The Breakthrough

By Nathan Bynum When things happen that are out of our control, we can use them to adapt to our circumstances and see the positive side of life. I knew writing my book and helping change people’s lives for the better wouldn’t be easy, but I thought it would be simple. I was wrong. I’ve always had an entrepreneurial mindset, ever since I was a little kid on the playground selling pencils and gum to the other kids. I didn’t know at the time what that would lead to, but I knew I would start my own business one day. Later, I realized how I could combine that mindset with my passions—learning how to improve myself, productivity, and most of all, helping people—and thus began my journey to writing my book. I wanted to find an area in which I could use my expertise to teach people something critical to their lives in a market that wasn’t synonymous with a thought leader’s name (i.e., habits and James Clear). I decided on Goal Setting: Habits to Achieve Your Goals and Succeed in the Life You Want. Structure and strategic processes have always appealed to me in achieving my goals, and so I figured the process of writing this would follow suit. The first couple of months went according to plan, and I wrote a certain number of words per day, had my interviews with experts in different fields scheduled, had my publishing process mapped out, but then something happened. Nausea and vomiting became a daily thing, and the doctors couldn’t figure out why. I spent weeks in and out of doctors’ offices and hospitals with no answers. My energy was drained, and my morale was down, yet I still had to continue to stay on schedule with my book. It finally got bad enough that I had to spend a few days in the hospital being tested the whole time. But that same week was when I needed to finish my book because the next week was when I had my book launch scheduled. So, I finished the rest of my writing from the hospital bed. I was out before the day of my virtual book launch and powered through the Facebook live event. The doctors had finally given me an answer to what my condition was but were clueless about what was causing it. They gave me medicine and a diet to follow. Little did I know that they gave me horrible advice about what foods to eat and the wrong amount of medicine. So for the next few months, I was just getting worse. Being only 24 at the time, I had never gone through so much medical mess. I had always been healthy and full of energy, so the constant symptoms and medical visits to try to understand what was causing this was getting to me on an emotional level in addition to the physical level. I was in constant pain and had no idea why. My motivation and energy were waning, but I kept going. I had to keep growing my business so I could reach and impact more people. My next step was to undergo a program to become certified in goal success coaching through a program taught by Transformation Academy. This would allow me to coach online entrepreneurs on how to create their websites and create a recurring stream of income and new clients for their business. While going through it, I was mostly concentrating on what my clients could get out of the lessons I was learning. Considering how the lessons I was learning could apply to myself and my own mentality was an afterthought. It wasn’t until I was having another horrible day that I started thinking back to a lesson that Natalie and Joeel Rivera had emphasized in the training. The lesson was on the reticular activating system (a common thought to pop in our heads when we’re in pain right?). To explain what this is, think about the last time you bought a car. After your purchase, you kept noticing that same type of car a lot more going down the street than before you owned one. That is because of the work of your reticular activating system. The information we allow into our minds is the information our subconscious focuses on. Have you ever had the experience where you were in a conversation with someone, you couldn’t think of a witty comeback at the time, but then hours later, the most clever response pops in your head? That’s because our reticular activating system was given a command to think of a witty response, and it kept working on finding one long after we were consciously thinking about it. What we put into our minds has a powerful impact on our lives. I’ve heard this before but never put much thought into how powerful it could be. In the book Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill teaches the power of how our thoughts attract into our lives what we desire and concentrate on the most. I didn’t understand the validity of his teachings until learning about the reticular activating system. When I thought about this on the day I was feeling so sorry for myself, I decided to look at my circumstances in a different way. If I kept feeling like a victim, then that was what I would continue to be. What I noticed in life would align with that thought pattern, and I wouldn’t get better. I started thinking about the blessings I had and how lucky I was to be living in a time with the medical advancements we have; regardless of the horrible medical system in my area, I had access to the Internet where I could learn from medical professionals worldwide and figure out what to do. And I was blessed to have a supportive family and girlfriend willing to help me through it. Once I changed my thinking, I changed my life. I started feeling more energetic and more motivated to better myself, so I could help others learn these lessons. I started noticing more opportunities open up and seizing them. I began to notice the good days I had and be more thankful for them. Goal setting is a systematic process that can be done time after time to achieve successful results. But we must realize that things happen in our lives that are out of our control. This shouldn’t scare us. It should instead motivate us to prepare our minds to adapt to our circumstances and see the positive side of life. If we start feeding our minds now with healthy thoughts, we will be prepared for whatever may come our way. Traveling the world and living in many countries blessed Nathan Bynum with the opportunity to befriend successful people from all walks of life. From these remarkable people, he has learned priceless lessons not skewed by a singular view on the world, which he shares with his readers through his website http://www.reachfuelpotential.com and his book Goal Setting: Habits to Achieve Your Goals and Succeed in the Life You Want. He is also a certified Goal Success Coach who specializes in helping entrepreneurs create a website to launch their online business and trains them how to continue to grow their business and reach more clients.