So you finally decided to make a change in your life, and for the better. You read something, saw a video, or overheard a conversation that was not only interesting but inspired you to make some beneficial change in your life.

You made the decision, you imagined a plan. You had a start date and understood how long it was going to take before you saw your results.

But after a while, your resolution started to lose steam. You started to cheat more and now your desire for a huge change in your life has dwindled back to being just a dream.

Life is about improvement, and it doesn’t only come from a new years resolution. You and I resolve to make copious changes in our lives continually. This is because human beings are driven by happiness, and tremendous happiness occurs when we are making progress.

We decide to exercise, read more, finish a course that will allow us to make more money, and for some of us, the goals we have are much loftier. You might have a desire to become suffocatingly wealthy, and since this DOES happen to people, it’s a dream that is possible. All dreams are, IN FACT, probable, if the right system is followed.

If we do not have a system, we are leaving our success up to chance, which is the same as having an idea for a road trip with no map, or Indiana Jones with no historical knowledge. It’s a FORMULA THAT DOES NOT WORK!

But even when things are properly planned, we need to account for setbacks. This means that when you decide to make any drastic change to better yourself, you need to also count for what is against you.

Many of us have an amazing offensive strategy, but how many of us also take into account that our firewall needs to be flawless? WHERE IS OUR DEFENSIVE STRATEGY?

Any achievement worth the name comes with setbacks. It’s a part of the territory. This is why experimentation is so necessary for success. You will almost never get it right the first time. In fact, nobody does, and that’s not that much of a generalization.

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Change or die: its a fundamental law of existence.

So here are the 3 techniques of Successful People that I use to rebound strongly after I relapse into my default behavior!

See The Setback As An Experiment

Stop sulking and forgive yourself, because relapses are 100 percent normal. Relapse, here, is synonymous with degradation, which is another fundamental law of the universe. Entropy means that all things decline into disorder if they are not maintained. 

Think of your desired outcome as a garden: this garden needs to be watered (add what works) and it needs to be weeded (remove what doesn’t work).

In short, if you are not constantly adding fuel to your goals and to yourself the fire will die out and you are not going to win.

“Have you ever heard of “drinking the Kool-aid”? You need to drink the kool-aid” – Grant Cardone

Here, Mr. Cardone, tells us of the importance of a suitable environment, an ingredient necessary for success. If you desire dramatic change, eventually you will outgrow your current circumstances and need to move on.

Before that happens, you need to constantly immerse yourself that atmosphere, through books, videos or however you connect with those who are doing it. Maintain your confidence, your knowledge, and do not allow the lack of these to become powerful enough to compromise your discipline.

Drinking the kool-aid means listen to those who embody the ideas, behaviors and results you desire. 

Refine Your Approach 

EXPERIMENT EXPERIMENT EXPERIMENT. With Everything!

If you are trying to wake up earlier and it’s not working, don’t be a dufus and just decide that it doesn’t work.

“Wake up call” It does work because people do it. It’s not working for YOU, because YOU require a certain method, a certain combination of variables and ingredients to make that accomplishment work for YOU. THATS ALL IT MEANS.

Simply find that combination that works. Do more research, switch things around.

As for the sleep example:

Did you know that wireless signals negatively affect your sleep, OR that some people position their beds in a certain direction because there is evidence that the magnetic condition of the earth can affect our sleep also?

No? What if that was all you needed to make your system work? Go ahead and kick yourself for giving up too fast and never make that mistake again.

Trying to form more habits of successful people?

• Do you know all there is to know about habits and how we form those tendencies?
• Whats the process?
• Where do habits exist?
• Where do they go when we form new habits?
• How long does it generally take?

Understand that you are not the first person to try something and not be professional the first time around.

Forgive yourself and gather more knowledge. Use that knowledge to understand yourself and your desires better while creating a protective firewall of methods for avoiding relapse. Keep going and never stop experimenting until it works.

Harness Your Willpower

This is a perfect example of how knowledge is power. Do any of us even know what willpower is? Point to it. Better yet, go get me some of yours and show it to me.

To reiterate my broken record, a life of constant learning is a life of serious achievement and success. FACT.

Willpower is a resource second only to time.

This precious thing gives us our drive and motivation. It is what we use to conquer our lives. Willpower is not only gas in the tank but a special kind of fuel we use to not only get things done but to accomplish those things with pizzaz and finesse. There is doing, and then there is REALLY DOING.

You will not achieve a flow state without willpower, you will be going through the motions.

Without serious concentration, you will not have the basis for creativity.

Without getting into your creative state (which we all have) you will not produce anything that is amazing enough for you to stand out.

BUT, most importantly, without willpower, we cannot hope to fight the inertia that keeps us in our default behavior.

Think of habits like rubber bands. In order to break a rubberband, you must stretch it so far that it snaps. When making changes in our lives, our habit bands put pressure on us to “snap” back into our default behaviors. Willpower will allow you to stretch yourself until you snap into the change that you desire.

When this happens, your new rubberband will be that change. It gets easier.

To interact with this resource effectively, you need to make two things a priority:

1. Allocate time for your important stuff when your willpower is at its highest
2. Maintain your willpower throughout the day, understanding that you are depleting it

We use our willpower with every cognitive process we execute.

• Reading, Writing, Making Decisions
• Exercise
• Interacting with people
• Presentations
• Exertion of any kind

This is why we get aggravated and “short” with others when we haven’t eaten; our brain needs fuel.

Understand that you will have the most willpower towards the beginning of the day before you’ve done a lot. Then do the most important things you need to accomplish during that time. You may have to switch your life around a bit.

If you really want to get crazy, like me, you will keep a serious record of what tasks make you feel depleted more so than others and do whatever is practical to maintain your eating throughout the day relative to these recordings.

I see my willpower like energy or fuel that I use to accomplish things. Humans have natural tendencies:

• To get angry when things do not accommodate us the way we like
• To not understand others’ behavior and judge it automatically to suit ourselves
• To be selfish and cheat others in large or small ways
• Self-preservation
• To Make excuses
• To be fearful of uncertain outcomes
• To NOT go through with plans and changes we decide to make 

In order to surmount these obstacles, we use our willpower.

In order to rebound after relapse and avoid them completely, you need to understand that your system might need refinement (make a new strategy), that you need to surround yourself with positive reinforcement and eliminate negative influences (set up your firewall), and make sure you have enough willpower gasoline to snap the rubberbands of your default behavior!

Take care of yourself.

SUMMARY:

1. Forgive yourself. Relapse is not the end of the world or your success. Rebound and continue!
2. In order to prevent another upset, surround yourself with like-minded and affectionate people. They will help you maintain your confidence and drive
3. Acquire more knowledge about your chosen goal/accomplishment. This will prepare you for the next step
4. Experiment! Figure out what works for you. There is no one way to do one thing. You might need more or less of something. You may need to add something all together that’s not “generally recommended”. Rarely do we start out perfect and everything is going to require some modification. Try new ways of reaching the same goal
5. Understand willpower and how crucial it is to your success. Brain gas is depleted the more it works for you. So do your important stuff when you’re full of gas and refuel throughout the day to combat diminishing returns.