One thing that really fascinates me is the study of how people try to achieve success in their lives and the thing that hold them back.

Recently I’ve become really aware of a pattern or program that people have in their subconscious minds that REALLY screws up their chances of achieving success in their live and making their dreams come true.

That patter or program is the subconscious desire to be “normal”.

Since I’ve become aware of this pattern, I’ve been really paying attention to what people say and how they act in their day to day lives and it’s been totally blowing my mind how often people make decisions based on what they think is the “normal” thing to do as opposed to what they intuitively feel is right for them.

In fact, you’ll often hear people even say the words “I can’t do that…that’s not normal” or something like “I really gotta start going to bed at a normal time” or other similar statements which clearly point out that they’re trying to conform to some sort of “normal” standard in life.

Now you might ask yourself “Well what’s wrong with NORMAL!?”

Nothing.  If you want to be “NORMAL” then go right ahead, but realize what the statistics show us…

… statistics show us exactly what “normal” looks like …

• Normal is a 50% divorce rate.  If you try to have a marriage that’s “normal”, there’s a 50/50 chance that your marriage will fail.
• Normal is retiring broke.  Depending which polls and stats you look at, it’s estimated that somewhere between 75% – 95% of the US population will retire completely BROKE.
• Normal is overweight or obese.  About 74% of the US population is considered overweight and 36% is obese.
• Normal is sick.  45% of the US population (almost half!) have at least one chronic disease and this number is growing.

I think you get the point, right?

Why strive to live your life trying to be “normal” when what is considered “normal” is not working!

A much better perspective to take might be to find mentors and role models that you could model who have achieved success in the areas of life that you want to achieve success in, and model THEIR beliefs instead of the beliefs that society tries to push onto you as “normal”.

Here’s an example from my life…

In the area of career and finances, I have completely stayed away from “normal” in the last 20 years.

The “normal” thing would have been for me to go to college and university and then to find a “good job” with a “good company” and then to keep my nose clean, work my way up the corporate ladder and then of course retire broke at age 65.

Instead I ditched post-secondary education and replaced it with SELF education and became an entrepreneur instead.

Now while “normal” people have to wake up at 5am in the morning to start getting ready for their “normal” jobs and then to battle rush hour traffic for an hour, only to work at some job they despise, surrounded by co-workers they find annoying, I get to work from home doing what I love.

I was only able to achieve this because 20 years ago I DITCHED the concept of what’s “normal” when it came to my career and finances.

However, let’s look at a different area of my life… my health and more specifically my eating habits.

My eating habits are pretty “normal”.

In fact my diet for the last 20 years could basically be described as the “Standard American Diet” (sometimes called the Standard North-American Diet) or S.A.D.

Up until about 2 weeks ago I’ve been eating and exercising ( or I should say not-exercising ) like a “NORMAL” North American person… for over 20 years now…

…and guess what?

By accepting those type of “normal” beliefs in regards to my eating habits, the result has been that my body is overweight.

I look like the average overweight North American.

See my point?

Trust me, you DON’T want to be normal!  In ANY are of your life.

So what I’ve been doing now to correct that is I’ve hired personal trainers to start working with me to make a change in this area of my life…

…and one of the main things I’m focusing on changing is my beliefs…

What I’m actually doing is I’m listening to what they’re telling me, and I’m paying attention to what beliefs they have related to food, diet, exercise and lifestyles and I’m starting to eliminate some of my “normal” beliefs and replacing them with some of THEIR beliefs because they have achieved the results that I want to achieve.

If you want to achieve extraordinary results in your life, you MUST be willing to have extraordinary BELIEFS!

You can’t think like a “normal” person, act like a “normal” person and have beliefs like a “normal” person and then expect to produce results that are extraordinary.

Make sense?

Ask yourself… in which area of your life have you allowed “normal” people thinking and “normal” beliefs to lead you towards mediocrity and away from achieving your dreams?

Are you willing to accept change in this area of your life and to let go of your need to appear to be “normal” in exchange for achieving the results you want?