Situational Prison: A condition, action or way of living that prevents you from doing the things you really want to.

Situational prison is something that I think many people inherentely get stuck in one way or another at some point in their lives. This doesn’t neccessarily mean situational prison is a bad thing, like having children for example would limit your ability to do certain things but may be something that outweighs whatever else it is you want to do. In this post however, I want to focus on the negative situational prison(s) that we can create for ourselves that really limit our abilities to accomplish our goals and dreams.

I have been stuck in many situational prisons in my life from relationships I didn’t really want to be in to having loads of debt that prevented me from doing pretty much anything. As I am sure you can relate, this is not a fun point in life and really brings down your overall attitude, which in turns drastically effects the bottom line of being able to do what you want with your life. Recently I have done a lot of thinking about situational prison and how it really impacts so many people, but more importantly, how I could get out of it when it popped up.

This takes quite a bit of honesty if you want to do it right, but can be useful in helping you figure out the things you need to eliminate or change to allow yourself the freedom to do what you want. Below is a set of questions I used to analyze myself and it may not be relevant to everyone, but I thought I would share.

1. What in my life causes me significant stress, unhappiness or anger?
2. Of these things, how many of them can I change? (Sorry, you have to pay tax)
3. How could I go about changing them?
4. What would improve if I made the changes?
5. What (if any) would the consequences of making the changes be?

Once you have listed all of these out, take a good look over them and answer each question for one specific situational prison. At the end, you should have a good overview of your current life and a path to changing it (if you really want to).

You may have noticed that I just put a “Reading Music” section in the sidebar of the blog. Personally, I have found music to be an incredible motviator for accomplishing work and creating a positive attitude. I realize that all of you may not have my “exquisite” taste in hip hop music (lol) but this can be applied to any genre of music that you enjoy. I really think that listening to those songs that you really like and make you feel good can have a tremendous positive effect on your overall progress and motivation. Next time your feeling tired, un-motivated or just plain lazy, throw on a track that you absolutely love and start grinding it out!

I am planning to update the reading music section really often cause I am constantly finding new awesome songs I want to share. Also, if any of you like a soca/hip-hop/reggae mix I listen to Trini Radio all day while I’m working, it’s free and broadcasted live from Trinidad and Tobago, thanks to Greg from RRRMusic for the link to that.

Back on the money side of things, I thought I would put a positive light on being rich rather than dwelling on the negative aspects. No matter what anyone tells you, there are specific traits, characteristics and actions that all successful people embody that greatly improve the way they conduct business and ultimately, their overall success. Below is my list of the 20 Traits of Successful People.

Successful People

1. Wake Up Early to get working and into the day before everyone else.
2. Are Patient in solving problems and making business decisions.
3. Innovate in most things they do, from idea to implementation.
4. Are Decisive in making quick choices.
5. Persist at anything they do.
6. Use Discipline while conducting business.
7. Organize everything to have a smooth running operation.
8. Are Entrepreneurial not neccesarrily literally, but in thinking.
9. Work Hard at every task, project and challenge.
10. Are Goal-Oriented in terms of their path to success.
11. Use Creativity to identify new opportunities.
12. Understand People and how to get the most out of them.
13. Find Solutions to common problems.
14. Are Outgoing in every sense of the word.
15. Respect Money both physically and in principal.
16. Manage Their Time effectively and appropriately.
17. Are Bothered by anything that doesn’t meet the highest standards.
18. Network with like-minded people.
19. Motivate not only themselves but others.
20. Are Curious by nature.

There you have it, how many are you able to tick off the list? Chances are, the more of these traits that describe your line of the thinking the better chance you have of being successful in anything you undertake.

This post was sparked by the continuing happenings at a poker affiliate forum that I regularly visit and is not targetted at any specific individuals or comments, but more to the overall concept of learning to change your business strategy when things don’t go your way. In any industry, there will be (almost guaranteed) bad things that happen, stupid policy shifts, rip-off’s, dissapointments and basically anything else you can think of that will test your business acumen. In my point of view, this is all really just a test of finding effective solutions to rising problems and is really what developing and maintaining a great business is all about.

Take a look at any industry and look at the market leaders, the ones who make the biggest profits, have the best product and usually are miles ahead of their competition. There is a simple reason for this which is the ability to use foresight and adapt accordingly. If you are really “in love” with your industry, your ear will constantly be to the ground and *most of the time* you will have a pretty good idea when things are going to go south with one thing or another. It is learning to use this foresight that will ultimately put you way ahead of your competition. If you sense a negative change coming, you better believe you are most likely right and start planning accordingly on how to adapt your business model to accommodate the shifting marketplace.

This seemingly simple skill is something that many take for granted in business but it really is what seperates the average from the excellent when it comes to strategy. Learning to identify potential problems and working to successfully overcome them is something that will not only help your business but you as a person as you continue on throughout your life.

I may not be qualified to speak on this topic or maybe I am, but either way since it is a personal realization I will share it anyways. Basically after doing a lot of thinking recently I came to the conclusion that being very rich and having tons of money freaks me out and this may have limited my ability to attain it (I haven’t yet) thus far. What I’m talking about is not the actual concept of having the money and the things you can do with it, but rather what it forces you to think about.

One thing that surprised me when I really thought about it was the extreme importance I put on money in terms of benchmarking my own happiness, image and general outlook on life. We all know that money is the not the answer to our problems, but I am convinced that most think it would be a good start. As I started forcing myself to be more honest about it, I started to realize that having a tremendous amount of money would be useful in a scary way. Since I place so much value on being rich, how would I be if I actually was?

When I started honestly imagining this I began to really see that being wealthy would make me question other areas and aspects of my life since I couldn’t worry about money anymore and quite honestly, that freaks me out. It is so easy to bury other important things in your life when your concern is first and foremost about money. This all goes back to the importance thing, so if you have put a high price (no pun intended) on being mega rich like I do, in terms of overall happiness, can you imagine yourself not having to worry about money. Would you TRULY be a happier person? What would you worry about? What would you do with your time? What things would change?

I think asking these questions of yourself is really important and can be beneficial in helping you to figure out what you need to do to change your outlook on different aspects of your life while re-modelling yourself into someone that will be a happy person first and (hopefully) a rich person second. It is far to easy in my opinion to consume yourself with money while overlooking other aspects of your life that could definetely increase your overall happiness as a person.