The Space Between Your Ears

Whether it’s resolutions for the New Year or an ordinary Thursday in August, we all want to improve ourselves and our station in life. The timing really isn’t the important part. It’s just that we usually choose to reflect on our failures and successes towards the end of the year, and then we resolve to become different for the next 365 days. Better, you might say.

The Colonel’s Recipe

So is there some secret sauce to hitting a new high each time we travel around the sun? I think you’ll agree in a moment that yes, there is.

The Old Testament uses the word “begat” quite a bit. It just means this person or thing came from that person or thing. Your grandparent begat your parent who begat you. Another way to think of it is “one thing wouldn’t be possible without the other thing coming first.” The smartphone wouldn’t be here without the invention of the computer. The automobile wouldn’t be here without the invention of the wheel. And so forth.

So where do our successes come from? What begat them? What’s their genesis?

Chicken or the Egg?

We all like to think we have a unique origin story; there’s nothing wrong with that. No two people really follow the exact same path to success. But they do all have something in common. It’s this:

Our thoughts beget our emotions, which beget our actions, which beget our results. And then the cycle continues indefinitely because our results then beget our thoughts.

Long story short, it ALL begins with our thoughts, whether we succeed or fail.

If your thoughts are aligned with the person you want to become, watch the dominoes fall in your favor. Again, your results come from your actions, your actions come from your emotions, and your emotions come from your thoughts.

The Final Frontier

The quality of your relationships, the quality of your business, the amount of money you want to have in your bank account, your lifestyle choices, everything in your life is directly related to what’s happening in the space between your ears.

It’s not enough just to say you have a blueprint for success. It’s not enough just to tell yourself to think positive thoughts. Life will, I guarantee it, throw a monkey wrench in there along the way. Employees will quit (yes, even the great ones), the economy will take a downturn, the competition will become fierce, your supply chain will fail at times, and nature will happen. Facts of life.

How do we get into the habit of making the difficult choices and executing our plan every single day? I’ve long said that success in life is not a knowledge problem. It’s a consistency problem, an execution problem.

What I mean by that is we can know exactly what we want and the steps to generate the income we want, but we make mistakes along the way. This is what I call the conundrum of human nature. We get in our own way by letting those mistakes steer our thoughts away from where they should be, and that begets inconsistent emotions, actions, and results. And it’s our thoughts that are the most important part of the success equation.

Humor me with this example from nature.

The Tree of Life

Acorns are the fruit (nuts are actually considered single-seeded fruit) of the oak tree. Acorns contain the seed which, with the right conditions, can grow into a new oak tree. Keep in mind that in order to survive, it has to avoid being eaten by wildlife, fungi, and insects. Oh, and it needs the right amount of sunlight and water. Only about 1 in every 10,000 acorns will actually become a new oak tree.

Can a new tree produce acorns right away? No, it takes time. On average, it takes TWENTY years before it can produce any at all. And the amount of acorns it produces is not always the same from one year to the next. A fully-grown oak tree can produce 10,000,000 acorns in its lifetime.

We can almost compare thoughts to acorns. If your plan is to thrive in business (to grow into a mature oak tree in this example), it will take patience, consistency and the right conditions. Your acorns (thoughts) will need to be focused on overcoming all the challenges your business will face if it’s going to survive and thrive.

We’ve become a people who desire instant gratification. Controlling your thoughts is something that can be learned the easy way or the hard way, but it does take time and practice.

It really is the secret sauce we’ve been looking for all along.