The post SUCCESS MOTIVATION: MASTER THE INNER GAME OF SUCCESS appeared first on Project Life Mastery.

Inside this blog, I share with you the three factors that encompass the inner game of success.

The quality of your mind determines the quality of your life.

If you draw inaccurate conclusions about who you are and what you’re capable of doing, you will only limit your potential.

If you're tired of falling short of your goals and are ready to succeed faster, read on…

Watch the video below:

(Click here to watch on YouTube)

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Let's talk about the psychology of success.

When you ask successful people what it takes to be successful they always talk about mindset. At the end of the day, mindset is everything. Your beliefs and values determine every single decision that you make in life.

If you think that you deserve success, then you will do whatever is necessary to become successful. Conversely, if you think that you're a failure, then you will create opportunities that set you up to fail.

What you focus on, expands. Where people get stuck is that they allow their limiting beliefs to determine who they are. In effect, they sabotage their success without even realizing it. If you depend on old patterns of thinking that disempower you, you will never be able to change your life.

You will be a victim of your mental programming. The first step in creating the life you desire is recognizing the power of your beliefs. The beliefs that shape your decisions, actions, and destiny. Once you have this awareness, you give yourself the power to reprogram disempowering beliefs into empowering ones.

Let me give you an example that reflects the power of beliefs.

Time and time again I see a lot of people pursuing success, with the intent to find the strategy that they can take action on. Unfortunately, many of them fail to take action because they are at the mercy of their limiting beliefs. Success is not an action that you take.

Success is an inner game.

Your psychology determines 80% of your success. Only 20% is a strategy. It doesn't matter what you want to accomplish in life. If the foundation is ridden with self-doubt and uncertainty, you're setting yourself up for failure.

You can have an unshakeable desire to be successful, but if you don't believe that success is possible for you, you won't take action. Even worse, you will find a million and one ways to self-sabotage your success.

Many of the success principles that I've applied in my life I've learned from my mentor, Tony Robbins. He has an incredible 6-day event called Date with Destiny which I've attended three times now.

Inside this blog, I am going to share with you some of the principles that he teaches at his event. If you have the desire to go deeper with this information, I highly recommend that you put it on your bucket list to attend his next event! I'm also going to share with you snippets of knowledge that I learned from the following books:

• Awaken The Giant Within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial Destiny!
• The Values Factor: The Secret to Creating an Inspired and Fulfilling Life
• Values Clarification

NOTE: These are Amazon affiliate links and you'll be taken to Amazon's website when you click on them.

How To Master Your Inner Game

The following three factors make for success in whatever path you decide to embark on.

1. Values

Your values are what you believe is important to you and your life. Each of us values different things. Some examples of core values include security, family, growth, adventure, and community. What core values do you live by?

What you value will determine the kinds of decisions that you make. Knowing what you value means having an understanding of who you are and what you want. Not surprisingly, people with different values will see the world from a different lens.

To be successful in life you have to be someone who values success. There are two types of values – towards values and away from values. Towards values are the emotional states that you're trying to move towards.

Conversely, away from values are emotional states that you are trying to avoid, like rejection or loneliness. Each of us has a hierarchy of what is more important to us to avoid. Below is an example of someone's hierarchy of towards values and away from values.

Towards values:

• Love
• Security
• Fun and adventure
• Comfort
• Success
• Freedom
• Happiness
• Health
• Honesty and integrity

What are the benefits of this person having values like these in this specific order? Well, someone who values love above all else will most likely have close connections with people. Also, this person will give love unconditionally and may feel less lonely because they will make friendships and romantic relationships a top priority.

Conversely, what are some of the conflicts that could arise if someone values love more than anything else?

When it comes to giving love, there is always a risk. You can get hurt by people. Also, this person may be someone who people pleases. They may sacrifice their security and health to make sure that others' feel loved by them.

If this person has the desire to create success but views security and comfort as higher up on their list of values, they will be less likely to take risks. If you want to grow and become more, you have to be willing to risk your security.

Early on in my entrepreneurial journey, I wanted success so badly that I was willing to sacrifice social time if it meant moving the needle forward in my business.

There was a time when I wasn't achieving the results I wanted, so I kept making success more and more important. It came with a huge cost to my social life, romantic relationships, and overall level of happiness.

However, I knew that it was necessary for that stage of my life.

I was willing to endure pain in the short-term because I had a clear vision for my life. Reflecting upon the above example, you can see how decisions are made subconsciously, based on the hierarchy of someone's values.

Away From Values:

• Rejection
• Unworthiness
• Failure
• Stress and anxiety
• Depression
• Humiliation
• Anger
• Loneliness
• Shame and guilt

This person wants to be in love, above all else, but they are trying to avoid rejection. They are probably not going to be all-in when it comes to a romantic relationship. Their fear will overpower their desire for intimacy.

On the other hand, this person may stay in a toxic relationship for too long because they are afraid to be rejected by their partner. Also, their fear of failure and unworthiness will greatly reduce the likelihood that they achieve success in life. There is no success without failure.

This person may desire success and take action towards it when the circumstances are right (security and comfort), but they won't succeed on a big scale. Eventually, they will stop trying because the process will be too painful for them.

2. Beliefs 

When it comes to your belief systems, there are two different types – global beliefs and rules. A global belief is a generalized belief. For example, “I am successful” “Americans are…” Life is”…

We have both empowering and disempowering beliefs. Empowering ones give you energy. They lead you to a better quality of life. Conversely, disempowering beliefs suck the energy from you and lead you to create even more disempowering beliefs.

For example, if you believe that life is constantly working against you, you will attract more bad experiences into your existence. Your global beliefs will determine your behavior and your success in life.

The second type of belief is rules. These are beliefs that you have about what has to happen for you to feel a certain way. Your values determine your rules.

One person may believe that they need to make millions of dollars every year and be respected by thousands of people to feel successful. The chances that this person will feel successful is not likely unless they meet each of their rules.

On the other hand, another person may say that all they need to feel successful is to reflect upon their resilience and the adversities in life that they've been able to overcome.

It will be a lot easier for this person to believe in their value versus someone who has unrealistic expectations of themselves. By making it easier for yourself to feel successful, you will naturally attract more success into your life.

3. Emotional State

A lot of people are victims of their emotions. They don't believe that they are in control of how they feel. In reality, you can be the master of your emotions. Even better, you change your emotional state instantly by focusing on something that you feel grateful for.

Whether or not this empowering state is sustainable will be based on your values and your beliefs. One of the best ways to condition your emotional state is by creating an empowering morning ritual. Your emotions are like muscles. The more that you challenge them, the stronger you feel, the more successful that you become.

If you can master the inner game, success is yours for the taking!

Get real with yourself and reflect upon where you're falling short in your life. Is your current model of the world serving your highest self? If not, it's time to take action to change what is no longer working. Everything starts and ends in your mind. When you change your beliefs, you change your life.

Do you want access to my cutting-edge strategies for accelerating success and mastering every area of your life? CLICK HERE to join my Life Mastery Accelerator program!

The post The Inner Game Of Success (Your Beliefs & Values) appeared first on Project Life Mastery.

I wasn't disappointed.  Timothy Gallwey talks about the idea of Inner Game, but in this books case in the area of tennis.  However, the concepts and principles basically apply to all aspects of life.  There are major comparisons of the Inner Game of sports and when it comes to your fitness, finances, relationships, and virtually every area of life.

In the introduction, Tim talks about how every game is composed of two parts: Inner Game and Outer Game.  I also like to think of it as Psychology and the Mechanics, as Tony Robbins alludes to many times.

The outer game is played against an external opponent to overcome external obstacles, and to reach an external goal.  Mastering this game is the subject of many books offering instructions on how to swing a racket, club or bat, and how to position arms, legs or torso to achieve the best results.  But for some reason most of us find these instructions easier to remember than to execute.

It is the thesis of this book that neither mastery nor satisfaction can be found in the playing of any game without giving some attention to the relatively neglected skills of the inner game.  This is the game that takes place in the mind of the player, and it is played against such obstacles as lapses in concentration, nervousness, self-doubt and self-condemnation.  In short, it is played to overcome all habits of mind which inhibit excellence in performance.

We often wonder why we play so well one day and so poorly the best, or why we clutch during competition, or blow easy shots.  And why does it take so long to break a bad habit and learn a new one?  Victories in the inner game may provide no additions to the trophy case, but they bring valuable rewards which are more permanent and which can contribute significantly to one's success, off the court as well as on.

Timothy stresses the importance of Inner Game.  When it comes to any other area of your life there is the Outer Game.  The Outer Game consists of the day-to-day actions, mechanics and tasks that you take to achieve an outcome.  These are all the “How To's” and “tactics and techniques.”

And then there's the Inner Game.  The Inner Game consists of your emotional state, beliefs, psychology, mindset and attitude, feeling confident and comfortable, and so on.  It's also conversley being nervous, having anxiety, self-doubt, lack of self-esteem, being scared or experiencing fear, and so forth.

What it comes down to is that Inner Game is more important than Outer Game.  Because if you don't have the confidence, beliefs, psychology, emotional state, etc… then all the “How To” stuff and all the “tactics and techniques” in the world will never work.  It starts with your internal self.

Timothy Gallwey talks about “state” which I loved, because we have the same beliefs about the topic.

Reflect on the state of mind of a player who is said to be “hot” or “playing in the zone.”  Is he thinking about how he should hit each shot?  Is he thinking at all?  Listen to the phrases commonly used to describe a player at his best: “He's out of his mind”; “He's playing over his head”; “He's unconscious”; “He doesn't know what he's doing.”  The common factor in each of these descriptions is that some part of the mind is not so active.  Athletes in most sports use similar phrases, and the best of them know that their peak performance never comes when they're thinking about it.

Exactly!  Most people when they're performing certain actions are stuck inside their heads.  They're overthinking things, which makes them start doubting themselves and lose certainty.  But, if you want to experience a level of peak performance or be totally ON then you must not be thinking and be fully in the moment.  I can relate to this socially when I go out and meet people.

Timothy has a chapter on “Quieting the Mind”, which I found interesting.  Here is an excerpt on something you can do to achieve a better state of mind when you're out.

For most of us, quieting the mind is a gradual process involving the learning of several inner skills.  These inner skills are really arts of forgetting mental habits acquired since we were children.

The first skill to learn is the art of letting go the human inclination to judge ourselves and our performance as either good or bad.  Letting go of the judging process is a basic key to the Inner Game, its meaning will emerge as you read the remainder of this chapter.  When we unlearn how to be judgmental, it is possible to achieve spontaneous, focused play.

This is a trap that most people fall into.  They judge themselves.  “I'm a loser”, “I'm too lazy”, “I suck at xyz”, etc… these are all judgments.  But what happens when you judge yourself?  You're setting yourself up to play a certain role.  As Timothy says, if you say to yourself “I'm a bad server”, then you're setting a certain expectation for yourself and you begin playing the role of a bad server.  You basically start to become what you think.  This is something that is mentioned in the As A Man Thinketh book review I wrote about.

One area that Timothy Gallwey goes into a lot, which I won't go into here, is the process of learning.  He believes learning isn't having more and more information, but rather it's the creation of a pattern of thought.  It's when you have a realization or understanding or epiphany or paradigm shift.  It's when you form a new belief.  The information is the vehicle for that process.

The Groove Theory of Habits

Every time you swing your racket a certain way, you increase the probabilities that you will swing that way again.  In this way patterns, called grooves, build up which have a predisposition to repeat themselves.  Golfers use the same term.  It is as if the nervous system were like a record disk.  Every time an action is performed, a slight impression is made in the microscopic cells of the brain, just as a leaf blowing over a fine-grained beach of sand will leave its faint trace.  When the same action is repeated, the groove is made slightly deeper. 

This is a interesting description of forming negative habits or “grooves.”  And, as I've learned in the book, the way to get out of a groove is to start a new one.  As Timothy says, “Habits are statements about the past, and the past is gone.”

Whatever You Focus On You Feel

He talks about to quiet the mind, instead of telling it to shut up or by arguing with it, or criticizing it, learn to FOCUS it.  Your focus controls how you feel.  If you focus on why you suck, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Instead, if you focus on why you're so amazing and amazing moments, you will FEEL totally different.

The book has many more concepts and ideas than what I've talked about here.  I could go on, but this review wouldn't end.

I really enjoyed the book The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey.  I'm thankful I picked it up.  If you're interested in checking it out on Amazon, then click here.

The post Timothy Gallwey – The Inner Game of Tennis Book Review appeared first on Project Life Mastery.