“When it comes to having more of what we want—it does come down to making a choice.”
– Steve Napolitan

Welcome to The Steve Show. Today we’re going to talk, how do you choose your success and then get what you want?

When it comes to having more of what we want—it does come down to choice.

You might be thinking, “Oh, well there’s certain things in your life that you can’t choose.”

I think virtually almost everything we do choose in our life. We don’t always get exactly what we want. One of my teachers, Carl Buchheit talks about choosing and choosing again. And the factor that I want to talk about today is to accept what we’re given.

For example, if you choose something, you request it, “This is what I would like,” then you take what you get, and you look at it, and you have gratitude for what you’ve gained, but then you also choose again. Because we don’t always get everything we want. And in fact, let’s look at that for a second.

If you got everything that you wanted in your life right now in this moment, then what fun would life be after that? You might think it would be the best thing ever, but then it would not. It would not be cool.

My good friend and one of my teacher’s Michelle Masters always says, “What if you got all the food, every meal that you were going to eat right now? It wouldn’t be that cool.” If you have the best pizza in the world, and it is hands-down the best, but then you had to eat the whole thing in one bite, there wouldn’t be much to enjoy, you would actually be looking for how to breathe, right?

This is the same with life. Life is a journey. Life is about learning. That’s why you hear so many people say, “Embrace the journey. Love life now.” And I’m 100% in belief with that. If you’re waiting for something to allow you to be happy, then you’re going to be waiting a long time. It’s choosing happiness. That’s why I say choose gratitude.

When we choose those things, we start to then have the life that we want. It’s in that moment of choice. And when do we get to choose? Always. You’ll always have another choice, no matter what comes your way, you have a choice.

So, if something comes into your life that you don’t want or was a negative thing, or was a problem or a challenge, then we need to look at how do we assess that? What choices do we make at that moment?

It’s like if you were playing cards, if you want to play the game, you look at whatever cards were dealt to you, and you got to play the best that you can. Then you get another round, and then you get another round. Therefore, the fastest way to have what you want is to choose what you want, be grateful for what you gain, look at how it could be better, then you choose again.

Then you repeat that cycle over, and over, and over again. So then, you choose again, then you take what you get, and you accept it, and you’re grateful for it, and you analyze it, and then you choose again. The faster you do this, the better.

So, what stops us from continuing to choose? What slows us down, many times, is that we choose something, we don’t get exactly what we want, and then we are upset about it. We start complaining about it and getting upset with ourselves.

We can even get into depression if it was a big thing that we wanted and didn’t get. Then we start getting depressed, we’re wallowing what we didn’t want, and there we’re not choosing again. I mean, if we want to get really detailed, you are choosing, you’re choosing to have that state of mind.

I understand. Believe me, I’ve been in some places where I’ve virtually lost everything. I’ve been in the points where I’ve had extreme highs of success, and then I’ve had extreme lows. Like many of you have heard me say, in my 20s, I had earned over $4 million and lost over $4 million. I basically went from having a lot of cool things to not having a lot of cool things.

If I focus on something that I don’t like, then I get more of that. There’s this saying, I don’t know where I got this, where I heard it or how it came about, but it’s been said many times, “Where your focus goes, energy flows.” If I focus on what I don’t want, then I’m going to get more of what I don’t want. That’s why it’s so critical to have choice, and to remember you have choice.

I’ll tell you, when I grew up, it wasn’t the most positive atmosphere. I’m grateful for what my parents gave me, we always had a house, we always had meals, but money was tight. There were struggles, and there were times when it wasn’t a lot of fun at the house, and there was a lot of negativity that happened around growing up for me. When I moved out of my house and went to college, I remember thinking that life just happens. Life just happens. That it’s what it is.

Then I read the book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. I read it by a coincidence. One of my friends moved into my house, and for the first time, I had my own place, and I wanted to be on my own for the first time, and my friend knocks on my door and says, “Hey, my dad kicked me out. Can I stay with you?” I let him stay in, but then I quickly realized within that first week, I was like, “Man, I didn’t want it. I wanted to have my own space.”

I said to my friend, “What’s going on with you and your dad?” He said that his dad kicked him out because he didn’t read Think and Grow Rich, and he thought his dad was joking. His dad was this super-duper business guy, and he said, “If you don’t read Think and Grow Rich, you’re kicked out of the house.” So right away, my incentive was to get him out of my house. I read Think and Grow Rich with him. I said, “Well, let’s read it.” I said, “Let’s go get the book.” And he said, “Well I have the book, I brought it in my bag.” So, we read the book together, and it was that moment, I quickly realized all of these people that have had success in their life, and not just money, just having the life that they desire, they chose it. They chose that life.

I realized that they could choose it. They came from hard times. Some of them didn’t even have an education past 5th grade. They were in really bad state of place and they chose to have the life that they wanted. I realized in that moment that I could choose, and my quest to be an entrepreneur and start all the businesses I have, in over 20 years now, has started from that moment of choice.

Wherever you are, if you think you don’t have a choice, if you think, “Oh, all of this happened to me,” then we’re blaming someone or something. And the minute you start blaming, you start putting your energy and your life force out on something else, instead of looking at what you can do.

Look for what you can do, and then choose again. It’s okay to look at it for a minute, analyze what’s going on, and then make another choice. It comes back again: make a choice, take what we get, learn from it. That’s what being a human being is about learning.

Look at any experience you are having in life, what can you learn from it? Capture the learning then choose again. There’s no failure, there’s only feedback.

Until the next post …

Choose Gratitude Create Freedom

Steve Napolitan