What we’re talking about here is success.

What does it take to be more successful and enjoy the life that you know you so richly desire and deserve to live? This question is one that got me thinking many years ago and is the reason why I now get paid to do what I love and wake up each day so grateful for the life I live.

But it wasn’t always this way.

I definitely struggled and failed my way to success both in business and in life. It certainly hasn’t always been easy living an entrepreneurial lifestyle especially at times like when I ran out of money, was in debt up to my eyeballs and was too proud to ask for any help.

I’ve had times where I’ve been really discouraged and felt like a total failure in business and in life as I struggled to even have enough money to eat. To compensate for that I tried working longer hours at getting my life back on track.

I went from working forty hours a week to fifty hours and still my results didn’t improve. Then I tried working eighty hours a week and still didn’t see any improvements in results. This really frustrated me as I had always believed that success was all about hard work only now I was finding out that it wasn’t.

At this point in my entrepreneurial journey I had never felt so hopeless and that I had no control over my future at all. Nothing that I did seemed to make any difference to my results or my bank balance.

The Hunger Begins

In the middle of what felt like one of the lowest moments in my life it suddenly dawned on me that if I kept doing what I was doing, that my results would probably stay the same. I knew I was a hard worker but that wasn’t getting me anywhere so I needed to figure out pretty quickly what else I could be doing.

Since that moment I felt an intense hunger for a better life burning like a fire in my belly. The first thing I realized I needed to do was get really clear on what I wanted as I’d been trying to make so many different things work in my life but I’d never really taken the time to get focused on doing just one thing properly. So I sat down with a pen and piece of paper and wrote down my life and business goals for the next three months.

What also helped turn things around for me was when I read a quote that said, “If you want to be successful at anything you need to hang around people who have already succeeded at what you want to do. So if you want to be a millionaire – then hang around Millionaires; If you want to be fit and healthy – then hang around with fit and healthy people; If you want to have great people skills – then hang around with people who have great people skills”.

It was then that I finally understood what was holding me back from success – it was me.

Once I got crystal clear about what I wanted then it became obvious that I also needed to shift my circle of influence and reach out to people who already had the success I was striving for so I could get out of my own way.

Since then, every single failure that I went through,or mistake I made, helped me to develop even more hunger and sharpened my perspective on what I needed to focus on to get where I wanted to be. They gave me the intelligence to make better decisions to help keep moving forward towards my goals and dreams.

5 Steps to Lifelong Success

Fast forward to today and I now have several successful online businesses and enjoy a lifestyle that revolves around doing what I like, when I like and where I like. I can work from anywhere in the world that has an internet connection and literally get to live the 4-hour work week.

The fact is that many people are still stuck in struggle and are stressed out in their everyday lives, just like I used to be. Some of them will make it through to the other side and some of them won’t, but one things for sure those that are hungry enough will be the one’s I’d put my money on.

Success never happens overnight and it is not a matter of dumb luck or any other such nonsense. Success happens to those that are ready for it, even if it looks like the odds are stacked up against them. It’s not measured by how rich, powerful or famous someone is. It’s measured by how good you get at picking yourself up off the ground, dusting yourself off and then continuing to march forward despite the obstacles that life put’s in your way.

One of the most powerful life lessons I have learned is that to thrive in business or in life you need to get really good at handling stress and pressure. The better you get at handling stress both internally and externally the stronger you’ll become mentally, physically and emotionally.

Those that don’t get good at it will always be in danger of either breaking down, or breaking apart, whereas people who learn to thrive under pressure will inevitably break through to success.

Here’s my top 5  steps to accelerate your success at whatever you want to excel at:

1. Write down your top ten reasons why you want to get out of struggle and become a success in whatever area of your personal or professional life you want to focus on.
2. Look at these reasons every day to continue to feed the hunger you have to succeed.
3. Identify you biggest weakness or roadblock to success.
4. Work on a plan to turn this into a strength or even better team up with others that are already strong in your area of weakness.
5. Develop a powerful morning routine to get you fired up for the day.

The Power of Morning Ritual’s

The purpose of a morning routine is to start your day feeling courage, confident, energized, yet calm and relaxed, with a clear mind that’s focused and ready to take on the world. This is also the best time to choose the most important activity for the day that will yield the biggest results for you and make sure you get it done.

Each morning, ask yourself what you are grateful for and what you are excited about for the day ahead as this would get your energy levels primed for the day ahead and also put your into a positive emotional state to start the day.

Give yourself time each morning to devote to yourself and starting the day from a place of balance and power. This can include things like meditation, stretching, or anything at all that helps clear your mind and feel good about yourself in the morning.

Ideally, you’d allow an hour to do this each morning and include some body movement along with a healthy breakfast. However, if the best you can do now is five minutes – then start with that and gradually build it up  to an hour over time.

Implementing an hour of power each morning is one of the most worthwhile investments in yourself and your time that you can give to yourself. Instead of getting up each day and madly rushing around and being stressed out from the get-go, it helps to clear your mind, get really focused on what’s important and helps strengthen you against any stress that comes your way during the day.

Life really is for the fun of it, it’s not meant to be taken seriously. All too often we let our emotions overpower our reasoning and when this happens, even the smallest of problems that we’d normally shrug off with ease can seem overwhelming.

That’s why it’s so important to remember to never make a decision when you are in emotional turmoil and to only make all your decisions about your future based on intelligence that comes from a place of feeling calm and centered.

Above all remember to nourish your mind daily, nourish your body daily and nourish your spirit daily.

Now is The Best Time

The reason most people don’t succeed at anything that they want to is because they don’t tell themselves that NOW matters and they stuck stuck in the idea that ‘someday’ it’s all going to work out for them. It’s this mentality that keeps them stuck in struggle and kills their ambitions and dreams.

Tell yourself that now matters more than ever.  Figure out what you want NOW, what your willing to do to make it happen NOW, and what you’re willing to give up NOW to get it. Not tomorrow, not next week, right NOW. What you do each day from today determines if you are going to be unstoppable or stuck in struggle.

—

Did This Help You? If so, I would greatly appreciate it if you commented below and shared on Facebook

Michael Atma’s Blog
Skype: michaelatma
Email: Michael@MichaelAtma.com

“I Teach You how to live a Happier, Healthier and More Fulfilling in Just 5 Minutes a Day!”

PS: If You want some free training on how to have more calm, clarity and focus in just 5 minutes a day, then try my focus 5 meditation made simple course. If you  enjoyed this post on Do You Hunger For a Better Life, re-tweet and comment please

What Is My Life’s Purpose?

From my perspective there are 2 distinct purposes that each of us come here to live. The first is your physical purpose which is connected to your ego and what your passions and talents in life are. The second is your spiritual purpose for being here.

This can be a bit harder to get in tune with as it really requires letting go of your ego and following your heart and spirit without hesitation.

What I’m going to share now are some simple ways to help you find and live your physical life’s purpose. By doing this you will at least be on your way to perhaps one day being ready to leap into your highest destiny.

How To Find Your Life’s Purpose

The first question to ask yourself is “What am I most passionate about?”

While the answer may be obvious to some, to others this may also be a difficult question to answer as the burden of struggling to survive takes precedence in their life. To help jog your memory and get in touch with what you’d really love to be doing with your life, here’s some helpful tips.

1. Make a list of the things you loved to do as a kid, or that you really enjoy doing now. This list is about what you are most passionate about in your life. Purpose and passion are invariably intertwined.

2. Write down what you would be doing with your life if you had all the time and money in the world and you never had to worry about working again. Many people kill their dream lives because they don’t believe that it is possible for them to do what they love most and get supported financially.

This could not be further from the truth. In fact, in today’s world where uniqueness and ‘standing out’ is actually a great way to get your foot in the door of the business world, the opportunities have never been greater.

Think about how much ‘You Tube’ has changed the way people share what their passions and interests are to the world. There are now thousands of people making a living doing all sorts of crazy things just using video to build a community of people that knows, likes, and trusts them.

This has launched many a successful singer, entertainer, comedian, musician, talk show host, and so the list goes on… And, it’s just one example of how social media has opened up the doors for anyone to become an instant celebrity.

3. After writing your list you are still not sure what your purpose is, then spend 10 to 20 minutes each morning doing something from one of your items on your passion list. Keep on doing one thing at a time from this list until you find the one that you can’t wait to get up each day to get started on.

Don’t Ration Your Passion

Everyone has a gift or latent talent inside them to share. From writing a book to producing a movie, to coming up with a new invention to creating a new cure for a disease, there are no limits to these gifts. No matter how small or big they may seem, your gift is simply something that when you share it brings you great joy.

The only time this doesn’t happen is when you do not believe in yourself enough to share your gift with confidence. Life is always moving to support you to do what makes you happy and fulfilled. Your opportunity is to trust and move with the energy you feel connected to from within.

Some people know what this is from a very young age. That’s when you see children on TV that can sing like and angel, or play the piano like someone whose being doing it for decades, or dance like they were born to dance. The fact is that they are already living their dream.

However, this is the exception, rather than the norm in most cases and from my observation the reason why most of us don’t have a clue about our purpose as adults is because we were never really encouraged to bring it out, let alone find out what it might be.

Let’s face it today’s education system and fast paced world rarely slows down enough to help a child unlock their hidden talents and show them how they can build a life around it. But as adults, we not only have the power to do this, it is the only thing that will truly make us feel like we have a life of meaning.

This is where a leap of faith comes in. You must act as if you are worthy of finding and living your life’s purpose even though you have no idea what it is or when it will happen. Faith to me is one of the most important of all human traits because it requires that you come from a place beyond yourself.

There are always universal laws at work whether we acknowledge them or not and by having faith in the ‘unknown’, the unknown can them become known. In other words, even if you have no idea what your purpose is right now, never give up believing that one-day it will find you.

I call this switching on your confidence in advance. You can confidently trust in yourself, or not. Confidently trusting simply means to follow your heart and your inspiration without hesitation. This is the doorway that will open up your heart and mind to living with passion and purpose.

Never be concerned about how you will make money from your passions or purpose straight away. Just keep following your heart and trust that the ‘how to’ make a living from them will be revealed to you in time.

And by revealed I mean you will have a thought or an idea one day that will suddenly make sense on how you can make a living from what you love to do.