The ideas I’m about to elaborate here are a cocktail of different insights compiled from various sources. But I have recently come to a conclusion that the specific ingredients I’m about to mention below, are the right set of ingredients required to get the taste of ‘Achievement’.

First, taking a note from Robin Sharma’s book “The 5AM Club”, I will talk about the 3-step success formula.

Robin writes – Better Daily Awareness leads to Better Daily Choices which lead to Better Daily Results.

The beginning of transformation is the increase of perception. As you see more you can materialize more. And once you know better you can achieve bigger. The great women and men of the world – the ones responsible for the magical symphonies, the beautiful movements, the advancements of science and the progress of technology – started by reengineering their thinking and reinventing their awareness. In so doing, they entered a secret universe that the majority could not perceive. And this, in turn, allowed them to make the daily choices few choose to make. Which, automatically, delivered the daily results few get to experience.

You may ask, what does ‘Daily Awareness’ or the ‘increase of perception’ mean?

This means a profound and innate understanding of your own potential, the real opportunities that lie in front of you and the limited time you have left in this life – and having this understanding on a Daily basis. It’s that kind of a truth that which if you knew – you would automatically take action. No question about it. It’s like – if you saw a Rupee 2000 note (or a $100 bill) floating by in the air, you would automatically grab it, wouldn’t you? It’s a matter of ‘OCCURING’ or ‘CLEARING’ (distinctions from Landmark Forum), which means how something is perceived by you. If it is perceived as something important, urgent and within your grasp – no doubt you will go for it. If it is perceived as something pleasurable, you will do it all the more.

So the idea is if you have a better daily awareness of your potential to transform your life as well as the urgency to – you will inevitably make better daily choices and that would lead to better daily results.

If the above is pretty clear, you need to understand the concept of ‘Day Stacking’.

An average life is basically made up of 25000 TODAYS. Or if I talk about myself, there’s about 15000 todays left. (I’m 30 years old). So every today is a microcosm of my real life. No joke. This can be daunting, but within this insight lies the most potent personal transformation idea. If I want to improve my life, I have to start by improving my days, in a very real sense. Own your day, own your life. Robin writes:

Remember that each of your prized days represents your precious life in miniature. As you live each day, so you craft your life. We all are so focused on pursuing our futures that we generally ignore the exceedingly important value of a single day. And yet, what we are doing today is creating our future.

What you need to do to pretty much guarantee a hugely successful and a splendidly meaningful life is Own the Day. Make those 1% course corrections and improvements over each 24-hour allotment you receive, and these days will slip into weeks and your weeks into months and your months will slip into your years. The main point is take your days very seriously. Concentrate monomaniacally on creating great days – and they’ll stack into a gorgeous life.

If you have read this post so far, then you understand that better daily awareness leads to better daily choices which lead to better daily results. And better daily results stack up into a transformed life. This all works like clockwork.

But now the question is how to cultivate better daily awareness, since that seems to be the first step of it all?

There could be many answers, and the perfect answer as per Robin Sharma is to install a rock-solid morning routine, preferably starting at 5 am daily.

While I agree that morning routines are essential, I am going to simply mention the two things that unfailingly work for me and my life.

1. Having slept a full 8 or more hours; and
2. Having conversations with Achievers (other people who’re going HARD at accomplishing big things in their life)

Doing these two activities, I have consistently seen an immediate and significant impact on my awareness of the possibility of life and my potential to seize that opportunity. I am immediately fired up and inspired as a result of the above two interventions. It works like clockwork.

There is good reason for the above to be true.

Having a fit body and a healthy brain does have impact on your mental clarity and general mood & focus. And being in the rested state is the necessary condition for creativity and imagination to flourish. Sleep just happens to be one of the pieces in the health puzzle. But it’s one that works the most significantly for me. If I must take it to the next level, I have seen similar improvements to my daily awareness when I’ve held a regular practice of healthy eating and exercise. The only difference is the results start showing after I’ve run the routine for some amount of time – few weeks or so. But it does have a big impact on the way I see life. I start seeing a life of more possibility.

And the other point on having deep conversations with Achievers is of course a testament of the old adage – “You are the average of the 5 people you spend most time with” OR “You become who you surround yourself with”. I don’t know for what reason, but countless of books and research and anecdotes have proven and demonstrated, that being in the presence of other people who are successful makes you successful. They don’t even have to be in the same industry or to be trying to achieve the same thing as you. They just need to be driven and be getting results. Success begets success.

If you have clearly understood the MONUMENTAL significance of better daily awareness and Day Stacking, and you are clear that managing your health and conversations can greatly impact the quality of your daily awareness, you are now ready to listen to the most elite level insight I have thus far on the topic of motivation and achievement.

It relates to Momentum and Inertia. Success is all about momentum. You want to achieve something big, start small, get small wins, that will propel you to take further action, thus setting the stage for bigger wins, and before you realize it, you’d be riding a wave, where taking action is easier than not taking action, you’re just in flow; things become simpler, decisions become easier, energy becomes available, and you make massive gains and progress.

All of this continues, of course, until you stop. And the moment you stop, Inertia sets in. You suddenly feel sluggish, you start seeing all the reasons why it won’t work, your focus goes towards your weaknesses and starting again becomes hard, most importantly your worldview or Occurring starts to change, you feel that the whole idea of trying to succeed was stupid or far-fetched, you feel all kinds of bad.

Depending on what kind of person you are, you can experience momentum and inertia for varying lengths of time. Some people ride the wave of momentum for weeks or months and fall back into inertia only couple of times a year. However I find myself going through momentum and inertia multiple times throughout every single day. The most important insight I have is that my worldview changes in accordance with which phase I’m in. The problem is that when I’m in inertia, not only am I held down by the natural forces of inertia but I also see the world in a way that suggests that there’s no way I can succeed in my goals even if I tried.

This experience remains even after having done various kinds of self-improvement trainings and learning various ways to maintain a positive outlook.

But the reality is that every thought that I get (every fear, every doubt, every conclusion about my impotence), every thought that I get while I’m out of momentum and not in action-taking mode, is unreal and a lie. It is not representative of the true issue at hand. It’s chatter of the mind. It’s where my psyche goes when it’s feeling most uncomfortable. It’s my safe space.

The best way I have found to reboot when I’m in inertia, is to ‘Break State’. This means to radically and often violently change the state I’m in (physically and/or mentally) and begin working on the task in front of me. Honestly, ‘Starting’ is the only thing that requires any energy, because when I’ve begun, I soon find myself riding the wave of Momentum.

I’ve seen this same pattern repeat so many times that I’ve come to understand that there’s nothing like potential or lack thereof, it’s only ‘how much time you can spend in the Flow of Momentum’. That’s what determines success, the hours you were able to put in. Nothing else.

This also means, all the downer feelings I feel when I’m not working, or am in inertia so-to-say, all those feelings are meaningless. Because they’re not real, they just come along with the package called Inertia. They don’t mean anything. I need not attach any significance to those constant bouts of self-doubt, fear, guilt, shame etc. I just need to snap myself out of it by breaking state, and getting back to work, where I’ll find momentum.

And if I can find enough momentum, then my results snowball into something larger than I could imagine.

Summary

So in the end it’s simple. If I wish to have a great life, I need to stack up great days. And great days are a result of right daily choices which naturally follow better daily awareness. And in order to make sure that I am in touch with (Aware) my potential and the shortness of life DAILY, I must sleep for more than 8 hours (or lead a healthy lifestyle, generally speaking) as well as strike conversations with others who’re on the same inspired path as I am (surrounding myself with Achievers). With the above insights as context, I need to follow the simple method of breaking Inertia and finding Momentum to actually follow through on my actions.

This, plus some luck, should do the trick!