The 3 Biggest Mistakes I’ve Made in Life & You’re Probably Doing the Same
Greg Gillies
Holistic Life & Exec Coach to Married Business Leaders - Optimise and evolve your 9 pillars of Success, Love and Happiness
1. I Ignored my Past and only Focusing on my Future
This is No.1 for me personally because when I understood how detrimental my Past programming, beliefs and suppressed emotions was having on my life I was blown away.
As Men we try to ignore any pain, mistakes or traumatic events from our past, we push it down, brush it under the carpet …
Why would we want to rehash that stuff?
Just Focus on the Positives and move forward Right? WRONG!
Ignoring and pushing down our Emotions, feelings, traumatic memories does make them go away… It cements them in our Unconscious Mind and creates an enormous amount of confusion and conflict when our Conscious Mind is thinking or trying to make decisions…
It’s like driving your car around all day with the Hand brake of full and not realising it, your Car’s perform will drop, things will start to break and eventually your Car will Burnout and need some major attention and work done to fix it back up…
So, for me and most of you reading this, we use Will Power to push through. Heck most of the Self-Help gurus say, “Think Positive”, “Push Yourself”, “Build Your Mindset” these are all important, until your Will Power runs out all the following start to flood in:
- Self-Sabotage (Alcohol and Food)
- Feeling Unworthy, I’m Not Good Enough
- Feeling Unsupported, Lonely and Lost
- Feeling Unhappy, Unfulfilled and like there was something wrong
- Feeling Unlovable, Not Loving Yourself
- And all the other self-doubt and negative self-talk that is controlling our minds
I did all that Personal Development, Positive Thinking, Mindset training etc and for the most part I would get short term boost of Motivation, but for the long term I ended up feeling worse, like there was something wrong with me and I wasn’t Not Enough…
Then I hit rock bottom before I surrenders and asked for Help… I don’t the Masks, I was vulnerable, raw and admitted I was struggling
What I learnt was I didn’t need Mindset work, I needed Mind-Reset work and I needed to get the right help to release all the Emotions and Feelings that I had suppressed over the years which effected both my Mind and my Body
If you want to learn exactly what I did to release my past beliefs, programming and suppressed emotions, then please click the link to watch the Video:
2. I Believed Money = Happiness!
This is the hardest lesson I’ve had to come to terms with, as a driven Entrepreneur the Motivation and Visualisation of “Having It All” was so glorified in my head that it become an unhealthy obsession…
My thoughts, self-talk and conversations with my Wife and Kids was always future based:
- Everything will be amazing when …….
- We will be able to do ‘xyz’ when …….
- I can’t wait until we have ……
- Imagine life when we are ……
The reality was!
I was never happy, never fulfilled, I was not giving myself, my wife or my children the quality time that we all truly desired and needed.
I’m sure you can relate as its so easy to get caught up in the Matrix of life, with all the Noise, Demands and Pressure we have and put on ourselves.
Not only was I not living in the ‘Now’. I was giving away my Power, Happiness and Life to a future materialistic reward called Money.
Combine that with my self-worth issues outlined in item 1; then I could only look at things External to myself to creating Happiness… This never ends well!
I have spoken to a lot of Businessmen who have given themselves to their Business, to create Wealth so they provide a better life for themselves and their Family … and in doing so the unspeakable happens, there Marriage falls apart, there Health deteriorates and they end up in massive place of Confusion and Overwhelm, saying “how the hell did I get here”? … “This is not the life I planned”!
I’ve learnt through my own Self-Healing and Self-Discovery journey that when we are ignoring or not listening to our Internal Wisdom (Intuition) we become very disconnecting from ourselves.
When we are disconnected from ourselves and our own truth, we start placing all our focus on External things/people as a source of Happiness!
This could be Money, Toys or even our loved ones….
I’ve made it 100% my responsibility to create my own internal Happiness through self-love, self-discovery, self-healing and then I bring my Happiness to all my relationships and businesses … In doing so I don’t need to focus on Money as it come to me more easily …
Of course, I could not have done this on my own, I Invested in myself and got a lot of help. To learn more about what I did to transform my Life click the link below:
3. My Work Hard, Play Hard attitude was Slowly Killing me!
Whether it was Business, Sales, Socialising, Sport or Exercise I pushed myself hard… I truly believed that was the key to winning and being successful. Little did I know the stress and pressure I was putting on my Mind and Body.
Here are some examples:
Business: Mind
I have been in Online Marketing for 12 years as I write this post and Lord knows this Industry has and is evolving rapidly… The up and coming Entrepreneurs are pushing the envelope, hacking and recreating everything … to keep up with it all will have you burning the candle at both ends ….
Well you guessed it … I tried to keep up for years… Some people call it ‘Shiny Object Syndrome’ or ‘FOMO’ (Fear of Missing Out), yes there was an alignment of that, however I was genuinely interested in learning everything I read or purchased… that 15 hour days were normal, on my mobile while having dinner with Family was normal (This is still a bad habit I’m working on 😊 )
What I have learnt was this:
- I was doing it out of Fear
- I was constantly comparing myself to others
- I was killing my Mental Health and effecting Quality Sleep
- I was constantly disconnected from myself and immersed by digital Influence
- I was un-Focus, even though I thought the opposite
- I was missing out on Life
Trouble is I’m in a few Global Online marketing Facebook Groups and the above has been normalised, a badge of honour who works late nights and weekends… Ultimately these people are burning themselves out, increasing their stress levels and getting anxiety and overwhelm from doing exactly what I use to do …
My biggest change here was giving myself permission to do nothing, sit in the sun, read a book… Remove myself from work and digital distractions…. STOP Punishing my Mind!
Exercise: Body
In my teens and twenties, I played a lot of Rugby, so growing up I was always exercising, keeping fit and weight training to build conditioning. Back then the Culture was Play Hard then Drink Hard … very punishing on the body … we all thought we were bullet proof back then.
When I stopped playing competitive sports, I continued with a regular training routine and the regular Drinking.
Over the years obviously my life got busier, more responsibilities, career, business, family etc So I didn’t have the same available time to train as I use to.
The problem for me is my Drinking continued, got worse actually and on top of all the other pressures of life, when I did go and exercise, I would punish myself for drinking, eating bad food and try and play catch up for all the missed training sessions.
This was detrimental on my Body as I would damage myself, hurt my lower back etc … you would think I would learn and take it easy, but no! I joined a CrossFit gym and I would punish myself at speed.
Why did I do this? It all comes back to item 1:
I had self-worth issues, and I allowed my Egoic Mind to control my life. I didn’t listen to my Body and learn what it needed to have support and regenerate. Then I was pushing myself to Exhaustion almost burnout and I was constantly in Survival Stress.
As I went through my Healing journey, I found out why I was doing this to myself and released a lot of beliefs and emotions attached to self-worth that were showing up as constant pushing and punishment.
I introduced several things like Yin Yoga for my lower back pain and going walking.
I also have the privilege of my gifted Wife Tracey who uses a combination of modalities including Advanced Kinesiology and Energy Healing techniques to release the stress, blockages in my body and increase my Energetic Vitality of all my major Organs and Glands... She does this by accessing your Innate Intelligence to identify what support your body needs … these processes dramatically increase the Bodies natural healing capabilities and brought my body and mind into alignment and flow.
To learn more about what Tracey can do, please click the Training Video Link here:
Lastly, but by no means least, the best thing anyone can do for themselves right away is create your own Morning Routine, the first 30 – 60mins of each day, make it about YOU, not your Phone, not work, not Family … YOU.
Here is my High-Level Morning Routine:
- Leaving my Phone alone (Don’t do it, it’s a trap)
- Journal any pressing thoughts (Tasks, Things to do, Negative thoughts and 3 things your most Grateful for)
- Hydration cocktail (You must Hydrate well every morning)
- Grounding/Earthing (Go outside, bare feet on the grass, face the sun, and breath deep x 20)
- Tai Chi movements (Get your energy flowing, check out 'YOQI' on Youtube)
- Mindful Practice (Sitting still or Guided Meditation)
- Go for a walk (Without headphones, take in Nature)
- Cold Water Shower (Learn the benefits of cold exposure ... Google "Wim Hof")
- Green Smoothie (Fuel Your body)
If you valued the lessons and information in this post , then please like, share and comment below ... I look forward to writing for you again soon...