How Do We Develop A Positive Work Ethic?

How do we develop a positive work ethic, that is the topic of today’s video.

First, I’m going to help you out to understand that if you struggle with consistency, it’s not because you are lazy. Next, what to do if you are in a negative work environment. Lastly I’m going to share with you the real secret to getting what you actually want.

You are not lazy.

If you are reading this post and you struggle with being consistent in your work ethic or (fill in the blank), it’s not that you are lazy. If you were lazy, you would not be reading this post. You would be doing other stuff. I have coached hundreds of entrepreneurs around this exact topic. What I have found is when it comes to consistency, there’s two camps. One camp is the hustler, the grinder, the one that shows up every day no matter what and that’s five percent less of the population. The other 95 percent really struggle with consistency. I understand both camps.

First of all, I was one of those hustlers, grinders, workaholics. What I realized through meditation and through deep work is that was actually a coping mechanism. It was a coping mechanism for low self-esteem that I got from abuse in childhood. You know how they say that the loudest person is the the most insecure, often that is true. The super hard workers often try to compensate for not feeling that great about themselves. Their number one fear is actually spending time with themselves, that was me and I didn’t know it.

I had my first million dollar year, my first million dollar month, my first million dollar weekend and none of that made me feel any better. I was trying to fill a hole that couldn’t be filled by rewards and recognition. I had to do different kind of work. If you are consistent but you struggle with joy, that could be you, that could be your vice. Work could be your vice of trying to not spend time on what the actual issue is which is you loving yourself, embracing yourself and being okay with yourself regardless of whatever circumstances happened to you in the past.

To focus on the larger percentage of people that struggle with consistency, they just get excited, they fall off, they set a goal, they just you know kind of peter out. The reason that that happens is it happens when you’ve drawn the wrong conclusion to success based on an observation you made as a kid. This does not have to be finances, it can be weight loss. For example someone who really struggles with weight loss may be someone who’s been sexually abused. A lot of people, a lot of women and some men that were sexually abused, they gain weight later in life and they really struggle to lose it because in the back of their head they think if I become more attractive, it may happen again. Deep, deep.

If it’s success and work ethic that you struggle with being consistent, I would ask you to look at your parents and look at their work ethic and their relationship to money and what did you observe? Did you see them work really hard for it and at the end of the day they just didn’t get any kind of reward for it…they were still poor? Then maybe you drew the conclusion that well no matter how hard I work it does not matter, so why bother? It’s a very common feeling, a very common program that was created in childhood. Look at your relationship, what were your parents or guardians, what was their relationship to money, to success, to working and what might you have observed and how does that fit with your patterns in your life?

If you are someone that goes from career to career to career to career to career, that’s a pattern. What’s the reason? What might be the observation that you made? I will give you a resource at the end of this post to help with this kind of question, but let’s move on to the next one.

What to do if you are in a negative work environment?

Now that we have talked a little bit about consistency, what if you are in a negative work environment? Well this is unfortunate. It’s never a good thing when you are in a negative work environment but, you have to understand that you have freedom of choice. You have the choice of also being negative in that situation or not. Maybe you think, “oh no, no, bro. You are not in my work environment, if you were you would be negative too.”

Well I’ll give you the most extreme. I dare you to try to one-up me on this one. Victor Frankl. Victor Frankl wrote the book called Man’s Search for Meaning. He was in a Nazi concentration camp as a prisoner and in his book he describes how he is seeing people fall over from starvation…..I mean just from the food aspect, let alone gas chambers, abuse and physical attacks etc.. He said that he saw and witnessed compassion in humans that were clearly starving that would give up their tiny piece of bread for someone who was more starving. He chose, although his body was in that environment, to not let them have his mind. He constantly saw in his mind that he was going to get out of that hell, that he was going to get out of there and he did. He did get out of that camp at the end of the war and he went all around the world giving lectures. I think he did like 1,800 lectures or something like that. Sharing not here’s what happened in that concentration camp but here’s how to better control your mind if you feel like you’re in a concentration camp.

You can always choose your attitude no matter what is going on around you.

I love Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee talks about “be like water.” You want to be more calm. Just because people are barking at you, just because people are yelling at you, you don’t have to take that inward. You do not have to allow, accept and let that rattle your cage and let you be sucked into it. I would call it a pendulum. A pendulum is a sucker of energy and that gets initiated when someone’s trying to get a reaction from you. When someone’s trying to get your mental thought process rattled. You get to choose whether you play that game or not. One little trick is move from participant to observer.

Observe what’s going on in your work environment, “oh, Tim’s doing that thing again, oh Susie’s spitting in the coffee again.” I don’t know what’s in your environment. Become more of an observer than an active participant in the battleground and letting whatever happens affect you energetically.

Let’s hear from you.

Before we move to my last point, I would love to hear from you. What are your little tricks for staying positive or feeling better when things are not going your way? We all have our little tricks. What is it that you do? Do you have an affirmation? Do you say a little prayer? Do you do a little dance? Do you fist bump? What do you do? I would love to hear from you because you might help some other people out as well. I read and respond to every single comment so feel free to drop me a comment.

The secret to getting anything you want?

Now, here is the real secret to getting anything that you want. This may sound like fufu or weird or whatever but I’m just saying weird or not, it is what works. I have done this in so many areas of my life so many times. I have been able to alter a situation or manifest something that seemed very unlikely, very improbable and I want to share with you. If you are in an environment or you have a lack of results or results in your life that you do not like, you need to become vibrationally incongruent with what your senses are telling you.

Let me give you one of my favorite examples. I like this example because I think you can relate with it. If I use our company has generated tens of millions of dollars online…most people have not done that. So if I say here is how I generate a bunch of money then maybe you do not relate with that, you may think, “well easy for you to say because you have a track record.” Well here’s something that I did not have a track record with…ballroom dancing. About a year ago, actually a year and a few months ago, my wife and I’s 10-year anniversary was coming up and I wanted to do something different. I wanted to do something special so I bought ballroom dancing lessons. Now that is very unlike me, I have never been a dancer, never danced ever. Total lack of rhythm. When we started these lessons, they’re like, “Ray, do you hear the rhythm?” I’m just lost. I’m like three left feet out there, all thumbs on the dance floor just not good and I know this is true, I’m not exaggerating. I swear.

Four months in of doing two lessons a week, two lessons a week for four months. I am out there and I am still struggling. It is not pretty. This guy, he was coming in for his lesson after me and he’s lacing up his shoes and he was new too he rushes over to me and he says, “oh my god, I’m so glad I came in early. You just made me feel so much better, thanks.”

Didn’t have to say that but you know thanks. Thanks for making me feel even worse and so I went home that night and I’m like I know what my problem is. I’m not using any of my mental power. I’ve used all this mental power to build a INC 5000 company, to write best-selling books, to be keynote speaker and all these different things but I wasn’t using an ounce of this power in dance.

That would be I was vibrationally congruent.

My results were not good, terrible, no rhythm, hips don’t move. I might need surgery, ridicule, humbled, not good and I was very vibrationally congruent with them. I was talking about, “yeah, I went to dance, it really sucked when I got feedback…I’m trying my best. I was very congruent with that of a person who sucks at dance. When that changed is when I became vibrationally incongruent. I started seeing myself as a better dancer. I started seeing myself remember all the steps, I started seeing myself moving across the dance floor, having rhythm, being able to move my hips and all of that stuff.

I asked myself, how would that feel? Oh, that feels nice to not feel like an embarrassment, to not be looking around to see who’s watching. Being able to feel confident and good dancing around people. It would feel really nice.

Then I asked well how would I know it’s true? Well if it was true then my wife would say something, she would compliment me “oh my babe, you’re getting so much better.” My teacher would say something, the instructor would say something. So I started creating and seeing in my mind conversations that had yet to happen and how it would feel as if they did happen. I became vibrationally incongruent with my current results.

Now does that mean all of a sudden I’m Fred Astaire? I’m just killing it and people are hiring me to dance at their wedding? No, no. The senses was still able to notice my lack of skill and results in there but I just did not notice it as much. I just did not pay attention to it, I did not report on it, I did not journal about it. I did not tell people, I suck. I started acting as the person that was good at dance. Within six months of that shift from I really suck to hey, I’m a good dancer and me actually saying those words to me over and over…my wife and I came in first place in two different dances at a big competition in Miami.

It was becoming vibrationally incongruent, then the results changed. Most people think the exact opposite. They think well I would feel better if I was better, that is not how it works. You have to actually feel better before it gets better and that is true of anything in your life. Whatever it is that you have in your life that you are wanting to accomplish, focus on you already being that person, you already having that person. Dr. Joe Dispenza says spend more time with memories of your future, than memories of your past or noticing your present. If you create the life that you actually want and see yourself as the person you want to be, watch how miracles will show up in your life.

Additional help.

Would you like more help around work ethic, achievement, getting what you want in your life and change in your life, you may want to check out our book Time, Money, Freedom. The paperback version has a forward by my good friend Grant Cardone, Mr10x. This is 10 simple rules to radically reshape your life and redefine what’s possible. It is written by both my wife and I. We have been married for 10 years and have built a successful business together and it just might help you.