You are a Badass (24 page)

People who are successful are not only willing to get uncomfortable, but they know they have to make a habit of it if they want to stay successful. They keep moving through each new challenge instead of stagnating and settling. The muscle of kick-assery is like any other muscle—you have to use it or lose it. If you have one big breakthrough
and feel like,
I got this, I am ON it
, and then sit back and wait for your long overdue stream of awesomeness to keep pouring in, you will lose your muscle mass and fall back to the marshmallow state that you were in before you started working out.

Keep moving, keep growing, keep pushing through obstacles, keep evolving. You break through at one level, arrive at the next, and take another step up. Each time you grow, you get to learn something new, which basically means you have to get uncomfortable again. Because when you arrive at a level you’ve never been at before, you’re faced with challenges you’ve never experienced before. It’s the willingness to keep pushing through new challenges, not shrink from them back into your comfort zone, that separates the successful from the unsuccessful.

New level, new devil.

All life is either moving forward and evolving or shrinking back and dying. If you want to evolve in your own life, you have to push through the obstacles instead of running from them.
Obstacles and challenges are the agents of growth
. Nobody gets to be large and in charge without facing challenges and moving through them. Birth is messy, painful, scary, uncertain, and freaky. Birth is also a glorious miracle that leads to new life. If you want the new life you say you want, you have to do the work instead of just studying and discussing and wishing and wanting.

I recently had a real wake-up call in this department that I’ll share with you in hopes that it’ll inspire you to do the work and keep the faith no matter what. At the moment I don’t live anywhere, or I guess you could say I live everywhere. I got rid of my place two years ago and have been exploring the world indefinitely ever since. I’ve always loved traveling, and since all I need to run my business is my computer, a strong Internet connection, good cell phone reception and a sandwich, I decided to put all my things into storage and go for it. I saw
this as a chance to walk my talk of living life on your own terms, to be the priestess of high vibe, to quantum leapfrog around the globe, to see in how many different languages I can learn how to say, “Would you mind watching my stuff while I go to the bathroom?”

My main focus at the moment is mastering Surrender. I want to have unshakable faith in the not-yet seen. I want to get so comfortable trusting The Universe that it becomes second nature and I can just leap into the void with toes pointed and daisy petals in my wake. Or, you know, at least do it with more grace and ease. Especially now that I’m traipsing around the world, loftily preaching about Decision this and Let it Go that.

I too would very much like to do instead of spew.

Surrender comes into play often, especially when it comes to figuring out where I’m off to next and where I’m going to stay once I get there. My modus operandi is to go with the flow and trust that The Universe will guide me to the perfect place at the perfect time, which, I’m quite pleased to report, has yet to disappoint: After following my sudden, and bizarre impulse to go to Tokyo (a city I had zero interest in checking out), I not only totally fell in love with the place, but the ideal furnished apartment came up for rent, and was handed to me on a silver platter, when I decided I wanted to live there for a while; An invitation to stay in a gorgeous guest house in the Spanish countryside with great friends came in, unsolicited and out of the blue, when I was trying, and failing, to figure out where to go next; I keep finding myself repeatedly, and fully coincidentally, crossing paths in distant corners of the world with several of my fellow, global nomads whom I met, and befriended, in Bali, and who have me drop-jawed and giddy every time I bump into them;
you’re in a tiny, remote, fishing village wearing nothing but a sarong and a frizzy hairdo in the middle of nowhere Indonesia too?

Yet even though my cosmic travel agent has more than proven that
she knows exactly what she’s doing, I was still fairly nervous about this last free-fall. Because this time it wasn’t all,
Just send me anywhere that seems cool where awesome things will happen to me, m’kay? Thanks
. I needed to land in the perfect place to write this book. I only had a month left before it was due to the publisher and I had, um, quite a bit left of it to write, so I was a tad uptight about the wheres and the whats and the hows. I was in Tokyo at the time, and my plan was to fly to L.A. to meet with a client, then road trip through the American west and wind up at some fabulous, fully-furnished luxury rental home with a great view and lots of sunshine where I could concentrate and get lots of work done. I imagined being surrounded by awe-inspiring nature, but being close enough to a city where some friends lived in order to avoid the isolation best known for driving writers to drink heavily or, in my case, to delve into failed experiments with cutting my own hair. If there were animals around to keep me company, that would be the cherry on top, but the rest was non-negotiable.

About two weeks before leaving, I went online and started searching for houses to rent. I looked in every state west of Colorado, but everything I liked was booked. I asked everyone I knew and everyone I didn’t know if they had any ideas; I sent out emails, Facebooked, Tweeted, and texted, but again, nothing. There was always the hotel option, but I really had my heart set on a house, and I was starting to panic about the fact that I’d waited until the last minute. This was a big deal—this was my book! I needed inspiration and high frequency! I wanted to look up from my desk and gaze out the window upon an awe-inspiring view of mountains or ocean or rolling fields! Meanwhile, if something didn’t come through soon, I was going to be gazing out the window of the bedroom I grew up in upon my mother sweeping the driveway in her slippers.

I began resigning myself to the fact that I’d blown it. Instead of having faith in The Universe and joyously anticipating the manifestation of
my dream home, I started shrinking and talking myself into taking what I could get.
What am I whining about? I’m lucky to have my mom’s house to go to. I love her. Plus she’ll feed me lasagna while I’m writing
. Then I realized what I was doing. What kind of hypocrite would I be if I got all fearful, small-minded, and low-vibe about where to write my book about how not to go through life fearful, small-minded, and low-vibe?

You have to keep the faith, always, even when your ass is on the line.

So, forty-eight hours before my flight left Tokyo for L.A., I calmly sat back, focused on my ideal writing palace, envisioned the wide open space it looked out upon, luxuriated in its plush couches and big open kitchen, soaked up the sun pouring in through its huge windows, felt it in my bones, believed it was real, did the whole wickety-woo thing, and got all excited and grateful that it already existed and was on its way to me. Then I sent out one more mass e-mail asking if anyone knew of a great place for me to write my book, surrendered it up to The Universe, and took myself out for a big fat sushi dinner to celebrate the awesome writing paradise that was about to land in my lap. When I returned to my hotel, there was an e-mail waiting for me from a friend who knew some people who had a place I could move into ASAP.

I’m pleased to report that I’m writing this in a big, luxurious, open, sunny, magnificent house with huge windows and spectacular views an hour outside of San Francisco where five of my best friends from college live. The house is on top of a hill overlooking seventeen acres of rolling farmland, and I can stay for as long as I want, as long as I take care of their adorable horse and two goats.

This. Shit. Works.

So, how serious are you about not settling? You can make a quantum leap in your life right now. You can change your entire reality on a dime if you want to badly enough or massively increase your income level or drop ten pounds or begin waking up excited to be who you are instead of merely putting up with your day until it’s cocktail hour. Whatever level of upgrade you want, it’s available to you, right now.

You just have to decide to make it happen, to be engaged with your life and let the Universe work for you.

Here are some ways to take what you’ve learned in this book and seal the deal:

1. GIVE YOUR BAD HABITS THE HEAVE-HO

Successful people have good habits; unsuccessful people have losery habits. Because our habits are all the things that we do automatically, without thinking, they help to define who we are: if you’re in the habit of getting up and working out every morning, you’re in shape; if you’re in the habit of never doing what you say you’re going to do, you’re unreliable; and if you’re in the habit of getting massages three times a week, you’re really psyched.

Pay attention to the areas of your life that you’re not so thrilled about, figure out which bad habits helped create them and trade those habits in for some good ones. Form the kind of habits that successful people have: good time-management habits, good decision-making habits, good thought habits, good health habits, good relationship habits, good work habits, etc. Think of what behaviors would make the biggest, positive changes in your life (maybe even the kinds of changes you can hardly imagine coming true) and set about turning them into habits.

How do you form a habit? Decide to. Make it a part of your regular, everyday activities. Make it as non-negotiable and thoughtless as
brushing your teeth or getting out of bed. Schedule it in. Work on uncovering your subconscious beliefs and rewriting your stories. And if it’s something you’ve tried and tried to change on your own, get some help. Hire a coach, a mentor, a personal trainer, tell a friend to spray paint “I am a lazy lard ass” on the side of your house if you don’t reach your goal of going to the gym five days a week. Whatever you have to do, start developing successful habits if you want to become a successful person.

2. BREATHE AMONGST THE PEOPLE

Your superhero power, i.e. your connection to Source Energy, is available to you 24/7, not only when you’re sitting cross-legged in your robe meditating. Once you get your brain used to shutting up and tuning into Source Energy, you can start doing it throughout your day.

The whole point of everything you’ve learned in this book is to use it to improve your life, not to take a break, go off and read, and then head back out to live your life again and leave everything you’ve learned back there, on the couch, where you were reading. You want to carry all the stress-relieving, life-appreciating, joy-delivering, mood-lifting, Source-connecting, butt-kicking benefits with you all day long. And the best way to do this is through your breath.

When you’re stuck in traffic, getting yelled at by your boss, feeling awkward at a party, strolling through the office, lying on the beach, trying to remember how to get to your sister’s house, take a moment to breathe deeply, clear your mind, check in with your bod, become present in the moment and connect with Source Energy.

The more of a habit you make this throughout your day, the more you will see profound, positive changes in your life both emotionally and physically, and the more gracefully you will be able to deal with
the next inconsiderate jerk who decides to yell into their cell phone while sitting next to you at a restaurant.

3. HANG HIGH

Hang out with people who are kicking ass and who will make you feel like a giant loser if you’re not kicking ass, too. I (obviously) can’t stress this enough. Who you surround yourself with greatly affects how you see your world and how high you set the bar for yourself. If you hang out with people who constantly whine about how tired, broke and worried about the economy they are, you’ll feel like a hero just for getting out of bed in the morning. Hang out with people who are living on purpose, who meet their challenges with a
step aside, suckers
attitude, who are dating super awesome people, making exactly the kind of money they want to be making (or working toward it) or taking the kinds of vacations they, and you, want to be taking, and you’ll not only see what’s possible for you, too, but you’ll have more incentive to follow suit.

4. SET HONEST GOALS

Don’t decide you’re going to run ten miles a day when you still consider walking to the pizza parlor around the corner a day’s worth of exercise. Start with running half a mile a day and add more as you get stronger. Discipline is a muscle; you have to build it at your own pace. If you bite off more than you can chew at the start, chances are excellent you’ll get discouraged and give up altogether. Set honest goals that are just outside your comfort zone and build from there.

5. READ YOUR MANIFESTO

Write down your goals and your vision of your ideal life in the present tense and be as specific as possible. Where do you live, who do you live with, what do you do for fun, who are you surrounded by, how much money do you make, how do you make it, how do you give back to the world, what are you wearing, etc. Make it so freaking awesome that you can’t read it without weeping and wailing and putting it down to compose yourself every few sentences. Read it to yourself before you go to bed and when you wake up every single solitary day
I am so not kidding over here
. Become obsessed with it. Think about how you’re changing your life and who you’re becoming and be in a state of giddy expectation about it as often as possible. The more you focus on who you’re becoming, and the more emotional you can get about it, the faster you will become it.

6. GET OUT YOUR CREDIT CARD AND PAY FOR SOME HELP ALREADY

Getting some coaching or mentoring is perhaps the fastest and best thing you can do to make a massive change in the shortest amount of time. I’m not, and I kind of am, just saying this because I’m a coach and have watched my clients do the impossible. I’m also saying it because I’ve
been
coached within an inch of my life and know how radically it’s changed my world. Think about it—professional athletes work with coaches their entire careers. They don’t decide all of a sudden,
alrighty, I just made eight million bucks hitting a ball around this year. I think I’m pretty well set to do this on my own
. They continue to get coaching so they can stay at their peak level and keep growing. What makes you think you think you can do it all by yourself (especially if you’ve spent the majority of your life basically proving you can’t)?