Coach LaSota's Formula for Success!!!

There's something strange in the air this morning, feels like it has to do with the way the rest of the day is going to fall, and I don't mean the heat pouring off the Yankee season going down in flames.

With that in mind I need to refocus my energy, which I've needed to do for some time anyway, and what better way to to that than to give you....

Coach LaSota's Formula for Success!!!

As with everything else in life, this is a work in progress, and there's much more to it, but this is a solid start...
So here we go....

Have a clear idea of what's important to you.
The biggest problem that most people have is that they don't really know what it is that they value in life. Then the things that they do, which seem like they're helping, actually pull you away from what it is that your heart really wants. For instance, if the most important thing to you is being a good father, but then you go and gamble away all of the rent money, you're not living in congruence with your values. But how can you live in line with what's important to you if you don't know what that is? Most people don't, then wonder why they're priorities are all screwed.

If you did nothing else, make a list of the 5 things that are most important to you in life and in what order. For me its:

1. Respect
2. Acting Right
3. Stability
4. Family
5. Love

Be Passionate about what you're doing.
Lets face it, anything that's going to work in your life is going to take a lot of doing, long hours, and getting passed road blocks. Its going to take facing tough challenges and putting your balls on the line, usually against some pretty scary odds. If you aren't passionate about whatever it is that you're trying to find find success with there's no way in hell you're going to put in those long hours or push passed those obstacles.

Believe its something worth doing and that you can do it
I've already spoken in great length about the power that even a small amount of belief can have and what can be accomplished because of it in my post "Facebook - The High School Lunch Room, and the power of BELIEF!!!". What is confidence but believing you can do something plus the faith that it will turn out the way you want it to? On the flip side to that, what is hopelessess but losing every sense of that very same thing? And there's nothing more crushing than hopelessness. You can know what you want and be passionate about doing it, but if you don't believe that you CAN do it you'll be stopped in your tracks quicker than a horse with no legs. And a horse with no legs will never be able to run now will it?

In fact, beliefs, whether right or wrong, are the table legs that hold our entire lives above the ground. You have to have this power working for you rather than against you.

Build a concrete plan to get the goal accomplished
I always like to use the analogy of the road trip to the Alamo. Remember the Alamo! Seems like a place everyone should visit, right? How can you remember something if you've never seen it? Not the point of the saying, I know, but whatever. Its a good road trip.

But there are many ways to go to get to the Alamo through this great big country we have here. You can map out a bunch of different things to hit along the way, make it a great trip, and be sure to end up at the Alamo. But what do you suppose would be the chances of getting to the Alamo if you just walked out your door and started wondering around out there? Not very good are they? Sure, you can go in a ton of directions, see and do a lot of things, but your chances of getting lost along the way are enormous.

Yet most of us live our lives like this. We go out there without a map, stumble around for a while and expect we're going to smack right into the Alamo, and how? By sheer luck? Then we get upset or confused when we end up in Cleveland with no money to get back home. At that point you're stuck there.

Do you want to be stuck in a place in life where you never intended to be without knowing how you got there or how to get out? Most of us are. Having a plan prevents this from happening. Or can get you back on the road when you make a wrong turn.

Have the energy to ACT, the mental energy to think clearly, and the positive energy to attract positive results
This is probably the single most important thing on this list, yet amazingly, its the one that's most neglected, and the very first thing that's sacrificed in the name of everything else in life. Let's face it, every single other item here takes a certain amount of energy to do. And if you feel like crap, you're not going to do ANY of it. Hell, even if you could do it anyway, you're not going to feel like it, so it's not going to get done. Or if it does, it'll be a half assed job.

This requires getting enough sleep. Eating right, exercise, and maybe most important, relaxing and spending time with friends and doing things that are fun. What good is any amount of success if you're too busy to feel good. And if you feel good, that's what its all about baby, you're already a success. Feeling good is the name of the game. I've got a good personal trainer if you need help with this here.

Always communicate perfectly what you want and what you're willing and able to do to get it with everyone, ESPECIALLY yourself
Its important that people know where you're coming from and what you want. How many of life's conflicts are over something simple, but come because we just aren't clear on how the other person see's things. The messed up thing about this is that the person we offend the most here is ourselves. You might not realize it, but you're talking to yourself literally every moment of every day, even while you sleep.

When you do this you're actually programming your subconscious mind, and your subconscious is a powerful Jedi, it's the engine that makes everything go. Yet ever single time you tell yourself you can't do something, it rattles around back there until you begin to believe it. Every time you tell yourself you want something that pulls you away from your values, it creates a jumbled mess in your mind that clouds your vision of what's important. As the saying goes, you can lie to me all you want but you can't lie to yourself. Its a sure way to an unhappy life. Except that most of us are pulling the wool over our own eyes without even realizing it.

Just as with the Alamo, if you're not clear on exactly what you want, how is anyone (including yourself) ever going to be able to give it to you?

Build strong connections and relationships with others to help carry you through. Especially with people that make life enjoyable. You're only as good as your support system.

Anthony Robbins always says the quality of your communication is the quality of your life. And according to Dale Carnegie, 85% of success comes from how you communicate with others. It truly is who you know, not what you know, and that goes for the people in every aspect of your life. Sometimes it's the person that gets your foot in the door, gets you that business meeting or job interview. Sometimes its the people that pick you up when you're down or believe in you so much it makes you believe in yourself. At others it people that spread the word for your cause.

I go into this in full detail in the post "The KEY TO SUCCESS IS RIGHT IN HERE.... if you read it... "

Even if you're not ready to take all these steps at once, be sure to take care of that very first one. If you know what's most important to you in life, and have your own 10 commandment, your Knights Code to live by, and you always stick to those guns, then you're ahead of the game already.

Later People!

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Coach LaSota

A deeply personal note from me to you... because you're incredible...

A lot of people had gotten to me yesterday about how much they could relate with what I was talking about. I had known that what I said was good and right because it came from that place where I was being as honest as a person can possibly be.

For a long time I had worried about what others thought about my work and what I was doing in pretty much all of my work and all of what I was doing. The end result became a sort of half truth that only proved to suppress me in the same way that all of my dead end jobs I never wanted to be at in the first place did. It was evident in my writing; even when it was good something was missing, and it failed to make that same sort of connection as yesterday's piece.

I have spent a long time now studying people, and there are two truths that have been since the first human breath was taken, and will always be true until the very last. Both involve our longing. The first is our longing to freely express our soul, as we do as children, to pour all of the joys of our heart into the world around us through our work, our play.

You show me a person who's forced to do things that they don't want to do too often and I'll show you a miserable bastard. Show me a person that doesn't have opportunities, for whatever the reasons, fear, oppression, to show off who it is that they really are through the things that they do and I'll show you desperation.

The other thing that we all long for is that sense of connection with our fellow man. We need to know that people get us, understand how we feel; we need to understand them. We need to know that we matter. We all, every one of us, need to feel loved, that we're not alone in the world, that we make a difference in people's lives, that we make those lives better.

You show me someone who feels alone in the world and I'll show you a person on the edge. You show me a person who feels like they don't matter and I'll show you a person who's lost everything, who's lost hope.

I've been driven to do most of everything that I've done so far in life by all of the worst in people. I was ruthlessly abused by my peers for all of the things that I didn't have, growing up as poor as can be. In many ways that still happens every day. No matter what I've ever done, it was never good enough for any of the people I surrounded myself with, I was never good enough, and that tainted the lens through which I see the world and left me jaded. In many ways I'm still not good enough. I became terrified to express who I am; I developed major depressive disorder, which I still deal with daily.

Many people have told me, and will tell me, that if I want to make a career of being a Life Coach then I can't show that side of myself. I can't be weak. I always have to put my best foot forward. I think that's a total crock of shit.

If you read my blog daily I take you along with me on my ups and downs. Some days I'm happy; some days I'm sad. Some days I'm strong, full of fire, and some I'm crushed by the days events. That's because I'm human, a man, real. It's precisely because of my pain that I can empathize with others' pain. It's because I've felt what they feel that I can see hurt in their eyes and my soul cries out to help them never to feel that again. It's because I don't want to hurt that I don't want you to hurt. It's because I, for so long, have been unable to express myself that I want you to be able to do so, to pour everything into realizing your dreams.

And that's precisely why I know how good I can be at this.

We all see the world in a certain way based on where we've been, what we've seen, who we're with and what has happened to us from our first thought to this moment right now. It's something I bring up often, and for good reason. Who we are and what we do rolls right off of that, is a direct result of it.

Our only real success in life comes from how well and how often we're able to fulfill those two longings, to find that self expression, in making that real human connection. That's where true happiness lies. And you can never find happiness without it. I've never been very good at either, and it's impossible not to see the marked difference in me when I am able to pull it off. But in my struggle to do so I've come to a great understanding of myself. 

I've never been the guy people seek out for a good time, never the one they think about when things are good. But, like a priest, they come to me when in need and disappear once fulfilled. The things that I do for that great release, writing, my pictures, Personal Performance Consulting (I like that one), are not and can not be the sort of thing I throw out in your face and convince you to want, or need, or get into. As such, I can not myself be something that I can convince people to want, or need, or be into. Rather, they have to be there when you need them, to connect, to see beauty, to make you feel better about who you are. I have to be there for you when you need.

This blog started as one thing, and became something very different. It's become my way of showing you all how I see the world. It's become my way of showing you who I am. And when you enjoy it, when you can relate, when you agree with or know what it is that I'm saying, when you feel the same, then in those brief moments you are connecting with my heart; you're one with my soul. In those moments you are me, and I am you. In those moments... I'm not alone. In those moments I'm free, and I matter.

For all of those reasons I thank you with every fiber of my being.
And I love you.

Sincerely,
John LaSota