SUMMARY 

• Today we’re talking about how you can tap into the power of personal responsibility so you can take things up a level in your business and life.
• First, you can really up your personal responsibility game and change the results in your life by focusing on just three areas, deciding who you want to be in just three areas: your health, your wealth, and your relationships, and bringing some intentionality into those arenas.
• The second thing that you can do which follows on from the first is a concept that I call champion proofs. Each and every day, I pick what’s the one thing that I could be doing which, if done, proves that I’m stepping into the champion version of me.
• Number three thing that I recommend you do to really tap into the power of personal responsibility and get your act together is to become a single tasker. The average person is losing 13 weeks a year jumping around from task to task to task rather than staying with things long enough to actually get them done.
• Number four thing that you can do to get your act together is turn pro. Make the decision to show up as a professional, not an amateur. An amateur thinks that feeling generates action. Professionals flip that around. They know that action generates feeling.
• Number five, the game isn’t about avoiding the knockdowns. The game is how quickly you can stand back up. If you really want to get your act together, stop worrying about the knockdowns.

TRANSCRIPT

It’s time for you to get your (beep) together. You’ve been playing way too small and sabotaging your success for way too long. Unless you tap into the power of personal responsibility like we’re going to be talking about today, you’ll be going nowhere fast.

Hi. I’m Eric Partaker and I’m on a mission to help entrepreneurs reach their full potential in both business and life. Stick around for the full message today because we’re going to be talking about how you can tap into the power of personal responsibility so you can take things up a level in your business and life.

Now, I definitely didn’t have my (beep) together for years. I mean I almost died 10 years ago as a result of not focusing properly on my health. My relationships were all over the place. I wasn’t achieving what I was hoping to do in the world of business. Yeah, I definitely wasn’t where I was hoping to be, but by tapping into the power of personal responsibility which we’re going to be going through today, I ended up getting into the best health and shape of my life. I became recognized as the CEO of the Year in the UK, built several businesses including helping build Skype before we sold it to eBay, built a chain of restaurants, built the Peak Performance Coaching business that I have today, and all while becoming a lot more present and available as both a husband and father because of tapping into the power of personal responsibility.

So let’s dive into how you can do the same and totally up your game in both business and life. The first thing that we’re going to be talking about relates to my book, The Three Alarms, which presents a simple system for how you can transform your health, wealth, and relationships forever. This first principle is all about deciding who it is that you want to be because look, there’s lots of things that we can do to improve our lives. There’s lots of areas that we can focus on. If you kind of listen to everything out there, you’ll be focusing on trying to improve a million different things and the change is expected to happen gradually, slowly over time. That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that you can really up your personal responsibility game and change the results in your life by focusing on just three areas, deciding who you want to be in just three areas, your health, your wealth, and your relationships, and bringing some intentionality into those arenas because those are the three areas which demand our greatest responsibility in life.

These are the three areas where you owe it to yourself to demonstrate the highest degree of personal responsibility. Why? Because without your health, you’re nothing. Right? I mean it doesn’t matter what’s going on in your life if you’re not healthy. If you put yourself at risk of death, for example, then none of that matters. Our wealth, second area because if we don’t have the means that we need to live the life that we want, then well we’re not going to be exactly achieving happiness or satisfaction in life, are we? And then our relationships because life is about love. Life is about sharing happiness with others, with those that matter most to us. So our health, wealth, and relationships, three areas that demand our personal responsibility, and what I recommend that you do is be intentional about those three areas. Decide what does your best look like in each of those arenas.

For me on the health front, it’s a world fitness champion. That’s who I show up. That’s the version of me, for example, that goes to the gym in the morning. On the work front, it’s the world’s best coach. That’s the version of me that shows up for my clients and helps them build their businesses, helps them close the gap between their current and best self. And on the home front, it’s all about becoming the world’s best husband and father. That’s who I am in the evening. That’s the identity that I shift into. By bringing that intentionality and taking responsibility for what best looks like, defining it for me in each of those three key areas, health, wealth, and relationships, it’s definitely helped me get my act together and it’s helped me shoot for something that represents the best in me. So I encourage you to think in those three areas, decide who you want to be. Let’s up your game. Let’s get your stuff together in those areas, and you’ll see a huge shift in the quality and in the benefits that you receive in life.

Now, the second thing that you can do which follows on from the first is a concept that I call champion proofs. Now let’s say, for example, that by deciding who you want to be, by getting your act together, by taking more responsibility, defining what best looks like in each of those three areas, let’s say you do that, but now you need to evidence that you’re actually being the person that you say you are in each of those areas. I like to do that on a daily basis. If each of those versions of me, the world fitness champion, the world’s best coach, the world’s best husband and father, if each of those versions of me represent the champion version of me, then I need to prove that on a daily basis I’m evidencing, I’m stepping into that champion version of me.

I do that through a concept I call champion proofs, which is simply each and every day, I pick what’s the one thing that I could be doing which, if done, proves that I’m stepping into the champion version of me. So for example, world fitness champion. On a daily basis, I might say, “Okay. Today, to prove that I’m a world fitness champion, I’m going to burn 700 calories on the stationary bike or I’m going to do 10 sets of 10 on the leg press or I’m going to do …” I don’t know. Pick another cardio or resistance routine. On the world’s best coach front, I can pick, “Well okay. What am I going to do here to evidence that I’m the world’s best coach?” And it could be that I’m going to deliver a knockout session, give it my all for a group of people that I’m perhaps training on peak performance principles. Right?

And then on the world’s best husband and father front, I could ask myself, “Okay. Well what could I do today in the context of today that would prove that I’m being the world’s best husband and father?” And that might be something as simple as telling my wife that I love her or it could be something as simple as playing a video game or playing a game with one of my boys, but I think on a daily basis, “How can I evidence that I’m being my best?” So champion proofs, second thing that I encourage you to be or, sorry, to do on a daily basis to evidence that you’re getting your act together and you’re being all that you’re capable of being.

Number three thing that I recommend you do to really tap into the power of personal responsibility and get your act together is become a single tasker. So the average person when they’re moving throughout their day, they don’t have their stuff together and they’re focusing on a million different things. They might be working on something in one moment and then in social media the next moment and then on a phone call and they’re just jumping around throughout their day. If you’ve ever read the book The One Thing, you’ll find that research shows the average person loses 28% of their workday by just jumping around from one thing to the next. Now, that might not sound like a lot because you think, “Hey, I got the next day. I can make that up,” but that’s 28% of every single day. If we apply that to the number of work weeks in a year, that means the average person is losing 13 weeks a year jumping around from task to task to task rather than staying with things long enough to actually get them done.

So 13 weeks a year, what does that mean? That means that the average person is only playing with three quarters in their year instead of four. They’re missing a quarter. Over the course of a professional career, a 40-year career, the average person loses a decade. Do you think you can possibly get your stuff together if you’re missing a decade? That’s like two extra careers you could fit in in your lifetime. So what do you do in this regard? How can you get your act together here? How can you tap into the power of personal responsibility? By really focusing on single tasking throughout your day, working in blocks of time, 30 minutes, 60 minutes, and resisting that temptation. Get your phone out of sight. Don’t have all these browser tabs open on your computer while you’re working. Focus one thing at a time and you’ll see your output significantly increase, and you’ll definitely feel like you got your stuff together when you’re producing at the level that you deserve to be producing at, that others deserve for you to be producing at, and that you’re capable of producing at.

Number four thing that you can do to get your act together is turn pro. Make the decision to show up as a professional, not an amateur. This is one of the most powerful concepts that you can embrace. It’s life-changing. When I get my clients, the entrepreneurs that I coach, when I get them to embrace the power of this not just theoretically, but to apply it, to put it in action and experience the benefits, they tell me it’s life-changing. I know because I’ve experienced it myself. It’s been life-changing for me. Now, what does a professional versus an amateur mindset? It’s simply this. An amateur needs to feel like doing something in order to take action. So for an amateur, feeling generates action. Okay? An amateur thinks that feeling generates action. Professional flips that around. They know that action generates feeling.

Now, why is this so powerful? Because how many times during the course of a day, and you can certainly relate to this, do you know you should be doing something, but you say to yourself, “I don’t feel like doing it,” and as a result, you don’t do it and then later you feel a sense of regret or a lack of fulfillment because you know you should have, but that you didn’t do it? Right? Happens to all of us, right? Now, my life used to be dominated by that mindset. I was an amateur. I didn’t do things because I didn’t feel like doing them. Did you go to the gym today? No. Why not? Didn’t feel like it. Did you get that piece of work done that you said was due today? No. Why not? I Didn’t feel like it. Did you do that special thing for your wife or play with your kids like they wanted you to? No, I was feeling a little bit tired. I didn’t do that either.

That’s an amateur existence and that was my existence before I got my stuff together and before I started to tap into this power of personal responsibility. Now, with a professional mindset, did you go to the gym? Yeah. Did you feel like going? No. But you went to the gym? Well yeah, because what does feeling like going to the gym have to do with it? I show up, I go whether I feel like it or not. And then what ends up happening of course when you get into this mindset and you actually practice this is that you recognize that the feeling is nothing more than the antics of a small child trying to get you to not do something, and you can actually just sit there and smirk at it as you would the antics of a small child and just do whatever it is because the moment you get started, the moment you take action, the action generates feeling.

So even if you don’t feel like, for example, you want to go to the gym, you want to work out, exercise, even if you don’t feel like that, the moment you start within five, 10 minutes, all those positive hormones kick in and the action generates feelings in the other direction. Ah, I’m so glad I’m here. I’m so glad I showed up. I’m so glad I did this. I still do this on a daily basis for example. I mean there’s tons of times when I’m thinking, “Oh my gosh, I got so much that I need to get through or so much I need to do or oh my gosh, how am I going to get through that schedule, that routine,” but I just push myself. I get started because I know the action generates feeling. I made a decision to turn pro years ago and I tap into that mindset on a regular, regular basis.

Number five, the number five thing that you can do to tap into the power of personal responsibility and get your act together all rests in one of my favorite proverbs. It’s a proverb from Japan and it states, “Fall down seven times, stand up eight.” See, the game is not about avoiding the knockdowns. The game is more about how quickly you stand back up, right? Marcus Aurelius, great Roman emperor, wrote in his personal journal exactly this, that he should expect to be knocked down repeatedly in life and that that wasn’t the game. The game wasn’t avoiding the knockdowns. The game was how quickly he could stand back up. If you really want to get your act together, stop worrying about the knockdowns. Stop getting upset when things don’t go your way. Stop getting discouraged when things become too challenging. Stop sulking when things don’t result in the way that you had hoped, and instead fall down seven times, stand up eight.

As long as you keep getting back up and keep trying, you’ll evidence to yourself that you have your act together, you’re tapping into the power of personal responsibility, and that, my friend, is one of the surest ways that you can navigate the ups and downs of life because, look, let’s face it. Life throws us unexpected punches all the time. One of my favorite quotes from Mike Tyson is, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Now, he was expecting in his day that his punch would put the person on the ground and they wouldn’t be standing back up. Don’t be that person. Right? You’re a lot more powerful than that. So step into that challenge, stand back up, step into the discomfort, fall down seven times, stand up eight.

So I hope you enjoyed that. It’s time for you to get your (beep) together. It’s time for you to tap into the power of personal responsibility. I’ve just given you five golden ways in which you can do that, evidence-based applied real methods I’ve used in my own life, in the lives of the entrepreneurs that I work with on a daily basis, and they’re at your disposal to use too. So I hope you’ve enjoyed that and if you head over to my website at ericpartaker.com, you’ll also be able to subscribe to my weekly insights newsletter.