Author: CLFurlong

Being stubborn about your goals will give you the discipline and commitment you need! Stubborn is one thing, but being flexible is another. Be flexible with your goals. Stubborn enough to stay committed and not give in to being lazy and not working forward. However, you need to be flexible in how you get there. Sometimes, there will be obstacles, delays, and challenges that will require you to move forward in a different way. Just because there is an obstacle, doesn’t mean you cannot still progress. Maybe you will have setbacks, maybe it will just take longer and maybe different opportunities will come… regardless be flexible, but be committed!

Blockages are tricky to handle. We really cannot ignore them. If we do, our inner voice will demand our attention. We also need to realize that many of our inner challenges can’t be easily solved with an affirmation or visualization. They take a concerted effort and some time to heal and repair. What’s needed is a strategy so that we can move forward. So what can we do? I think the easiest way to handle blockages is to treat them as long-term companions in our lives. And give them their due. One way is to write in a journal every day in the morning and the evening. The amount of time doesn’t have to be great. By giving attention to the part of you that needs healing you are then free to move forward. And you will feel better about yourself and therefore do better as a result.

– Maria Hill: (Simple steps to move forward)

Avoid pushing yourself too hard and too fast. By accepting limitations, you actually stand a better chance of success because you are not fighting yourself.

Be prepared for and accept obstacles as important information. Sometimes obstacles occur because of details that we need to pay attention to. We may not notice when we are going too fast or when we need to take a step back because we have missed something important.

“If you don’t make the time to work on creating the life you want, you’re eventually going to be forced to spend a LOT of time dealing with a life you DON’T want.” – Harrison Ford

Photo Credit: Instagram @_clfurlong_ | Location:  Siem Reap, Cambodia

Do you want to be a greater you? Being a successful individual doesn’t just happen to someone. People work hard, learn the ins-and-outs of themselves, and apply different methods that work in order to become successful. When you’re starting out in search for a greater you, you want to make sure you know what makes a successful individual.

Never Take “NO” for an Answer

• When chasing your dreams and a greater you, taking no as your end game is never going to cut it. When you reach out for assistance from people, and they turn you down, do not take their response to your requests as a determinant factor to your success.

Work like You’re Going to Retire Tomorrow

• You know one thing about retirement? It makes us want to work harder to save more. Successful individuals find fun and joy in hard work. So they never get tired. And when success finally comes, they’re just well-prepared for it.

A Mentor

• If you want to be successful, then you should have a successful role model whose experience will guide your career and path. This means you need someone who is successful and is willing to share their experiences with you.

Copy the Best (Learn)

• See what the best of the best are doing and see if you can do it just as good if not better yourself. If it is working for them, it is bound to work for you.

Be Humble and Stay Hungry

• You know what kills success and greatness very fast? The big egos of their top executives. Learn to espouse humility and always stay hungry as Steve Jobs always said. He was actually fired from the company he later came back to and saved! By staying hungry, you’ll be willing to learn new things that could come in handy in the future. Not staying hungry breeds complacency and conceit in entrepreneurs. The moment you become complacent, you allow others to overtake you and leave you behind.

Dream Big

• Don’t be afraid to dream big. Successful entrepreneurs achieve because of their big dreams. The co-founders of Google once said their marketing officer once asked them who they wanted to market to and they responded by saying the whole world. Well, if dreaming big hurts, Google wouldn’t be the gigantic corporation it is today.

Love Yourself

• If you can love yourself and I mean really love yourself and respect yourself – you will make it. You need to give yourself all the love you can afford. Most people won’t care about your feelings. Everybody is busy trying to win, so stop worrying about pleasing others and start loving yourself!

“The only thing that stands between you and your dream is the will to try and the belief that it is actually possible.”– Joel Brown

Photo Credit: Instagram @_clfurlong_ | Location:  Siem Reap, Cambodia

Don’t live life-limiting who or what you can be! MAKE IT HAPPEN! If you know what you’re worth, then go out and get what you’re worth. You can’t blame anyone else for not being where you want or expected to be in life. If you are worth more money, respect or whatever it may be, then go and get it.

While on the journey to your success, here are some common traits and mentalities found across those who have made it and can be declared successful:

Knowing when and how to please others. If you try to please everyone all the time, you will become completely overwhelmed and unable to get accomplish anything. The most successful people know that saying “no” all the time is not the answer, though. Instead, they look for ways to get to “yes” that benefit all parties and help prioritize their work.

Keep your options open. While successful people are decisive and move steadfastly toward their goals, most of them avoid choices which limit future options. None of us can afford to create boundaries that are so stiff we can’t adapt when necessary.

Listen before speaking your mind. Successful people are bold, but they know railroading every conversation is a quick way to end cooperation. Show them you understand their point of view with your responses, and they will be much more likely to hear out your opinion, too.

Target small successes. Failure is a necessary part of ultimate success for most people, but bombing at regular intervals can kill your motivation and encourage you to abandon your dreams. Successful people set themselves up for victory by establishing many ambitious short-term goals on their path to whatever they see as their big prize. By consistently challenging themselves and achieving tougher and tougher objectives, they build confidence and move closer to their ideals.

Exercise caution when necessary. Fear of failure or embarrassment can paralyze even the most ambitious among us, but a healthy respect for the unknown and potential danger can save us from disaster. Successful people are not afraid of taking risks, but only after they have weighed possible pitfalls.

Have multiple projects going. Multitasking has developed a bad reputation over the last few years, and for good reason since it’s really hard to do two things well at the exact same time.  There is plenty of other times.

Stay stressed – humor me. Stress is the “silent killer” that can wreak havoc on your health, but successful people have learned how to use it to their advantage. They realize that hardly anything worthwhile ever gets done at a leisurely pace, and the pressure to perform is a powerful motivator. The most accomplished among us thrive on deadlines and outdoing their previous best efforts, over and over again. By applying stress from the inside out and latching onto these other “negative” habits, they leave 99% of us in their dust.

“You don’t need to be better than anyone else, you just need to be better than you used to be.” – Wayne Dyer

Photo Credit: Instagram @_clfurlong_ | Location:  Angkor Wat, Cambodia

Victory is given to us once we achieve it. But it is a fight. When we set goals, the hardest part is making it to the end. When it gets tough when you feel like giving up… Just remember how far you have come… If you back out now… To start again it will only be harder! But if you have to start again this time do it right!!! Work harder for it! You didn’t come all this way for anything!

For those who are working on goals which take time to cultivate and blossom you need to remember and focus on pushing forward no matter what.  It’s okay to be afraid of failing, you just can’t let it stop you from trying. While at the same time you need to be motivated by your desire to prove the naysayers and cynics wrong. Even if after all this time you do fail, or things don’t go to plan, success isn’t about failing, it’s about bouncing back after you fail.

Maybe you don’t have a problem with making your goals happen – maybe the struggle is how you feel when people suggest what you are doing is not how you should be spending your time… Well, it doesn’t really matter what other people think you should be doing with your life. All that matters is that YOU know what you’re doing with your life.

I know where I’m going and I know the truth, and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want. – Muhammad Ali

Regardless of your fear, your struggles or obstacles, or the people around you. Everyone starts out as an amateur, but it’s only those who keep trying that become true successes.

Big shots are only little shots who keep shooting. – Christopher Morley

Photo Credit: Instagram @_clfurlong_ | Location:  Angkor Wat, Cambodia

You have a choice. Continue to follow the masses into the norm. Or escape the norm and be free. What I have found is the longer you let society dictate the way you live, the way you work, the way you spend and the way you should be – the longer you will be miserable. Shake free of being bound by what seems to be the ‘norm’. You don’t need the latest and greatest car, you don’t need all the money in the world and you don’t need to be dressed to impress.

I am sick of hearing and being told that this is what and how I should be living – a life of superficial ideas and persona’s which prove nothing.

Just be yourself. Let people see the real, imperfect, flawed, quirky, weird, beautiful, magical person that your are. – Mandy Hale

If you have a dream, a vision, a goal or an aspiration to be, see or do – unless it contradicts ethics, law or beliefs  – you should chase it and follow your heart in making this happen. Your lifestyle may change, or conflict with how others (society) suggest it should be. But if everyone was a sheep – would we have half the things in this world? Would we have discovered as much as we have? 

Just remember to stay true to who you are. Be yourself; everyone else is already taken. – Oscar Wilde

Photo Credit: Instagram @_clfurlong_ | Location:  Angkor Wat, Cambodia

Today is the mark of completing 70% of the year. This is the final stretch! (Where has it gone…) The first thing you need to do is ask yourself this:

Are you happy with what you achieved so far?

If yes, then kudos to you, but this doesn’t mean you slack off. It means you need to buckle up and push even harder for the final stretch.

If you are not happy, then you still have a choice to make. You can sit around being all sad that you have failed to make it to where you wanted to be, or you can get out there and put some hard effort to work and make a dint before the end of the year.

So how can you make a dent in the final stretch?

Earlier this year I told you that if you want results, you need to apply some action and keep momentum. While at the same time if you apply daily discipline and create a new habit through willpower to prove to yourself that you even can do it – then you will be motivated more and more by the result. 

Forming habits can be hard or really, really simple. It is all about limits, quotas, and challenges. With only 109 days remaining – you have a wonderful chance to still make some noise and a big enough impact to whatever it is you wish to do. All you need to do is set yourself a daily quota to do something and this will enable you to more likely stay dedicated.

So what will you do? Grow your mind? Read more books? Develop your writing passion?

In quota terms, this is how you could do it: “Do 20 math exercises a day”, “Read a chapter a day”, “Write 500 words a day”.

Make this a priority for each day for the next 109 days (starting today).

Then you need to just evaluate what this can do for you. Remember to make sure you pick something realistic.

I say keep it smaller to enable consistency.

Now you want to take whatever it is and calculate the development of this daily discipline.

• If you do 20 math problems a day, for example, after 30 days you’re 600 problems smarter. So for 109 days, that’s 2180 problems solved. 
• If you read a chapter a day, after 2 weeks you have read the entire book (based on the average book size). So for 109 days, that’s roughly 7 to 8 books.
• If you write 500 words a day, after 2 months you end up with the equivalent of a full novel. 109 days would mean the equivalent to almost 2 novels.

Where the real magic is found is if you improve your effort by increments every day for the next 109 days instead of not or even less.  My favorite example on this is pushups. 

Start with a baseline of 1 push up. Then increment daily by 1. The next day, do 2 and so on. So by the end of 109 days year, you will do 109 push ups on your final day. But think of the compounding. If you do not increment each day by 1, by the end of the year you have done 109 push ups. BUT! If you increment by 1 each day for the next 109 days. By the end of the year, you have done 5,995 push ups. And that’s just pushups. Imagine what you could with all your other goals!

The point is, go back to your list of goals for the year and have a look at what you have and have not done. Don’t waste any more time and pick one goal that requires action and makes it your priority today. The more time you invest yields a higher return. 

Just like when I go for a run, the final 500m is where I push the hardest, I fight for a burst of energy and a bolt of speed to wipe off some of those slacked seconds. It is my chance to finish strong, to finish on top and to come out with a smile. This is what you are doing. If you have been taking it easy this year, it is time to make the final sprint and really make it count. No, you may not reach the final tip of your goal, but you will make noise and make enough effort to make you realize you have what it takes. 

With this said – this will only work if you take action and invest the little time left.

“The biggest difference between success and failure is total time invested.” – Oliver Emberton

Photo Credit: Instagram @_clfurlong_ | Location:  Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam

Living; it is more than just doing the same old. As human beings, it’s natural to constantly want control of things — in relationships, the workplace and with regard to matters of life in general. You can’t plan for life. I don’t care what anyone tells you. You can be the most diligent, prepared, disciplined person on the face of the planet, and things will still go wrong. At the end of the day, the only thing you can control 100 percent of the time is your own attitude. The only thing you can control is your reaction. And your attitude will determine how you react to all of the situations and people around you — so, by controlling that, you’ll inadvertently be putting yourself in a position of authority.

You can’t expect anything in life.

You just can’t. When you start to expect specific outcomes, you’re only setting yourself up to be let down. Instead of anticipating your destinations and taking them for granted, focus on the journey. Smile, remain positive and construct multiple plans. When one doesn’t work out, fall back on your ambition first, and then figure out your next course of action. I am not saying to not set expectations, but rather keep them lower (giving you a buffer) and do not put all your eggs in one basket… laying it down for a single expectation. Now, I understand higher risk = higher reward, but risks can be calculated, expectations become too precise and slip away from how you define a risk. Life’s a trip through uncharted waters — it doesn’t follow any certain course.

Striving for control will lead to limiting comfort zones.

While you might think control of life will leave you with a sense of security, it’s not always for the better. In many cases, a sense of control is reached by becoming a creature of habit. If you ever feel fully in control of your life, you’re probably not living it to the fullest. Shake things up. They say life begins once you leave your comfort zone, so that means life begins once you start to give up control. If you wish to maintain a sense of control., but also grow exponentially at the same time and move outside of your comfort zone. Then all you need to do is challenge yourself and take on something new. As long as it puts you outside of your comfort zone, then add this into your routine. Once your routine is once again handled, controlled and relaxed, you know you can grow again.

An attitude will take you further than control can.

You can have the perfect, most “foolproof” plan devised for the rest of your life, and it won’t guarantee you anything. Life has a habit of throwing us curveballs, and when it does, we’ll likely be forced to head back to the drawing board and figure something else out. And it’s not always with negative things, either. When you set your heart on one thing, you limit yourself to the other alternatives. Likewise, you can’t control opportunities. They come around without any rhyme or reason — the only thing you can control is how receptive you’ll be when they do. An attitude will take you a lot further than a sense of comfort, or control, will — as that comfort will only last until something unexpected occurs. See, attitudes aren’t situationally dependent. By aiming your attention to your attitude, you’ll set the tone for how you handle the unexpected.

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude. – Thomas Jefferson

If you can spend more time on reacting and responding with the right attitude when the unexpected occurs, you will spend less time worrying about what can go wrong and how to live accordingly. Furthermore, if you control your attitude, you control your reaction and ultimately you will spend more time living.

Blog inspired by lifehack.org

Photo Credit: Instagram @_clfurlong_ | Location: Angkor Wat, Cambodia

In lead up to our 70% checkpoint, I would like to remind you that the year ain’t finished yet – so keep on grinding a for a little longer.

If you haven’t already this year, once you learn to break mindsets, you will unlock new levels of motivation and new levels of growth. In this particular case, I am talking about exercise and pushing yourself to new limits! Even when it is tough, when it has been a long day, don’t make excuses. Just get out there, and just smash it!! You won’t regret it! But this counts for any activity or goal it is you’re working on. Don’t back down, don;t give up. Get out there and make it happen. Smash those goals before the end of the year is up.

Desire fuels your motivation! If you want it, don’t stop fighting for it till you get there. 1 week, 1 month, 1 year! You keep going. It will be the determination, the commitment that will see your excellence come to life and it is that which will enable you to attain the success. So today I say to you to step it up. If you slipped up yesterday, today don’t. If you didn’t work hard enough yesterday, work harder today.

Always remember it is NEVER too late to change the road you’re on. If you have a hidden passion, a drive to do what it is you love… then do it. If you do what you love, you will always love what you do. Finding your passion can be a journey in itself, but once found, see how you can apply a change in your life to work your passion! Start today don’t wait until tomorrow!!!

Passion is attractive. As passion comes from believing you’re unusually good at something, being passionate is a very sincere way of saying, “by the way, I’m awesome”.

“If you feel like there’s something out there that you’re supposed to be doing, if you have a passion for it, then stop wishing and just do it.” – Wanda Skyes

Photo Credit: Instagram @_clfurlong_ | Location: Angkor Wat, Cambodia

Are you one of the superheroes? I’ve found that when it comes to being you and following your dreams – the journey itself is usually not alone. Even if it is, there will be key people who help light fires, fight fires, path paths, move walls and share wisdom – in doing so they will essentially enable you further than you could have by yourself.

Just recently I was reminiscing about the past and my journey here so far and started to wonder who has been the one or the people to thank for all the advice, guidance, structure and most certainly more across these years – especially the recent ones.

Regardless of who is who in the zoo – these people are like your everyday heroes… why? Because they are the ones supporting you along the way. They may not have any superpowers but when it comes to keeping you emotionally stable, sane and on track for your dreams – these guys are doing the heavy lifting. These people are there to listen, to care and to see you excel.

Your friends should motivate and inspire you. Your circle should be well rounded and supportive. Keep it tight. Quality over quantity, always. – Unknown

We have people in our lives – some positive, some negative – but you know who the right people are… the ones who are supporting you. Keep these people close, as these are the ones that want to humbly see you be all that you are.

The question is: Who are you supporting and who are you helping see their dreams come true?

Photo Credit: Instagram @canva | Location: Unknown

What mindsets are you playing with? If you don’t think you can do it, if you don’t even believe in yourself, or have the benefit of the doubt to give it a shot – you may as well pack it up now and choose to follow rat race of society. I believe you can be and do all that want and dream to be. All you need to do is; know you can think you can and have enough dignity to stand up and take on the world. Even if you are John Doe.

We have all seen or heard how certain people managed to accumulate great wealth, or simply how they became renowned individuals — but what was truly on their mind? This brings up a different question – what is the true criteria for being highly successful? Is it having substantial revenue, or showing the world what you are good at? I believe that it is the latter, and that money and fame simply come with the territory.

Here are 2 quick mindsets which are super crucial for following your dreams and finding success:

Have a vision and make constant efforts to realize it…

Never allow your governing passion to rust — hone and nourish the skills you have. Learn from others and come up with something new you can share with the world. This is how you can become highly successful and admired.

“People can be really smart or have skills that are directly applicable, but if they don’t really believe in it, then they are not going to really work hard.” – Mark Zuckerberg

Never lose hope, instead work hard and remain patient…

“Highly successful” does not always imply wealth — very often it simply means being the best at something. Bruce Lee is the undisputed champion when it comes to fighting techniques, and no matter how you look at it, this is a sheer success. He showed the world the potential of the human body.

“Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.” – Bruce Lee

The mindset must never be excluded from the equation, and as far as highly successful people are concerned, these are the mindsets they share.

Photo Credit: Instagram @canva | Location: Unknown