Andy Wells

Whenever I fail, I do this:

• Andy Wells

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Bailias setbacks and stress how to become resilient. If you take one thing away from all of my content, and all of the content that I will ever do, I would love it to be this Everything is okay. Everything is going to be okay, no matter what struggle you're currently going through, no matter what setbacks, no matter what doubts you might have. I promise you will make it if you just keep going. I tell myself this mantra over and over, especially in my low moments everything will be okay. I repeat it to myself again and again Everything will be okay. I also like to tell myself no matter how many times I fall, all that matters is whether or not I get back up again. I can fail a billion times in fact I have but as long as I hang in there, I always eventually succeed. And my mindset on this is it's not even a failure, it's a learning experience. I talk more about this in the chapter everything that happens to me is good.

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I'll play a motivational video that perfectly encompasses this embracing of failure from Michael Jordan, one of, if not the best basketballer of all time. I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed. On days when I'm sad or stressed or busy or tired or I don't have enough time or I'm feeling unmotivated or whatever else, I like to remind myself there is always something that I can do, some action that I can take to move forward. Even if it's something so unbelievably small, one tiny little baby step, that is infinitely better than nothing. Big goals are usually achieved by lots of tiny little baby steps, compounded or added up over time. Consistency over a long period of time and having patience along the way is what has gotten me to all of my goals, and humility has helped me with patience. I just remind myself I will achieve my goal when I achieve my goal. In other words, it'll happen when it happens, and my only mission is to focus on the actions that I'm taking and leave the rest up to the universe.

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Accountability partners and friends and support groups have done wonders for me as well. Accountability partners can pick us up when we're feeling down. They also prevent us from feeling overwhelmed or stressed in the first place by being there for us, keeping us on track, motivating us and all of that good stuff. Without accountability partners, we can fall off the rails for weeks or months at a time before we finally get back on track. And this was very much my experience in the first few years of my self-improvement, before I had lots of accountability partners. I would often go weeks, and a couple of times months, without making any progress, without working on myself, without really being happy because I didn't have anybody in my corner cheering me on and helping me. And with accountability partners, the longest that we will go is a day or two before they help us get back on track. We save ourselves months or years. I have more on accountability partners in the chapter self-reflection, mindfulness and gratitude, how to not move the goalposts. And if you want a hardcore version of accountability, you can join our coaching program. You can go to killyourinnerlosercom forward slash coaching and you will get lifetime access to our accountability group.

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I also like to take at least one day off a week, every single week. I've done this every single week for the last eight years, including weeks where I was really busy and really didn't want to take time off. I've made sure that I always prioritized having that day off. It's very meaningful to me, very special to me and helps me in a lot of ways. And on that day I do something fun or something to recharge my batteries, or even sometimes I do nothing at all, just being completely at peace. And if you have the worry of I can't afford to take the day off, what has helped me is to remind myself that the most productive thing that I could do on that day is to recharge my batteries so that I'm re-energized and ready to kick some ass over the upcoming next six days and I avoid burnout or overwhelm. I also love to use this day off to think about my goals, plan some things out, fantasize about how exciting it's going to be when I achieve the next goal, etc. And there have been some times where my mind says I can't afford to take a day off. In those moments I remind myself taking a day off each week is the most productive thing that I can do. And it is In the early days when I didn't take days off, I would feel overwhelmed, I would feel burnt out, I wouldn't be as productive and the weeks started to blend together and I felt like self-improvement was a grind, a chore.

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It was no longer enjoyable. Taking a little day off every week helps reset and helps make this journey fun, enjoyable, and I found I achieve 10 times more. If you find yourself stressed or in a rut, or maybe you hit a few setbacks and you're feeling a little overwhelmed I have been in that position many times. It's normal and everything will be okay, I promise. If I'm feeling that way, I like to take a little extra time off, so a few days or weeks, as long as I feel I need, same as when I've had breakdowns in the past or I get to a point of I need a break. If that happens, I take a break. I be kind to myself and I be patient with myself. I've found most goals are achieved as a marathon rather than a sprint. In other words, we've got plenty of time. It's okay if we take a few days or weeks off. Nothing bad will happen if you take a little bit of time off.

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I also like to do something nice for myself. When I'm feeling stressed or overwhelmed or in a rut Whatever I would do for my best friend if they were feeling overwhelmed or burnt out or sad I do that for myself. If I would tell my best friend that everything's okay, then I tell that to myself. If I would go for a walk with my best friend and listen to him or her, then I do that for myself. If I would just chill with my friend and play some video games to make him feel a little better, then I do that for myself. Whatever advice or whatever I would do for my best friend, I do that and I give that to myself.

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I also like to use what I call the zoom out exercise from the book. You can't afford the luxury of a negative thought. So the short version is I lay down on my bed and I close my eyes. I imagine that I'm looking down at my body, noticing myself feeling whatever I'm stressed or worried about. Then I zoom out a little bit, imagining I'm now overhead my house, looking down on the entire building. I can no longer see myself at this point. Then I zoom out a little further to the street level. I notice all the cars zooming around going about their lives. I can only just see my house at this level.

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I zoom out a little bit further to the level of the entire city, noticing everyone going about their lives. I can't even see my house anymore. It's lost in all the detail of the busy city and all its goings on, millions of people just doing their thing. I zoom out further still, this time to the level of my entire country. Now I definitely can't see my house, I can't see myself, in fact I can't even see my city at this level, eyes still closed. I zoom out again to the point where Earth is just a beautiful blue marble, spinning in all of its glory. Further out, I zoom to the point where the entire solar system just becomes a small speck, lost in the magnificence of the Milky Way Galaxy. I zoom out again and now our entire galaxy is just one of many in a beautiful cluster of galaxies, so many my brain can't even comprehend the magnificent scope of it all.

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I take a big, deep breath and at this point I ask myself do I really still care about the issue or the thing that's been stressing me, or is everything okay in the universe? This exercise has brought me a hell of a lot of peace in my most stressful moments. I also like to use what I call the zoom forward in time exercise from the same book. I ask myself do I think I will still care about this problem tomorrow? If the answer is yes, I will still care. Then I zoom forward in time a little bit. So I will ask will I care about this a week from now? Sometimes the answer is no, I won't care, and then I'm filled with some peace, but sometimes the answer is still yes. So then I will say will I care about this one month from now, three months from now, six months from now? And if that's still a yes, I will still care about it. Then I ask myself what about in two years? Will I still care? What about ten years from now? At this stage I am almost always filled with a sense of peace. The problem that I was stressing over probably won't last forever. There will be a moment in time where everything is all sorted and it's all okay. My experience with doing this exercise is there is almost nothing that I will still be stressing about ten years from now, and most of the time most of my stresses won't even be there one week from now. So if it's all going to be okay in the future, can I speed that process up and show myself that it's all okay right now? In some cases I can even just trust that things will kind of just take care of themselves and one day I won't care about this. So much Time will solve this problem. If I won't care about it in the future, can I let go of needing to stress about it right now?

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This book you Can't Afford the Luxury of a Negative Thought has a ton more techniques just like these two. It was a life-changing book for me and many of my clients and friends. Another amazing book full of techniques to deal with stress, frustration, setbacks, sadness, anger is Instant Calm by Paul Wilson. As I said earlier in this chapter, sometimes a solution to setbacks, stress or being in a rut is to take a couple of days off and just chill to recharge my batteries. This book really helps with that. I also like to write a list of five reasons this setback could actually be a good thing. Is this so-called setback even a setback at all? What if it's actually progress and I just can't tell? What if I'm on the right path but I'm just being impatient or unrealistic about my progress? I talk more about this concept in the chapter. Everything that happens to me is good. Gratitude really helps me too. Often, thinking of just five things that I'm grateful for helps pull me out of a rut, helps pull me out of sadness or whatever I might be feeling in that moment. I talk more about this in the chapter self-reflection, mindfulness and gratitude how to not move the goalposts. Another question that's helped me a lot is even if I'm not physically closer to my goal, have I at least made some big mental shifts that'll help me in future? Here's an analogy that one of my coaches gave me.

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When you're constructing a building, you have to lay the foundation first. During this stage it can appear like there's no real progress being made. After all, you're just laying a little bit of concrete on the ground, hardly impressive at all. It can feel like there's no progress. For months. The ground was just a flat piece of land before, and now it's still a flat piece of land, just with some concrete on it. But then all of a sudden progress. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere. There's some scaffolding, then some pillars, then the first floor, the second floor and before you know it, the building starts rapidly progressing Amazing, and often with our goals.

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We are in the stages of laying that foundation and it doesn't look like we were building much at all. But we might be just a few weeks or months from that turning point where progress starts becoming exponential. So as long as we're hanging in there, as long as we're taking at least a tiny bit of action each day, as long as we're learning, as long as we're just figuring out what does work and what doesn't work, as long as we're improving by 1% each week, I promise you progress is happening, even if it's a little hard to spot sometimes. We never know how close we are to that breakthrough moment where it all starts to pay off very suddenly and very rapidly. Then growth explodes. We start kicking ass and we go oh my god, now I'm in the swing of things.

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Success feels easy as hell. Now it's almost automatic. This is how almost every single one of my big goals has gone. It feels like I'm making very little progress for months. Progress is hard to see, and sometimes that even lasts for a year or two, and all of a sudden, boom, I'm making crazy progress and the results start coming in. This is why we focus on and choose to enjoy the process of self-improvement and working on goals, because sometimes the goals take a little while, and so we want to make sure we're having fun along the way, especially if it's going to take a few months or years to achieve the things that we want to achieve and to help me be more patient as I'm going through life and working on my goals.

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I choose to just focus on the action that I'm taking and I do my best not to get so down if the results take a little while to come to fruition. David Hawkins, one of my favourite authors, says it best you are responsible for the intention and effort, but not the result, which is dependent on many other conditions and factors that are non-personal. In other words, I just focus on the daily actions and I work towards my goal, and I trust that it will all work out, as long as I continue and don't quit and I tell myself this mantra over and over again I will not quit, I will hang in there, I will keep going. I choose to be a stubborn bastard and I refuse to give up, and this stubborn refusal to quit, this persistence in other words, has served me so well in many of my low moments or moments of doubt and insecurity and frustration. And persistence is something that I've improved over time with practice. It's okay if you're not always perfect at it I wasn't in the early days either.

Speaker 1:

I also take the time to reflect and make sure that I'm making progress and I celebrate and be grateful for that progress. And if it's ever difficult for me to tell if I'm actually making progress, what I do is I look back six months or a year ago and I say am I ahead of where I was back then six months or a year ago? If so, I celebrate. If not, I improve or change something. I also ask myself do I want to go back in time to six months or a year ago and forget everything that I've learned over the last six months or a year? If the answer to that is no way I don't want to unlearn all that I've learned in the last six months or a year then awesome, I have made progress. Now all that's left is to just keep going. But if the answer is yeah, I kind of wish I could have a do-over and do all of that again then that's awesome as well. Now it's time to make some big changes to really improve my life.

Speaker 1:

Progress in general is often two steps forward, one step back, three steps forward, eight steps back, 15 steps forward. It can feel pretty random at times, so I choose to zoom out a little bit and as long as I'm making progress in the long run, then I'm happy. And if none of that helps, when I'm feeling in a rut or stressed or having some setbacks, then I use whatever emotion I might be feeling in that moment as fuel to take some more action. So if I'm feeling frustrated, good, I use that frustration to go and take more action. If I'm feeling a bit sad, good, I use that sadness to propel myself towards a happy, beautiful future, while obviously still enjoying the present. My sadness doesn't have to put a dampener on my enjoyment of this current moment. Right now I can be present and be okay in this moment, even while I'm feeling some sadness. Again, everything is okay, everything is going to be okay.

Speaker 1:

Frustration and insecurity often fueled me more than any other emotion in the early days of my self-improvement journey. Frustration in particular was an amazing motivator for me. Insecurity was as well. These days I use the feelings of love, excitement, joy, gratitude, peace, happiness more than I do the feelings of frustration or sadness. But every now and then frustration will still creep up a little bit, so I'll use that as well. Just hang in there. Everything is okay and everything is going to be okay.

Speaker 1:

I promise that was a free chapter from my new video course Play to Win how I Built a Winner's Mindset. So I hope you found that helpful. If you would like to grab the full video course, the link is in the description below. You can pay whatever you can afford, even if that's literally just $1. I also have $200 coaching calls. If you want to sit down with me one-on-one, we'll sit down for an hour or so, go over any problems that you might be having, any struggles, what you want, come up with a plan of action, pick my brain and ask me any questions that you might have. Whatever you want, however, you want to use that time Link is in the description below to that and we have a hardcore coaching program Change your life 12 weeks all in plus lifelong access to our accountability members only. Group Link is down below. As always, ladies and gentlemen, go out there, crush those goals and have a bloody game. Crush those goals and have a bloody good time doing it.

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