In today’s Blog, I want to talk about your personal filter. This is one of the top 2 things that will lead to your success or failure in your business.
Yes, I know that is a big statement, but I want you to hear me out. Hopefully, you’ll understand why I believe this when we’re done.
Let’s start with this statement. You can have all the business mechanics education in the world and still fail in your own business. You can have years of experience in corporate America and still fail in your own business. Because the truth is, you don’t really know what running a business is all about if you have never run one. Business success is all about your personal filter. So… what is this personal filter I keep talking about?
In the last blog post, we talked about failure. The old adage that you have to fail to succeed is NOT true. Learning through failure is the key to success, Failure does not lead to success. Failure only leads to more failure…. unless you learn and apply. What you learn through failure is information that goes into what we call your personal filter. Think about it like this, every single one of us has a filter that sits in our subconscious mind that analyzes every single bit of information that comes at it every day. Everything that comes into your brain is analyzed by this filter. Every person you listen to…. every podcast you listen to… every coworker that talks to you… every book you read… every TV show you turn on is feeding you information. Your subconscious filter, whether it’s a success or a failure filter when it takes that data in, it makes an instant decision on whether it’s going to accept or reject that information. So if somebody tells you something that you don’t believe, your personal filter says, “Nope, don’t believe that” throws it out the window and it’s gone. If you believe what the person is telling you, it becomes a new part of your filter. Your new updated filter will then help filter every bit of information that comes at you moving forward.
This filtering process started when you were born. Your parents started putting information in that filter. They tried to make you believe in the things they believe and think the way they think. When you started school, your teacher started giving you information, and your filter accepted or rejected that based on what your parents told you. Your friends tried to feed information based on peer pressure and it was based on what their parents were feeding them. You went to college and your college professors fed you information based on their entire histories. Your brain is constantly accepting or rejecting this information. When you got out of college and you got a job, your boss and the people you work with started giving you information. In every instance, you either accepted or rejected it based on your entire personal history since the day you were born. When you get into business. Every decision you make about your business is then based on every bit of information that’s ever gone into your head. Here is the key, if your filter doesn’t know how to accept positive success information, it will reject it. And then you will use that bad decision as a new decision-making tool.
This is why people fail. If you’ve never succeeded at something, your brain doesn’t know how to correctly process the information. Your brain literally doesn’t know how to succeed at whatever it is you’re doing. It’s a simple fact….If you’ve never succeeded in business, you don’t know how to succeed in business.
Now, you might get lucky, make the right decisions and make a million dollars, good for you. But that’s not the norm. I always like to say that when I teach these things, we have to apply the 80-20 rule. 80% of what I’m telling you is right. 20% of the time there’s going to be an outlier. It’s unjust, it’s unfair. Bad people can succeed for no good reason. Good people fail. That’s the 80-20 rule. But you have to understand that 80% of the time what I’m telling you here is a fact. if you’ve never succeeded in business, you don’t know how!
Okay, so here we are. If you are a new business, or even if you have been in business and not succeeding at the level you want to, your filter probably isn’t capable of making the right decisions for you to succeed. This is the whole point of failing, learning, failing, and learning. When you fail and learn something, you take that new information and it becomes part of your personal filter moving forward. You won’t make that mistake again.
Ok so we have talked about your need to learn, the question is… how can we speed that up? The fastest way is to get a mentor or coach. Maybe join a mastermind group. You need to get around people who are five or 10 steps ahead of you, that can tell you what you’re doing is wrong. You need to drop your ego and listen to what they’re telling you.
Here’s the big challenge, If you don’t have a success filter, then you don’t know when to drop your ego. If you don’t know when to drop your ego, you’re not going to take the advice they’re giving you…. And you still won’t succeed. You can join every mastermind group in the world. You can read every positive motivational book in the world. If your brain won’t accept the advice, it’s not doing you any good. So your biggest challenge is dropping that ego. You have to understand that your personal filter isn’t where it needs to be…. for you to get where you want to go. You need to allow somebody to come in and help you make those decisions. Let them help you have some success. You need to train your brain to be successful so that you can then make the right decisions moving forward.
It took me 20 years in the business of making failure after failure, bad decision after bad decision before I dropped my ego and listened.
So…. get hard-core and honest with yourself…If you don’t have a success filter, find somebody who does. Let them help you so that you can learn how to make the right decisions.
Don’t let your failure filter keep you from dropping your ego and learning from somebody else!!