My Story (Part 2 of 4) - Deuces: When to Say Bye-Bye

Anything that you wish to keep in proper working order needs to be fed properly.  To have a healthy body, you have to feed it right.  You wouldn't put sugar water rather than "premium petrol" into a Maserati and expect it to perform well.  The same is true for your body, of course. Food is the fuel that drives either keeps your body in proper working order or has it broken down on the side of the road. 

Most people understand this without much explanation, but we all seem to minimize the impact of feeding our minds well.  The biggest driver of performance - at anything - is what we expect and what we believe.  If you believe, you can achieve.  So, if we know that strong performance comes from high expectation and strong self belief, then, of course, we should be very careful about who we allow to feed our minds. Most of us are not discerning enough.

There was a popular song a couple years ago called "Deuces."  It was about saying good bye to someone in your life by figuratively - presumably - "putting the deuces up" (flashing the peace sign) and "say bye-bye, say bye-bye, say bye-bye to her."

 
The sad fact is that not everyone in your life wants to see you do well.  So many people are on standby waiting to give you all the reasons why what you are trying to do won't work and why you are foolish to even try.  I strongly believe the only people you should invite into your life are people for whom your success is their success.  We need people who will help us get to the mountaintop and stay to celebrate with us rather than wishing that they got there first.  And we should be that person to the people in our lives as well.  Allowing anyone to feed you "mental garbage" is no less dangerous - perhaps even more dangerous - than eating the physical kind.  Both will make you sick and quick!

I have learned first hand about the power that positive and negative support has had on my personal performance. Neither is a guarantee. Surrounding yourself with positive people who believe in you does not necessarily mean you will win.  On the flip side, prolonged exposure to negative people, while toxic, does not have to be fatal. 

However, if you want to succeed bigger, faster and more consistently, you will have to learn when and to whom to say "deuces."