’s better for our good, the easier it is to make those decisions. And the crazy thing is, the more confident you are and the quicker you are making those decisions and the better you are at sticking to what you really want for your life, the more people actually respect those boundaries and those decisions that you make.
So it’s a funny thing. It’s really hard to do it, to start with. We know what we want to do. We know we want to say no to this, or yes to that. And then we fall off the wayside because of what’s going around us because of a lack of confidence. And we think those people are going to like us more or accept us more because we did what we kind of thought we had to do with them. But then we built our confidence muscle, and we get better, and better, and better at doing it and being truly aligned to what we want. Then those boundaries are clearer. We don’t get asked to make those decisions that aren’t for our highest good as often. And there’s actually a lot more respect you think about it. When you know, someone in your life is so clear and so determined and so confident, and so … They know who they are. Don’t we respect that?
I totally respect that. I admire that in people. I love that about people. I think it’s awesome when someone is that clear and they don’t get distracted. So just in the next, you know … You know what I say. In the next 24 hours, notice a few things. In the next 24 hours notice when you know you should be going this way. And something happens and you think, “Oh, I’ll just go that way.” Write down, or just even think about it. You know, I’m a believer in writing it down. But just think about, “Why is it I’m not making the decision I know I should be making?” And just maybe practice making the decision you know you should be saying it, instead of the other one. And see how that feels. See how it feels. It’s scary. It’s really, really scary, but you know it’s the right thing to do for you. And that’s what this is all about. Doing the right thing that is for you. So have a fantastic Monday and I will see you all tomorrow. Bye.