The Earning Cycle

The Earning Cycle defines everything I feel is necessary for lasting change. If you want wealth, happiness, a loving relationship, a great job or anything else, you have to earn it. Lasting change doesn’t allow for quick fixes, cheats and stealing. It is a process and in order to earn the change, you have to be willing to stick with something long enough to get good at it.

Humans are constantly observing their surroundings and adapting as necessary for survival and growth. Our perception is the gate by which all things enter. To perceive something is to grasp with the mind. All of our senses are feeding information into our minds for interpretation. Our sight, touch taste smell, hearing and our instinct, are all providing an abundance of information for analysis. The gate keeper, our conscious mind, determines what is allowed to enter and what is not. This gatekeeper makes an instant judgment call based on our past experiences, beliefs and perspectives and only allows things to enter if we perceive that they will make us grow or provide protection. If we perceive something to be a danger, we will reject it. This doesn’t account for misinformation or deceit.

In order for something to take root in our subconscious mind, we have to learn or cultivate so that we can accept the new information. In essence we have to prepare our mind to receive. If we have past experiences with the information, this is easy. If we don’t have any experiences, we might feel a sense of anxiety and will need to trust before moving forward.

Once we accept the information, we have an opportunity to act or not to act. If we don’t act, the information is just that; information. Once we begin to take action on the new learning, we strengthen and nourish it through repetition. As we do it over and over again, our brain creates neural pathways and our subconscious mind runs this program automatically. We will eventually do it without thinking. Therefore, if you want to make a new behavior a routine or a habit, you must practice it over and over again. If you want to become an expert, you must practice while making adjustments. These adjustments will allow you to fine-tune your skill.

Only when you have learned something new and nurtured it, will you receive the reward for your labor. This is your harvest time where you receive the fruits of your labors. If your labor isn‘t producing the results you want, take that as feedback and trouble shoot the information you received or your efforts in nurturing. Either you have been misinformed or you haven’t nurtured properly. When you receive rewards for your labor, it is because you have taken appropriate action to that end.

The joy of this work is the rest period. I don’t mean that you give up and retire. This is the time when you get to enjoy your creations, share stories, offer thanks and teach others. This is the space where the expert lives because instead of just dreaming, the expert is enjoying the fruits of their labors.

Does this remind you of something? The four seasons? Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter? We Earn in seasons, so to speak. We have a learning phase, a nurturing, an earning and a rest phase. Each one vital to the next and all interconnected. If you don’t learn, you can’t earn. If you fail to nurture you will not enjoy the fruits or experience the rest phase.

We do things for two reasons, survival or advancement. Unfortunately, most of us live in survival and in survival you miss out on a lot of the opportunities to learn. You may learn something and not nurture properly because of fear. Because of survival, most of us never get beyond living day to day and earning the life we would truly like to have.

Unless our life becomes completely uncomfortable, or we are pushed to change, we will live exactly as we always have.

If you want to become who you are capable of becoming, you have to earn it. When you are ready, I am ready to push you and stretch you to the point that your life changes. You can do it yourself, but in most cases, your habits will win and you’ll keep doing what you’ve always done.

I have a coach because he pushes me to go further than I think I can. I wouldn’t be where I am today without mentoring and coaching. It has literally saved me years of frustration. I can do the same with you, but only if you start coaching with me.

Take action for yourself today! There is no need to wait for life to become extremely painful for you to take action. You can make a difference now!

Choose Up!

Nicholas Townsend Smith

The Expert Productivity Coach