Success is 80% psychology

According to Peak performance experts, success in most areas of human endeavour is 80 per cent psychology and 20 per cent strategy. Another way to put it is that success is 80 per cent mental and 20 per cent tactical or methodical. Your mindset is more important than your methods. You need the right method quite alright, but that by itself is not enough to deliver the goods if you lack the mental capacity to pull through to the finish line. You may have an excellent blueprint but lack the capacity to implement it. It will simply gather dust. If you want to experience change in any area of your life, you have to change first on the inside before it manifests on the outside.

If you have succeeded in saving and keeping the money or losing weight and keeping it off, you will understand that making the internal shift is what makes the difference. You may succeed in saving but lack the capacity to keep saving, but fall back to old habits. You may lose weight with a fancy diet and then gain it all back, and more for good measure. The internet is full of “how to” articles. You can see steps to achieving virtually anything under the sun. You can get books on seven steps to financial freedom, five ways of becoming rich, 10 ways of losing 10 kg in 10 weeks etc, but reading it alone will not produce the result.

You have to see beyond your nose

In seminars, I keep getting the feedback that the returns in the money market is peanuts, ridiculous, does not make sense etc. That is very true if you do it the first month and end it there. Whatever market you choose to play in, you need to pay the full price of sticking with it to be able to succeed. You cannot bypass the process. The amount of weight you will lose if you cut down on your food portion and exercise for one day only is also peanuts, ridiculous and does not make sense. If you got a very bad performance appraisal last year, doing the right thing one day only will bring progress that is also ridiculous. If you want result that makes sense, then you have to do it consistently and persistently. It is in the mind. This is where you win or lose.

If your mind operates on pay as you go basis, considering only what is immediately before you rather than also looking at years down the road, it will focus on instant gratification. Many people are looking for a quick fix, something they can do today that will bring instant results without taking time to build a solid foundation. If you want an instant win, you stand a better chance with the lottery.

You cannot get new results from just one or two days of doing things differently. It took years to get you to where you are today. It may take years to get out. How long it takes actually depends on you.

The Be – Do – Have model

Most of us want to be rich, to have enough money to live our lives the way we want it. That is not a bad thing. Poverty is not a virtue or a desirable goal. Wanting to be rich is one thing. Following through the process is another. To become rich, you have to be rich first. In the now rested Ken Saro Wiwa’s production ‘Bassey and Company’ the lead character had one catch phrase that expresses this principle – to be a millionaire, think like a millionaire. You become one first mentally by upgrading your mind to think like millionaires do.

This thinking process leads to certain actions. Those actions did not just happen by accident. There is a certain mindset and level of conviction to sustains this action through thick and thin irrespective of upsets or challenges. If you do not get to this place internally, you may not be able to do the right things sustainably even when you know the method. When that sustained action is missing, you cannot get the desired result. Hence you have to be rich first (inside) before you become rich (on the outside).

This follows the Be – Do – Have model. We all want to have, so our first line of attack is to find out how to do it (method or tactics). That is why we run after seven steps to this or that. What happens when you finally discover the seven steps, do you find yourself climbing the steps? If you locate the steps, what about the strength and tenacity required to climbing them to the top? What is the use knowing the seven steps when the ability to climb them is missing?

What moves us to action on a sustainable basis? It is being. If you see yourself as a fit and healthy person, you will not load your plate with unhealthy food or over eat. You will not sit in one place for hours, buy things through the window of your car or fight for parking spaces closest to where you are going. You will park your car far away and walk down. You will tend towards an active and vibrant lifestyle instead of a sedentary one. It will not be a surprise when the result shows when you climb the bathroom scale.

If you see yourself as one who is prudent financially, getting richer by the day, you will save and invest before spending. You will prioritise cash or cash flow over things. Rather than turn your cash to things, you turn things into cash. It is a mindset.

There are people who don’t save because they don’t have enough money. There are also people who save and invest for the same reason – their income alone is not enough, so they sacrifice and save so that they can generate another source of income. Both face the same situation, one uses it as an excuse while the other uses it as a motivating factor. You don’t need a prophet to tell you which one of them will become richer.

Poverty is a mindset, not the state of your wallet, bank account or finances. It is the poverty mindset that leads to actions that produce what you see and call poverty. If the person becomes ‘born again’ and starts doing the right things with what he has now, you will be amazed years down the road. If you give money to a person with a poverty mindset, he will spend it with nothing to show and returns to square one – poor. If you take away money from a rich person, he makes it back and returns to square one – rich. Ultimately, we manifest what we are on the inside.