The Circles Of Life – Which Are You On?

In 2025, with AI tools, remote work, and endless distractions, success still boils down to one thing: your mindset.

Years ago, I found some notes I had taken in San Diego at Frank Kern’s event. I went through it and got some nice little reminders. But, one of the sheets had something that I remember Frank talking about. And at the time I remember thinking, “This stuff comes before any online success can be had and is so important”.

So, today, I bring you my interpretation of the concept. I’ll just call it “The Circles Of Life“. There are two of them, and we all need to make a personal decision which one we will live on.

The Circle Of Nothing

Most people live in a frame of mind which is not conducive to success. Their thoughts and the thoughts they allow into their heads from others literally forbid success. Such a mindset actually attracts failure and will revel in the failure of others.

These are the people who will chastise people who find success. They may think they were successful because they did it on the backs of other people. You know this type. They exist everywhere.

These people live inside this circle…

They live in a world of anger and fear. As a result, their actions are wasteful and don’t really accomplish anything. This leads to frustration (often with themselves). Then, they just want an escape from their own lives. To find that escape, they fall to the news and other TV shows. Well, the news propagates fear and anger with all their talk of controversy, murder, sickness and death. Which then breeds more frustration and anger.

And so the circle continues…. over and over and over again. Until you die.

The Circle Of Success

There is another way. And this circle is one which is entered by DECISION. It is not something you arrive at by the luck of the draw. You actually DECIDE to flip the bird at the other circle.

There are fewer people on this circle. It is the road less traveled. However, the world rides on the backs of people on this circle, whether the people on the other circle want to admit it or not.

This circle breeds success. At the core is doing the right actions. Doing things which help others and which does the greatest good for the great number. It means doing ethical actions. It means working toward accomplishing positive goals. This, in turn, brings on an expectation of positive outcomes. You may have noticed that people on this circle don’t expect failure. They operate on the assumption that they will succeed. Even when they fail, they take the positive from it and apply it to their next endeavor. This breeds working on the right things and not wasting time on negative things. This, lastly, brings on positive results which then encourages more positive actions. It is a lot easier to expect success when you actually see good results, is it not?

And so this circle continues. It breeds success.

How To Stay On The Successful Path

Success in life comes from a mindset of success. And that mindset comes from a DECISION. You either decide to walk the path of success or you decide not to.

I think there are 6 principles which, I believe, stand as common traits of the successful. When you talk to successful people or read biographies from well known entrepreneurs and CEOs, you very often see these 6 things in play.

Let’s address them one by one.

#1 – See yourself achieving your goal.

This isn’t exactly a new concept. You’ve likely heard about the importance of visualizing what you’re going for. And we get pictures of sitting in bed, eyes snapped shut, and picturing ourselves doing something groovy. Others use things like “mind movies” which are another route to the same thing.

I would like to take it up a notch because I believe simply imagining your goal being accomplished might seem a little too “new age” for some people. And, for me at least, a “mind movie” seems like a weird roundabout way to trick yourself into doing what is really just a natural ability. We need to make this more real.

A technique I’ve addressed before is to take out a sheet of paper and write out your ideal day. I’ve heard this one from a number of people. What you want to do is SEE yourself living out your ideal day. This has to be a day which you could live over and over again and be completely happy. Where will you live? What will you do? How do you feel? What is the food you’re eating? Who do you wake up next to? What’s your house look like? What’s it smell like?

Sit down and do this on paper in as much detail as you can possibly come up with. It might even take you a few hours to complete. Here’s what you’re doing…

By getting VERY exact and thorough, you are more completely immersing yourself in this new reality. And all of us have a deep-down, spiritual ability to make the real world match the reality which WE created. Most of us just forgot we have that ability, but it is there in all of us. The exterior world is just the lowest common denominator of all of our illusions put together. Individually, we can create our own worlds. And, through this exercise, you are creating this world and doing it thoroughly.

You will begin to THINK in this reality. It will become a part of you. And one day, you are very likely to pull out that sheet of paper, read what you wrote, and be simply floored at how much of it came to fruition. But, don’t be suprised. It wasn’t luck. You created the world around you. You just did it according to a design spec which you made.

#2 – Don’t compare yourself to others. Compare to who you could be.

It is natural to look at people who have accomplished more than you or who have more than you, and feel a bit down. You wonder what’s wrong with you. Why haven’t you accomplished that?

Look at what you’re doing when you think these thoughts. You are invalidating yourself. You are making less of yourself. And you should have no better friend on the face of this planet than yourself.

Such questions also rely on the assumption that there is some element of success that you don’t have and they do. What?! Everything you need to build your empire in life is right between your ears. You need nothing more. All that’s left to do is (a) stop getting in your own way, and (b) start using what you have.

Also, keep this in mind: You get what you flow power to. You, as a spiritual being, are a source of immense power. You have the power to create new realities by simply VALIDATING THEM. If you validate your incompetences, you’ll get them. If you validate your shortcomings, you’ll further them. On the other hand, validate the SUCCESS of others, you’ll see more success. Validate your strengths, you further them.

#3 – Associate with like-minded, success-minded people.

Emotion and energy is contagious. In my post about minimalism, I broke it down to energy flows and, at least for me, when I look at it that way it explains so well why emotion is contagious.

On that note, it just makes sense to surround yourself with people who support you and aspire to achieve the thing you, too, want. This is why mastermind groups are so powerful. Even if the people in the group are in different businesses, they all aspire to success. Being in that sphere of people is a supportive atmosphere for helping you foster your own inner success.

On the flip side, this means you need to control or get rid of people in your environment bent on getting you down. If you have a family member or “friend” who belittles you when you talk about your goals or makes fun of you when you blog, you need to exert some control over that. Do you ever get around a particular person and just feel a bit disturbed or down? You need to make a decision: handle it or part ways. In most cases, you can handle it by simply talking with them and getting their agreement not to do that. Many times, by simply confronting them on it, they’ll stop. On the outside chance that there is nothing you can do, then you might need to make the decision to part ways.

You have the right to control your own environment. You have the right to control what goes in and out of your own head. Exercise that right if you must.

#4 – Build a Success Library.

Most successful people read a lot. They build a library. And we’ll call it a success library if that material serves to improve our lives.

If we look at most people, they don’t have a success library. Hell, most don’t have a library at all because they hardly read anything. Their libraries consist of the latest copy of Cosmo or the daily newspaper, complete with its headlines of death and controversy. There is nothing redeeming about reading about a plane crash, learning about the latest bout of insanity from Washington, or reading about the asinine ramblings of celebrities.

Instead, a success library would be about things which further your knowledge or expand your viewpoints of the world around you. And, this leads me into my next point…

#5 – Fill your head with good stuff.

We’ve all heard the phrase “You are what you eat.”. Well, it applies mentally, too.

If we look at the first circle of life, it self-perpetuates because of the crap those people choose to let into their heads (and, hence, validate). Let’s look at television, for instance. The 24-hour news channels are full of nothing but controversy. It is mostly people yelling at each other. If you go to social media (especially ones rife in news and politics), it is often centered around negativity and people arguing with one another.

Why would I let that into my head? If my reaction to watching that stuff is to get angry, WHY DO I WATCH IT?!?! Me getting angry at the TV solves NOTHING. But, it sure as hell means I’m accomplishing nothing useful in my life.

Today’s news is a cancer on our society. These people outright ignore good news and instead zoom their cameras into every bad thing in our world and make it seem as if that IS the world. They twist stories to make them more controversial. If today’s “news” was a person I knew, I would straight-up kick their ass.

Only you can control what goes into your head. If you let it in and think about it, you’re validating it. You’re giving it energy. You might as well just wrap your lips around the tailpipe of your car, because mentally, that’s exactly what you’re doing to yourself when you watch today’s news media and most TV shows.

#6 – Draw success from other like-minded people. Draw strength.

You might notice a common theme here. 🙂

In thinking about this, I would actually rephrase this slightly. Because I don’t believe we “draw” success from others. Instead, I think we validate success in others, and hence validate success in ourselves.

When you go to a conference, you go to network with people. It allows you to network with others who have the same ambitions. These are like-minded people. They have varying levels of success at it, but all the vectors point more or less the same direction.

It is contagious. And it furthers you along.