Have you ever considered the power of a personal growth mantra in steering your life’s course?
Learn strategies to adopt a proactive mindset, take ownership, and accelerate your personal and professional development.
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Life is full of challenges, but it’s also a chance to grow. We all face ups and downs, but there’s room for personal growth and change within them. One way to kickstart this journey is by embracing a personal growth mantra. Think of it as a powerful saying that keeps you focused on becoming better and achieving your goals. It’s like your own motivational compass, helping you guide life’s twists and turns toward success.
Amelia
If you can embrace owning it as your opportunity to be empowered to, then change it, that becomes… like that’s just liberating.
The Power of Personal Growth Mantras
Amelia
Duayne, in Live Life Build, we like to have lots of sayings that you and I often collect quotes from. These sayings resonate with us, have a lot of meaning for us, or are good reminders to help us stay motivated about certain things.
Do you have one saying, though, that you live your life by that is a mantra for how you want to think about things?
Duayne
Nothing happens to you. Everything happens because of you.
And that gets used in every single situation I get into. Now, whether something’s gone wrong on-site, something’s wrong with a relationship or communication breakdown with someone, a trade hasn’t shown up, an issue with an employee, you name it.
I take the time now to take my breaths, calm down, and say, “Look, why is that happening? What have I done to be in that situation? What have I done to make them do that?”
It’s amazing how many solutions you come up with when you start thinking and using that saying to live your life. That’s a Grant Cardone saying. I got it from him.
Amelia
It’s a great one, isn’t it? Nothing happens to you. It all happens because of you.
Because it immediately forces you to take personal responsibility for your role in whatever situation you’re in. So often, we hear builders complaining about things. I mean, people complain about things.
People complain about where they’re at or what’s happening around them and to them.
And the only thing you can do in those situations is you can’t control what anybody else is doing. You can only take responsibility for where you’re at and control what you’re doing, how you’re responding, and the choices that you’re going to make. And so it’s fantastic that that’s the saying that works for you in that regard.
The Role of Personal Mantras in Guiding Life’s Challenges
Duayne
I think for me, it’s helped me. I try so hard not to make excuses. Even something as simple as getting caught up in a phone conversation or being five minutes late to a meeting or something. I’ll always sit there now and go, well, nothing happens to you, it happens because of you, what happened then?
It’s quite easy to set yourself rules to try to prevent it from happening again. And that can be… well, look, I can see who’s calling me. I’m 10 minutes away from a meeting. I know that’s going to be a long call; don’t take the call. If you’re running late for a meeting or something, think about it… Did I talk to someone too long?
There’s always a reason.
And probably more importantly, when you get to the site situation and what happens in your jobs, and we’ve had a couple of situations in our own projects at the moment that I sit here and shake my head, I go through that saying and the issues we’re having completely because of the decisions I’ve made.
We broke a couple of our rules, and we’re paying the price. So I’ve got to own it. And I’ve got to move on. That saying is simple but powerful. If you take the time to think about it, you have to own it.
There’s no other option, but it puts you in your place. And it makes you think,
“Well, shit, because I did that, that happened.”
Turning Challenges into Opportunities for Growth
Amelia
What’s interesting is that people would sometimes hear that saying, if nothing happens to you, it all happens because of you and think, “Oh gosh, well, then everything’s my fault.” That makes everything so much worse.
But if you flip your mindset about it, it helps you get in the driver’s seat of your own life and realise how much that can empower you to say,
“Okay, if I’m in this situation because of something I did, where did I stuff up? Where could I have taken three steps backward and made a different decision at a point that would have changed the outcome?”
This happens so often with builders when something goes wrong with their client, when there’s been a misunderstanding or an issue on-site.
And we do this with our members’ traceback.
Okay, at what point should you have had a better process?
Should you have communicated better?
Should you have made sure that they understood something?
Even though they were saying yes, yes, yes, did they understand it?
What will you do next project to avoid this situation happening again?
Because if you can embrace owning it as your opportunity to be empowered, then change it. That becomes liberating in terms of what it provides for you.
Nurturing an Active and Positive Mindset
Duayne
You’re exactly right; you could use that same, and it could go completely pear-shaped. But you could blame yourself for everything.
I think it’s important to talk about, obviously, a lot of anxiety, a lot of mental health in our industry, and I don’t want people to use that saying and put more pressure on themselves.
Again, that saying has made me a lot more open-minded as I’ve gotten older. It really makes me consider every single situation I get myself into. It’s probably a good saying, and I’ve just run with it, but it really ties in well.
So another thing I use quite regularly is there’s never a problem with any solution. And when you combine those two, because if nothing happens to you, it happens because of you, you’ve got to look at the solution to why that doesn’t happen again.
That saying is constantly on repeat in my mind now. If I get a phone call from my supervisor, a team member, a client, or whoever it may be because I’ve found that sense, I use sayings like this to run my life by, and I’m so focused on them.
It is very easy to get caught up in other people’s dramas, and a lot of people out there will call you because they love the drama.
Amelia
So many people are addicted to drama.
Duayne
I don’t give them an opportunity to drag that on. You’ve got to pull it up. And is that saying a lot now if one of my employees or especially an apprentice comes to chat with me about something they might think has gone wrong on-site? I’ll say to them, nothing happens to you. It happens because of you.
Why did that person say that? Why did that go wrong? Or why did you cut that wrong? There is a reason for everything. And when you find solutions, it just makes your days better, your weights better, and your mindset better. You focus on the positives.
Your Path to Self-Improvement with a Personal Mantra
Amelia
I think, too, that the key is realising that this isn’t just another opportunity to heap on yourself and be hard on yourself. It’s about being kind to yourself and staying in that positive mindset where there are no problems. There are only solutions.
Because then you can start doing what you do a really good job of not personalising everything; instead, you look at what you personally could have done differently.
It’s great because it means that you can. Everything isn’t just feedback. It’s feedback on what I need to do to personally change what I’m doing, how I’m showing up, how I’m speaking, how I’m communicating.
If I can depersonalise this and address what I can do personally, then it’s different from saying, “I’ve stuffed this up again.” There’s a big difference between recognising that just because you’ve made a mistake doesn’t make you a terrible person. That makes you a person who needs to make a different choice next time.
It’s always that thing that looking at what they’re saying can do in terms of opening opportunities to think differently, to take responsibility, and how exciting that can be because it means you can avoid those problems again in the future.
Duayne
Finding a saying that relates to you or a saying that motivates you, I think, is the key. There are so many sayings out there; for me, that one just stuck, and I’ve run with it.
But it’s that thing. I think a lot of people out there that might be watching this, and they’ll say, “It’s alright for Amelia and Duayne; they’ve got multiple businesses, and they always look happy and…”
Look, I have my struggles, just like everyone. I think it’s a combination of things. You find a saying that relates to you and resonates with you. Being open-minded is obviously a big help, but take every single thing that happens to you as a learning experience, improve on it, and keep going from there.
Amelia
Most definitely.
Share your experiences and journey with us in the comments below. Tell us about your personal growth mantras and the stories of transformation they’ve sparked. Your insights could be the beacon that guides someone else to their next breakthrough.
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