The Decision 

I can’t tell you how exciting and terrified I was to take the leap and leave my 9-to-5 day job. It’s the dream of entrepreneurs. It was mine.

The first thing I’ll tell you, most of the articles you read about preparing to make the leap are lies. How many times have you heard, in order to leave your day job, you should replace your 9-to-5 income, have a cushion of savings, and have a plan B?

There is no one-size-fits-all.

The decision to leave your day job is 100-percent individualized to you, your goals, comfort, family situation, and risk factor.

To me, this looked like leaping before I was “ready.” I had savings and a plan, but I was nowhere near replacing my full-time income, let alone replacing my benefits I was choosing to leave behind. But to me, this decision was more than the financial stability — and luckily, I was in a position to be ok with that.

A year in the making. At the beginning of 2018, I decided my goal was to figure out how to leave my day job by the end of the year. Truthfully, I had no idea how I was really going to make it happen. However, I knew I needed to push myself into new opportunities to help me grow my businesses. So I decided that I was going to say Yes to every new opportunity that came to me.

Here’s what I learned:

I set a big goal.
I didn’t know HOW to make it happen.
But I was committed.
I showed up and took action.
And through a string of incredibly unforgettable new opportunities…
I made it happen. 

The determining factor for me wasn’t that I had replaced my full-time income. I really wasn’t even close. Instead, I saw these new opportunities as proof: 

If I could make all of this happen while working a full-time job, imagine what I could accomplish if I pursued this full time instead? 

December 5th, 2018, I left my day job for good. 

The Fear

Rather than this being the end of the story, it was only the beginning. I want to be completely transparent with you that it wasn’t all rainbows and butterflies from there...quite the opposite.

To preface this, this is where I shifted.

In my gut, I knew that making the leap was right for me, yet it was so overwhelming that I didn’t have a bi-weekly paycheck coming in… or any money for the first full month.

Glued to my computer screen, I lost count of the hours day-by-day. Literally all I remember doing that January was working All. The. Time.

At this rate, I knew I couldn’t do it all on my own, so I hired a coach. I got support. I tried to figure out what wasn’t working so I could just fix it and get everything working.

My biggest fear: I didn’t want to go back to a JOB. In my mind, that truly felt like the ultimate failure… But I was so worried.

What if I couldn’t do it?
What if all this work led to nothing?
What if I had to go back and get a job? 

I pushed harder.

Month after month, I wrote the same goals in my journal with no results to show for it. At the end of each month, the pit of my stomach would churn knowing that the month was almost over and I was nowhere close to my goal… again.

I didn’t want to keep working so hard with nothing to show for it.
I didn’t want to go another month without hitting my goals.
I didn’t want to fail.

The Difference 

In my journey, and in hindsight of course, it’s easy to see what the difference was here — although in the moment, I was way too close to it to see anything different.

If you are currently feeling frustrated or worried that you’re not hitting your goals, listen up, because I so feel you.

In both situations, I had clear goals.
In both situations, I showed up and took action.

The only difference was the reason I wasn’t achieving my goals in the second situation — my mindset.

You probably hear a lot about mindset, usually in the broad term and think that it means you need to do affirmations, journal, and just be positive. It’s not.

Mindset is how you approach the action. The state of mind you go in believing.

On a deeper level, your mindset is the direction you give your energy towards or away from the thing you want. 

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't —
you're right.”
― Henry Ford

It’s one thing for me to tell you this; it’s another to illustrate it through my own story (struggle).

When I was at one of my most frustrating points, feeling like I wanted to throw in the towel, I will never forget saying, “I feel like nothing is working! I’m working so hard with nothing to show for it.”

My coach responded: “That’s why. Just believe that it’s already done.”

Let’s just say, when you’re frustrated to tears, having someone tell you to just believe that it IS working felt like petting an irritated wet cat backwards with sandpaper…

It’s not that easy.

Simply put, I want you to consider this:

Every moment, you take in 2 million bits of information from the world around you, yet you only process 126 bits of that 2 million. Your brain processes this information through filters of your past experiences to delete what’s not important (to you), distort the information through values, beliefs, and attitudes, and generalizes it to help you translate the information into meaning for you to then emotionally and physically respond to it.

This literally creates YOUR perception of the world, while everyone processes their own unique perception as well.

The way your brain decides what information is important and what’s not is based on what YOU decide to focus on. 

“Where focus goes, energy flows.” 
 — Tony Robbins

When you set your focus, it is either with the energy to move toward something or away from something -- toward a goal, achievement, or success; or away from pain, fear, or lack. 

First let me ask you, where are you focusing your energy? 

Here’s the problem:

Your brain at the unconscious level works to process all the information to sift through that which you give your energy to.

You know that example when you start to think about looking for a specific car you want to buy, all of a sudden you start seeing that car on the road all the time?

This is literally an example of your brain working to find the information you say is important, so in turn, you start noticing that car more because your brain knows to look for it.

Your goals work the same way.

When you are focused on making the goal happen, your brain helps you process information to help you notice things around you that will help move you closer toward your goal. Much like in my first story. I didn’t know everything I needed to do in order to leave my day job, but I was focused on finding new opportunities to help me make it happen.

In turn, when you are focused on what you DON’T want to happen, your brain only understands that your focus is on the thing you don’t want, so continues to search for that information. In my second story, this was me. I was so focused on wanting to NOT fail, NOT going back to a day job, and continuing to NOT hit my goals, instead of focusing my energy on what I actually wanted to happen instead.

Let me be clear. My goal was to grow my business and bring in more income. My action was aligned to that -- knowing what I needed to DO to make that happen.

BUT my mindset was focused on what I wanted NOT to happen. Which caused my energy to go toward what I didn’t want and my brain to search for the information that was relevant to the things I didn’t want.

MINDSET IS EVERYTHING.

The Takeaway

If you take nothing else away from this, let it be this:

You have the ability to create your own success.

Based on how your brain functions, you literally have control of how you choose to see the world, yourself, and your success in it.

Set the goal. Focus your energy. Take the action.

Success is your perception.
Success is literally your choice. 

It’s not something that just happens to you. 

Success is what you DECIDE to create.

What is it that you want to create?