Purpose, Passion & Destiny
Module 1: Shape up your Attitude

2. Tell a different story

This second step is about how you can start to tell that different story. I’m going to give you a practical exercise that you can use to ensure you can powerfully follow through on your decision to always take responsibility for yourself. But before I do so, let me tell you about Natalie du Toit.

Natalie’s Story

South African swimmer, Natalie du Toit, first came to the world stage in 1998. She was competing as a highly-promising 14-year-old in the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur. But her life was tragically changed in February 2001 when she lost her left leg at the knee in a motorbike accident. Remarkably, she was back in the pool by May, and before she had even re-learned to walk she had made the next Commonwealth Games a target. In the 2002 Manchester games she won golds in the 50m and 100m disabled freestyle swimming events, breaking four world records in one day.

Natalie du Toit had the most plausible excuse in the world to stop competing, to give up. Yet she didn’t – she made no excuses, she didn’t blame anyone or anything, she didn’t rationalise herself into a mediocre life.
Natalie du Toit has excelled at disabled swimming, but she never let go of her dream to compete as an able-bodied swimmer. In 2008, in the Beijing Olympics, she became the first amputee to qualify for the able-bodied Olympics and competed in the women’s open water 10 km swimming event, considered the hardest swimming event there is, lining up against the world’s greatest long-distance swimmers. In the 24-competitor race, she finished ahead of 9 top able-bodied swimmers.
She had no physical or technical trick to compensate for the loss of her limb. ‘I don’t even think of one leg, two legs,’ she said. ‘When you’re racing in an able-bodied competition you’re all equal and you go out there and try your best, and that’s what counts. I go out there and train as hard as anybody else. I have the same dreams, the same goals. It doesn’t matter if you look different. You’re still the same as everybody else because you have the same dream.’
Interviewed after the event, she enthused, ‘My message isn’t just to disabled people. It’s to everyone out there… I’ve been through a lot of ups and downs… I was able to use the negativism in a good light and say after my accident, I can still do it…’

Taking responsibility is about response – ability: your ability to choose your response to whatever happens in your life. It’s not what happens to you in your life that shapes your life: it’s what you do with what happens. You choose what you make your experiences mean. You choose how you interpret the events of your life. Natalie du Toit is a terrific role model for this, and that’s why I wanted to tell you her story.

What about you? How do you interpret the events of your life? What have you made your life experiences mean? 

When you read your story, you might find it’s peppered with ‘negativisms’ – your mother was overly critical (or too accepting)… your father always expected too much (or too little)… you went to the wrong school (whatever ‘wrong’ means to you)… your job was too demanding (or undemanding) … The crucial point is, even if these were all absolutely true, focusing on them, and using them to limit the potential of your life, will not serve you.

Remember, you can have what you want, or you can explain and justify why you don’t yet have it. Your challenge is to be a person of your own making.

Here’s that exercise I mentioned that you can use to ensure you powerfully and practically follow through on your decision to always take responsibility for yourself. It will help you to rethink the meaning and significance of past events – and those that happen from now on. Take each ‘negativism’ and answer these five questions:

. Something I learned about myself from that experience was….
. A way I can now make this insight work for me in my life is…
. The way in which that experience makes me unique is…
. The opportunity that experience gave me was…
.  Making full use of that advantage would mean…

Once you realise you can do this for all the ‘negativisms’ in your life, all those experiences you wish you could change, something wonderful will happen – those experiences will change.

For example, one of my clients, Tim, had been focused on the negative aspects of being part of a big family – the fact he never got much attention or support from his parents. Asking the above questions, he was able to take a different perspective and see that his childhood had made him into the resourceful and self-reliant adult he now was, and to reflect that with his own children he had used his experience to make himself an attentive and caring parent.

Commit to re-telling the story of any ‘negativisms’ in your life. Each time you do, you step closer to a life of purpose and passion, to living your destiny.

3. Associate with empowering role models

Surround yourself with empowering role models. The company you keep is vital.

Watch the child of a friend for a little while and that child will soon say and do things that you recognise in your friend. As children, we naturally model the most significant people in our lives. We naturally notice what our parents and carers do, what our friends do, and we do the same things. Most of the time we do all this unconsciously.

Use this powerful natural ability to seek out confident people you admire and consciously model what they do. Study them. Notice the way they talk, the way they move, and the way they behave. Observe how they respond to the events of their life, their response – ability. Watch what they do and learn from them. Then ask yourself what you can do, how you can change your behaviour, the way you talk, the way you respond, to be more like them. As you change what you do, so you will change how you feel. And as you change how you feel, you will change what you do. Thoughts feed behaviour and vice versa.

You don’t have to be born with an empowering attitude to grow one. No matter what your background, once you take the decision to empower yourself you can work to achieve it. Apply these techniques and you’ll do just that.

Actions for the Week

1. Commit right now to building an empowering attitude

Never again talk yourself out of that purposeful, passionate life that’s waiting for you.

2. Ask yourself if you are truly taking responsibility for your life

Recognise that no one else is responsible for how you feel, and that you’re in charge of your own destiny.

3. Challenge any ‘negativisms’ by rethinking the meaning and significance of past events

Commit to re-telling the story of your life. Turn your negative experiences into positive advantages. Each time you do, you step closer to a life of purpose and passion, to living your destiny.

4. Seek out empowering role modes and consciously model what they do

You don’t have to be born with an empowered attitude to grow one.

5. Throughout this course, keep vigilant

As you work through the next five modules, if you ever hear yourself justifying and rationalising why you ‘can’t’, come right back to this first module. Listen to, and challenge, the story you are telling yourself. Remember, it’s easy to talk yourself out of that purposeful, passionate life that’s waiting for you. Challenge yourself to talk yourself back in.