I quit reading self help and business books about 3 years ago. It wasn’t that I knew everything and needed to quit learning, but rather I felt they were all saying the same things in different ways. 

In 2005 or so I read Jack Canfield’s, The Success Principles.  It was very long and very eye opening in some ways  but the one thing that I kept thinking was, “I sure hope there’s a list at the end of this to tell me exactly “how” to do this. There was no list. 

Even the most scatterbrained among us (read: me) crave order. It calms us down and gives us a path and a way. We want answers. We  somehow want to fit the chaos of our lives into the neat boxes and “7 Steps to a New You,” we are bombarded with. But the world is chaos and as of yet there are no exact lists that can solve everything for you. What does Jack Canfield even know about the intricacies of your life?  

But here for the first time, for zero easy payments of $19.99, I give you the answer you need to start.  You will thank baby jeebus you didn’t pay good money for this and you’re also going to be a little disappointed, so prepare yourself. 

I can’t tell you the path out of or into what your life has dealt you. After looking outward for the way, what I’ve found is that the way is    simple and brutal, yet free and available all day everyday. 

HONESTY. Simple. Brutal.  Self honesty. We hold the way out by looking in the mirror and deciding that today “If I am honest, and I want to change “x”, I have to do it.”

I have to do it. You have to do it. And if you think about it. You already knew that. 

“BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!!”

Being honest really is the ultimate success principle, but it’s hard as hell. It makes you vulnerable, it makes you feel inadequate and it makes you come face to face with all the “things” we think define us. The other thing it does is give us a path. 

In another post I alluded to “The Next First Step”. It something I thought about when during a meeting, someone was throwing around “next steps. What are our next steps?”  People all chimed in with them, we took our marching orders and left. I looked at the list and thought “there’s four steps prior to this next step.”  Then I disregarded the list and did something else. So that’s where the FIRST NEXT STEP came from and I think it’s really important. 

So if HONESTY is the way how does this all work. Pick something you are working through. Be 100% objective and honest with how it’s affecting you and now think of the VERY FIRST NEXT STEP to move through the problem. Then the next. And the next. 

What I have found through trying this is that what usually is also attached to this is a DECISION that the thing you are being HONEST about HAS to change. This is the catalyst. 

What I’ve also found is that I knew the answer all along.  It’s when you come to know, and are finally FED up enough to take that single first next step. That you’re FED up with the current state and want to change it. 

If I’m being honest, you knew it all along 

#hugsandhi5s

#9minutes