What if you are worth it?

(time to want better for yourself darling.)

I have big goals for next year.

I will achieve all of them (some might change as I change) and plan to take you along this journey.

Right now, I am using the last two months of this year to establish the groundwork for my future goals and refine the current systems and routines I have set in place to achieve them.

So far, I am very happy with where I got myself in life.

One of my main goals this year was to build and grow my business to be able to live comfortably, by relying on an income that is mainly generated by myself.

I still have a little side job (I work in a gym for around 10 hours per week) but earn more than the average Swiss person whilst working half of the time most people put in.

My mornings usually start at 5 am (5:30 am on the weekends), and I get most of my work done until I head off to the gym to coach or get a workout in.

By 11 am, my day is usually done (unless I teach a class or work at the gym in the evening), leaving me to do whatever I feel like doing that day.

Since the biggest chunk of work is done when my focus is at its best, I dedicate the rest of my day to educating myself on topics I am curious about, socialising, looking after my body and mental health or working on new projects I want to create.

The motivation behind achieving my goals for this year comes from my need to honour a value that is very dear to me.

I want to be responsible for myself.

The idea that someone else can tell me

• what to do
• when to do it
• how I should do it

has always been very off-putting to me.

The idea that I would have to work on projects

• I am not interested in
• with people I don’t care about
• in an environment I don’t want to be in

was all I needed to envision to find the necessary courage to take responsibility for all aspects of my life instead.

- I want to be responsible for my health.

- I want to be responsible for my income.

- I want to be responsible for the quality of my relationships.

- I want to be responsible for the standards at which I live life.

- I want to be responsible for the success or failure of my goals.

What everyone wants but no one says out loud.

You want to be free and autonomous.

You want to live your life on your own terms.

You want to choose what you want to do with your days, regardless of the day of the week, and you want to do that with little to no restrictions.

Ideally, you would like to be able to do that for the rest of your life, not just when your boss allows you to go on holiday.

If you think that isn’t true, then I want you to ask yourself the following question:

“If I would get paid the same amount of money (or more) at the end of every month without having to have to go back to my job, would I still want to go to work next Monday?

Most people wouldn’t go back to their jobs because it’s just a way to pay their bills at the end of the month.

But what if you could replace your boring, repetitive work with meaningful, exciting and purpose-driven projects that are going to elevate all aspects of your life?

• Your health.
• Your income.
• Your standards.
• Your relationships.

I wouldn’t be honest if I told you that the life you desire is easily accessible.

Most people live the same life you do because it’s very rare to find people who understand that the quality of your life is a direct reflection of the value you bring to the world.

Right now, you are replaceable.

If you quit your job today, your boss will find someone else to do what you’ve done for the last 10 years.

The monthly salary you earn is reflective of the value you bring to your boss.

Your income can only increase if the value you bring to the company increases. That usually happens when you climb the hierarchical ladder of a company through furthering education, exceptional dedication and/or skill development.

But since you depend on your boss for your income, you will never have control and freedom over how much you earn and what you want to do with your time.

The same equation is true with all the other aspects of your life.

If you are a person who doesn’t bring much value to a relationship, people will easily replace you with someone else, let you down or make very little effort to keep this friendship with you.

If your health is worth a lot to you, the value of being healthy will be reflected in the way you look and prioritise your mental and physical well-being.

So if you want to build a better future for yourself, you will have to become a more valuable human being. To do that, you need 3 things:

1. Power
2. Responsibility
3. Control

1) Why you want power

All of your most painful experiences can be tied back to a situation of powerlessness.

You felt like you didn’t have a choice, you were forced into doing a certain thing and didn’t have any control over a situation.

This has obviously resulted in painful experiences and/or emotions.

It can be the frustration you feel on a Monday morning because you have to go back to a job you dislike because you have to pay your bills at the end of the month.

It can be despair and helplessness you feel when a loved one is in a terrible situation and you can’t help them in any way.

It can be the disappointment, anxiety or stress you feel when you try your best at something but still doesn’t go your way.

Everyone wants power. But few will acknowledge that because of the negative association we have with this word.

Power is simply the ability to bring about or create a desired outcome.

If you are hungry and want to eat some food (desired outcome), you get into the kitchen and make yourself some dinner.

Congratulations, you’ve just used your personal power to fulfil one of your desires or needs.

Power isn’t inherently good or bad.

It’s what you do with the power you have that will create a positive or negative outcome in your life or the world.

You have the power to put food into your body that will heal you or you can choose to put food into your body that will make you sick.

You can use your power to influence people in a positive or a negative way.

So stop looking at power like it’s only a bad thing or something you shouldn’t want to embrace because that will lead you to more situations you feel powerless towards and simply make you bitter and resentful towards life and the world.

Power starts with how you think of yourself and how others perceive you.

You’ve spent your life trying to fit in and belong to be accepted. It’s something natural all of us are doing because of the conditioning we all go through during childhood.

The dangerous aspect that comes with avoiding being yourself is that you are simply like everyone else. Which means that you are replaceable and not of much value.

It’s also disrespectful towards yourself because you are constantly reinforcing the belief that “who you truly are isn’t good enough”.

You have played the character of the perfect obedient citizen for long enough, and look where it got you.

Maybe it’s time to start detaching from the parts of this character that aren’t true to you and confidently choose the parts that make you different from everyone else.

You will gain power and become more valuable when you decide to:

• stop being so afraid of failing
• stop being so timid with your ideas and your actions
• stop being so attached to other people’s opinions about you

2) Why you want responsibility

Power and responsibility always come together.

Whenever you avoid taking responsibility, you are also giving up some of your power.

Remember, power is the ability to bring about what you want.

This means that change can only happen through taking responsibility for everything that is or was in your control.

• If you don’t take responsibility for your income, you can’t have control over your time.
• If you don’t take responsibility for your body, you can’t have control over your health.
• If you don’t take responsibility for your emotions, you can’t have control over your thoughts.
• If you don’t take responsibility for your actions, you can’t have control over your life.

No wonder you feel powerless towards life if you have little control over your time, your health, your thoughts and your relationships.

There is something I really want you to get here: you are responsible for the things that happen in your life.

Blaming the world or your environment won’t fix the mistakes you made or change the consequences of your decisions.

Look at yourself and see where you can find the elements within yourself that are to blame for what happened.

In what ways are you responsible for the negative outcomes of your life?

Once you find that, own it.

You can now step into your power and use that power to bring about a better outcome.

“It is not possible to experience a feeling of control unless one is willing to give up the safety of protective routines. Only when a doubtful outcome is at stake, and one is able to influence that outcome, can a person really know whether she is in control.  —  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

3) Why you want control

If your sense of control only comes from the predictable external situations and routines, then you aren’t truly in control.

You only know if you are in control when you know how to think, act and feel, regardless of your external environment.

Will you still have control over your income if your boss fires you?

Will you still have control over your emotions if a situation becomes really stressful?

Will you still have control over your body when that workout session becomes really hard, and you feel like giving up?

Will you still have control over your actions when your attention is constantly pulled away by endless distractions?

Most likely not.

This means that you have to get better at controlling everything that is in your control.

• Your health.
• Your income.
• Your standards.
• Your relationships (the part you are playing in your relationships)

You might ask, why should I do all of this Olivia?

All this power and responsibility stuff, it’s so complex and so much work. Isn’t life meant to be simple?

Life becomes simple when you solve all the basic problems most of us have spent our lives running away from.

The accurate question here should be, are you worth all that effort?

What if you were?

What if for once, you decided to try your hardest to finally make things a bit better for yourself?

There are two months left to this year.

If you don’t become more powerful, embrace responsibility and learn how to control what is in your control, next year will be the exact same as this year.

If you allow that to happen, then what was the point of going through this whole year in the first place?

At the start of this letter, you heard me confidently say that I will be experiencing the goals I’ve set myself up to achieve next year.

My confidence is backed up by years of gradually taking responsibility for all aspects of my life and becoming a better human by developing different skills and bringing value to the world through my free content, self-improvement courses and coaching.

If you are in control of your mind, your body and your actions, you have the freedom to direct all the power you have towards what you want to create.

You already have power. Now it’s time to take responsibility for where you have gotten yourself in life and learn how to control your future actions and decisions to lead you to the freedom and autonomy you deserve.

I will see you in next week’s letter,

Until then, take care.

Oli