There are times when the behaviors you think are helping you succeed are precisely the ones holding you back. On today’s show, Brad Bizjack will be breaking the three common mistakes you don’t even realize are slowing down your success. Brad is a personal development expert, mindset strategist, CEO/Founder of Brad Bizjack, LLC, and creator of the Appreciation Academy. He joins Krissy Chin to share strategies to help you correct these mistakes and explain why having the right mindset is key to success in life and business. Get valuable advice and insights to speed your personal development journey by tuning in to this episode! 

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3 Common Mistakes That Slow Down Your Success With Brad Bizjack

Let’s welcome, Brad Bizjack. He's a certified high-performance coach, personal development expert, creator of Appreciation Academy, podcast host, husband, dad, and dog dad. Brad helps people maximize their life and elevate their mindset, career, and relationships to a level beyond anything they ever thought possible. Brad, I'm stoked to have you here on the podcast. Thank you so much for being here.

The limiting beliefs that you have about your life dictate everything. 

Krissy, I'm pumped to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

I'm excited about the topic that we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about the three mistakes that slow your success. I'm all about speeding up this process to get where you want to go. I already have the inside scoop of what these are, and they are on point and 100% going to help you get there faster and enjoy the process.

Before we dive into those, I met Brad in a mastermind. I don't know how much he's going to share his story but we met in the mastermind and we have a similar background. We have this experience with network marketing, so we did click right away, having that both be a part of our stories. Now we both have our successful businesses. We connected right away. We had a fun time in this mastermind together. Brad has some exciting things coming out that I'm super excited to share with you. It only made sense to bring Brad on the podcast to talk about these three mistakes that people make and let you dive in.

I’m super excited about this. I can't wait to talk about this. This is such a topic that's near and dear to my heart. If we can help people to succeed faster and feel more alive in the process, not just have more achievement but also more fulfillment as they do it, that's what it's all about. To give you a little bit of background, Krissy share with you how we met, but have you ever noticed that in success, the limiting beliefs that you have about your life dictate everything?

I had two big ones I dealt with my whole life. One was that I wasn't enough and the other was that money was an incredibly hard thing to make. Money was something that, once you had it, it would disappear. If you didn't have enough of it, you couldn't be happy. I remember one day when I was a kid, this set the path for us asking, “Why is it that you guys are always stressed out?” I remember my mom saying something interesting, “Brad, it'd be easier to be happy if we had more money.” That's where that belief came from.

The past only becomes the future if you live there.  

I also had these feelings of not feeling enough and not feeling like I mattered. I'm sure everyone deals with that from time to time. Even if they have a positive mindset on the outside, they have that on the inside. When I started my adult life, I remember I was $92,000 in debt and I had a lot of resentment and struggle. I was that guy that was good at pretending that I was amazing on the outside but on the inside, I was dying. I was using positivity as a coping mechanism for my insecurity. At that point, all I wanted was to be financially free and be debt-free and create this life where I felt like I was sprinting towards something, instead of running away from something. At that time in my life, I found an online business, network marketing, and it was the ticket.

I remember I saw the stories of freedom and choice. I wanted that freaking bad, but have you ever felt that no matter how much time you spend focusing on something, it feels like it's two steps forward and three steps back? You feel like you're trying hard but it's not working. That's where I was. I was trying everything and nothing works. I was doing everything I was supposed to do. I was inviting, following up, and trying hard to change my circumstances.

It started to get in my head and I started to ask myself, “Am I not destined to succeed? Is this all there is? Am I destined for mediocrity? Something must be wrong with me.” I had people on my team quitting saying, “If all it took was hard work, you'd already been at the top.” My team is starting to quit. I'm feeling like a failure, failure in business and failure to be a strong provider.

Seeing other successful people made me feel less than and miserable. I thought, “Once I achieved success, then I could be happy and grateful,” and I craved it. All these other people were flying by me and they seemed to have it so much easier. I was doing all the same things, but it wasn't working for me but it was working for them. I remember getting the states of burnout where it'd be 11:00 PM and I'd be sitting on the couch knowing I need to go to bed, but instead, I'm feeling sorry for myself. I'm binge eating microwave nachos watching Friends reruns and I was getting pissed off at myself that I was depressed. I had these negative feelings.

I remember my laptop staring at me and it was begging me to change my life but I didn't care, even though I cared so much. I asked my mentor, “What's going on?” She's like, “You need a mindset coach. This mindset is not going to allow you to get to where you want to be.” I was $92,000 in debt. Have you ever had those feelings where something just feels right and you go after it, even though it's scary and you don't know how it's going to go?

You don't set goals for the certainty of achieving them. You set them so that you can allow yourself to expand and become a new person. 

I maxed out my last credit card to hire a coach. On our first call, she shared something with me that changed my life forever. It's guided me to this day and it's the basis of everything that I do. I was telling her how I'm trying so hard and how I'm doing all this stuff. I'm reading the books and listening to podcasts. “Why isn't this working for me but it seems to be working for everyone else?”

She said, “Brad, you're so attached to success that you're missing the whole point. You're under the impression that you shouldn't be where you are right now. Business, money, and success are never going to cause lasting happiness. It's happiness and appreciation for your life that will lead to success. If you want to succeed, you need to start to learn to appreciate everything, everything about your past, childhood, and business. You need to find a way to love where you are right now because appreciation is the master skill to faster success.”

Lightbulbs went off because I was resenting all of those things, my bank balance, my business, and all the people that had success. I compared myself to everyone. I didn't realize that my existing circumstances were all I've got to work with. I figured, “What I'm trying isn't working, so I'm going to dive in and fix this.” I buy a ticket to a mindset conference to begin to work on this but the universe is funny. Have you ever had moments where the minute you decide to start changing your life, the universe test you to see if you're for real?

In the months leading up to this mindset event, I got fired from my job. Keep in mind that I have no savings and $92,000 in debt, and now my income is gone. I instantly go right back to those old patterns of blame and frustration. I got a part-time job teaching group fitness, making $24,000 a year to cover bills. I had to put my student loans into forbearance because I couldn't make the payment.

At the same time, Janiece, my wife, girlfriend at that time, was saying, “We've been together for ten years, no pressure, but what's going on?” I couldn't afford it. I had all these limiting beliefs about marriage. I felt completely hopeless, like a failure but luckily, I already had tickets for the mindset conference and something pulled me there. I had to get there.

I remember landing in San Diego, heading to the grocery store to buy peanut butter and bread because I couldn't afford to eat out at the time. I get the groceries. I head right back to my hotel and I checked the bank balance. I did it 100 times a day at that point and I over-drafted my accounts across the country. I'm in the negative, so dig that knife in a little bit deeper. “Why is this happening to me?” There was this deep feeling of shame.

I remember walking through the doors of that conference, tail between my legs, and the topic that day was that appreciating your past, appreciating your present, and appreciating your future goals is the key to faster success. Learning to love everything you hate. Learning to be grateful for your past and use your pain instead of being dominated by it. Learning to fall in love with your present circumstances instead of resenting them when you're not where you want to be yet.

That day, I went through one of the greatest transformational experiences of my life. I learned what mindsets and beliefs slow down success. I started to adopt those changes into my life and that day is when I came up with the course for Appreciation Academy. Within 2.5 years, we paid off that $92,000 of debt. We moved to the same city. We bought her that ring, retired her from her corporate job, and went on to generate a multimillion-dollar business in the following couple of years. Now we have a daughter at home and I'm never going to have to miss a single memory with her.

It was that skill of appreciation that changed my life. I finally understood that life is always happening for you and not to you. The people in my life were guiding me. The problems, being broke, painful childhood, and a lack of business success were meant to happen. If it didn't, I wouldn't be right here right now teaching you. The list of things that used to be my biggest challenges is the catalysts for who I am here with you. Ever since then, I have made a promise to myself that no matter what happens in my life, I'm going to find a way to appreciate it and love it. I learned that appreciation is the master skill to faster success.

Success comes from good judgement. Good judgement comes from experience, and experience typically comes from bad judgement. 

My hope is that we dive into some of the concepts that allow you to succeed faster so you can go through this transformation way sooner than I ever did. That's a little bit of a background on where I came from and how I got to this point in summarized. I hope that story alone, Krissy, serves your readers and helps people see that it's the mindset behind the strategy. If you have the right strategy but you don’t have the mindset to apply it, it's not going to work. That's what we're going to talk about.

It’s such a powerful story. I love it so much. I wrote down a few words. If you're watching on YouTube, you might have seen me raise my hand when you're like, “Have you ever felt like you're not enough?” That was one of my things, not being enough. I overcame that and I realized it when I was getting mindset coaching. I'm a full believer in mindset coaching. I believe you need a mindset coach, whether it's a one-time program, or a one-time thing, or ongoing. We can always be working on ongoing but at least starting with a one-time thing has made a huge impact on not only my business but my personal life and my relationships as well.

I've talked about that on podcast episodes. You guys can binge all the episodes to read about all the little stories I've shared about mindset and how it made this huge shift. That was me. I was feeling not enough. In my business, it showed up as me feeling this pressure to create, be more successful, and make more money. “Once I hit this goal then I would be enough,” and then you realize, “No, I still have that feeling.” The next is, “When I do $1 million, then I'll be enough,” and it's still that same feeling.

The mindset coaching was what identified that and made me realize, “I am enough just as I am.” I get emotional talking about it. It changed everything in my business because now I approach things because it's fun and I want to, and not because there's this pressure. I now have this mindset that I don't have to create another single thing and I am enough. That's super powerful.

I continue to create because now it's coming from a place of love and joy. I hope that if you're not there yet and you're like, “That's me. I feel not enough,” maybe you can get a little bit out of this podcast episode. Maybe you can continue on your journey with Brad as he walks you through this because I'm getting goosebumps and chills. It's super powerful and not only for business but in life as well. I love that.

I also love that you talked about appreciating your past. This is something I talked about. It's the reason why I'm open about having a failed marriage before the one I have now, talking about how I learned so much from that, and use those experiences to get where I am. Appreciating some of these crapping points in your life to get you further along and help you. I'm excited whether or not we dive into that more.

That resonated with me as well, as it's something that I do too. I'm happy doing what I'm doing. I love what I'm doing and generating success there. There are these mindset pieces that make a difference and impact. When you focus your energy on getting better, personally focusing on the mindset, and being happy with where you're at, then the rest will come. You touched on that, too. I'm excited to dive in.

You're giving me goosebumps and chills when you're talking about that. What you said about appreciating your past, a lot of people do this where they take a look at situations of their past like, “That happened to me.” They use that as the reason as to why they can't succeed. They use it as a reason why they're stuck, or maybe a limiting belief came from it. I would argue that it gave you one of your greatest gifts.

What I always like to do as an example is, are you a better parent now because you didn't like the way your parents may have parented you? Are you better with money now because you saw a bad example of money growing up? Are you better in marriage because of an experience or maybe you saw the example of divorce? My whole point is, what if the worst days of your life are secretly the best days of your life in disguise? What if your pain has a gift inside of it to lead you to emotional freedom? What if you adopt that belief that life's always happening for you and not to you, and you can see the past as a gift?

I’m not saying you want to live in the pain. The past only becomes the future if you live there. You can appreciate it and you can learn from it so that you can grow. All of a sudden, the resentment or the anger or maybe the limitation doesn't hold you nearly as much. I wanted to touch on that before we dive into stuff. Krissy, your story is powerful and I love the emotion behind it, the goosebumps, and all that stuff. I want to celebrate you for all your growth. It's absolutely beautiful and amazing.

Thank you, Brad. Living with no regrets, I always talk about that. It's like, “No regrets,” but that's what it is. It's realizing that I don't regret marrying that person. I went through some crappy things, but I learned a ton and I grew. Now I do things differently because of that. I never lived in the dorms when I was in college. I wanted to live with my best friend, who was two years older.

That's how I met my first husband because we lived kitty-corner. I always think, “If I would have lived in the dorms, I never would have met him, or maybe I would have met him, just in a different way.” I was meant to do that, to live those experiences. What can I learn from it? How can I take that to move me forward? I love all of this. I’m super pumped to dive in. Let's get to it.

Setting Safe Goals

That gave you so much incredible strength. I love it. Let's talk about three big mistakes people make that slow their success and hold them back from what they want. This is going to ruffle some feathers a little bit because I'm going to tell people things that might be against what society tells them. The first huge mistake that I see a lot of people making on the path of success is setting safe goals, setting goals they know they can hit. Otherwise known as realistic.

Perfection kills your dreams. 

I'm not saying, “I'm going to be a billionaire tomorrow.” My favorite quote of all time is from Will Smith. It says, “Realism is the fastest traveled road to mediocrity.” I'm not talking about denying your current reality, your current resources, and things like that. I'm saying that we want to set goals that put us in place to become resourceful and create.

What most people do is set goals based on what they have or haven't been able to do in the past, which is causing them to live in the past. Wherever you focus, that's what you create more of. Where focus goes, energy flows. The past only becomes the future if you live there. People are saying, “I haven't hit this revenue goal. I haven't hit this number in my business. Maybe I should tone it down and go after this instead.” All that's doing is causing people to stay in the same spot.

If you think about not setting a massive goal, then you have nothing to look forward to or get excited about, which means that you're more likely to look at your problems. If you look at your problems, focusing on the problem perpetuates the problem. I'll give you an example of a little short story with this. One of my best friends in the world, John, I love him so much. I was talking with him. Our business was doing something like $25,000 a month in revenue. That's livable. It's good. That's a great income. It's awesome. I was super appreciative of it and grateful for it.

I remember talking with John and what goals I want. I'm like, “I push myself that I can get to about $33,000 a month in revenue and $100,000 a quarter. It sounds amazing. That's incredible. That's a big goal.” He goes, “Why would you set such a weak goal?” I was like, “What? Excuse me. $30,000 a month is cool.” He said, “Why would you ever set a goal that you know you can hit? That's missing the point.”

He said, “You need to set goals that cost you to become a different person because, with a massive goal, you have to think differently than you do now if you're going to achieve it. The mindset that created your current life is not going to be the mindset to break through to the next level.” He said, “What really excites you? What makes you go, ‘Oh my gosh?’ What that thing?” It instantly came out of me, I was like, “$100,000 a month in revenue. That's what I want.” My state changed. My energy exploded and I felt fully alive when I said it, but there's one problem, we just had a baby. I didn't, but my wife did.

Thank you for validating that. Men always say that, “I had a baby.” We’re like, “You did not have the baby. You didn’t push that thing out.”

I did not do any of that. I just held her hand.

You contributed. I know you are amazing to your wife and with your daughter, so I know you contribute in ways that you can contribute.

I added value but I didn't push. Anyways, we had a baby and it was traumatic childbirth. Lily almost died. She wasn't breathing when she came out. Janiece was in the hospital for fourteen days of the mystery infection. The best infectious disease team in the country was on it and they couldn't figure it out. It was one of the scary times in my life.

It was right after I had this conversation with John. I remember what he said that stuck with me. He said, “Live in the feelings of your wishes. Live in the feelings of what you want, not trying to marginally improve your circumstances. Live in the feelings of what could be.” I kept picturing it, even with a newborn at home after we got out of the hospital. “$1,000 a month. That sounds amazing.” I live in those feelings. I started having his voice come to me and he said, “Huge dreams change the way you think.”

One day after rehearsing this for a month or so, I remember being in the shower. Do you ever realize that your best ideas come to you when you don't have a pen? I thought of these new ideas to share Appreciation Academy, my online course, and to help large network marketing teams. Two ideas that I’m like, “Holy cow. How did I never think of this before?” I ran with it. Within a week of coming up with that idea, we had $70,000 in revenue in a week and went on to generate $800,000 in revenue in six months.

I don't share that to impress you. I share it to impress upon you that I realized something powerful and I hope you take from this. You don't set goals for the certainty of achieving them. You set them so that you can allow yourself to expand and become a new person. Every single time in my life that things have exploded, it came from setting goals that I didn't think were possible. It's why I call it a typical goal setting.

Here’s a great example that we can use. Think about little kids. Up until the age of twelve, little kids are the greatest role model of success that I've ever found because, at the age of twelve, something interesting happens. They get told to sit down, shut up, not speak unless spoken to, and if they don't get an A-plus, they are a failure. They're encouraged not to fail. They're encouraged to explore their passions. They're told they can't speak up for themselves. They're told they need to sit back. They're trained to avoid failure and mistakes. They're groomed to be a perfectionist.

This is what happens right around age twelve but before that, something powerful happens. If you look at what happens before that, your kids are the most creative wizards in the world. They want to be Spider-Man, Superman, an astronaut, and the president on the same day. They come into the room in their Spider-Man underwear with a suit and tie, an astronaut helmet, and give a presidential address. What happens to their energy? It skyrockets. Their creativity skyrockets, which changes their existing circumstances because they find new creative solutions to what they're experiencing right now. It’s the greatest role model of success I can find.

When you set safe goals that you know you can hit, you likely won't even hit those because they don't pull you and they're not compelling. You don't feel energy and momentum. You start to settle. You start to say things like, “This is how my life is.” You start to rely on push motivation, that willpower. There’s nothing wrong with willpower, it's beautiful. There are times when it's required. If you rely on that and that alone, it causes you to get burnt out. You find yourself, like I did, at 11:00 PM on the couch binge eating nachos, feeling sorry for yourself, watching Friends reruns. Your circumstances don't stay the same. They get worse.

When you set huge goals, your energy is set at an all-time high, you're creative, and you feel pulled. Working hard is no longer hard work. You just do it and you take risks who otherwise wouldn't have taken it. You risk being seen. You put yourself out there in a way you've never done before, which allows you to succeed faster than ever before. Even if you miss your goal, you're so much further than you ever would have been if you set a safe goal. You don't burn out. You feel like your energy increases and massive success happens.

One of the biggest mistakes I see people make is setting safe goals that they know you can hit. We need to let go of this perfection mindset and realize we're setting these goals for who we become. At the end of the day, your last breath, the last day of your life, you are not going to give a crap about how much money you made. You're not going to care what your rank was in your network marketing business. You're going to care about the person you were and the legacy you left. Meaning, the emotional feelings you left in someone else. Your eulogy does not have your accomplishments, it has your character.

If you think about the person you become, if that becomes your new ambition behind everything you do to become something more, then you no longer fear being seen. You put yourself out there and you try things you've never tried before. Set huge dreams, not safe goals that you know you can hit. Set dreams that cost you to change who you are. That's number one. Krissy, what are your thoughts on that?

I love it. I'm thinking about this eulogy thing as we passed on a year of my dad's passing and we're going to do a memorial. This obituary, I'm thinking nobody writes, “Brad made $1 million or had a multimillion-dollar business.” I was thinking about this when my brother-in-law brought home a two-week-old kitten that was going to die in the rain. My husband handed the phone over to me like, “You make the call.” I was like, “I can tell him no.” I’m like, “Fine, bring this kitten down.”

He goes down to go to bed and I am feeding the kitten with a little eyedropper food and I was thinking, “I hope someone says, ‘Krissy is the kind of person that would wake up every two hours to feed a two-week-old kitten, so it didn't die.’” They're not going to say, “Krissy is the kind of person that will set a goal and make $1 million or made $1 million.” I love pointing that out. Building your legacy creates your character. Who do you want to be remembered as? How do you touch people's lives? I love all of that.

I had no idea you rescued a kitten. That's beautiful.

My brother-in-law brought it home but then he was like, “We'll feed it in the morning.” I'm like, “This thing is a heating pad.” I have my vet tech sister. I'm like, “What do I do?” She's like, “You're going to have to get it to go pee.” I didn't know this. She’s like, “Baby kittens can't pee on their own.” I'm like, “What are you talking about?” It's random off. She's like, “The moms lick them.” I was like, “That's not happening.” I YouTube vet and there's this girl who's like, “You take a Kleenex, hold it, and then tickle it,” and it worked. It had to pee four times before we sent it off. We found a home for it. They're taking care of it. We can't have cats. Michael is allergic.

Would you say it cost you to become a different person in the process?

Yes, exactly, and wiser. Now someone's going to put that in my eulogy.

I love that so much. I did not know that about you. That's fantastic news. I'm going to take this story and feel joy from it for the rest of the day.

The greatest mistake you could ever make is to create something amazing but never see it. 

I lost a lot of sleep that night but I rescued a kitten, so it was all worth it.

Trying to Be Perfect

Number two is something that everyone deals with at some point in their life. That is, “One of the biggest mistakes of success is trying to be perfect.” It will kill your dreams. We're groomed to be perfect. We're groomed to avoid failure. That's how society teaches because what are we supposed to do? If you think about where that system came from, we're groomed to be on an assembly line, not missing anything, and make sure that we are able to do the job right. We fear failure.

No judgment to corporate. If that's your thing, that's beautiful. In the corporate world, success is a little bit scarce. There’s a scarcity mindset surrounding it. If you think about it, people are competing for one spot, a promotion, and they're afraid of, “What happens if it doesn't go perfect? What happens if I’m not on all the time?” They fear not being able to get promoted. If that is your chosen path, no judgment. In business, that type of mindset won't work because there's success available to everyone.

There are 1,700 new millionaires created every day. How is that possible if there's a limited pie of success and you need to be deserving of a limited pie? How does that make any sense if there are 1,700 new millionaires created every day? The pie is abundant and expanding. You could always have a little scoop. Don't go to the ocean with a spoon, go to the ocean with a pump. This is what I've learned about how to view success, but what most people do is try to be perfect.

One of my favorite quotes of all time is from Tony Robbins, “Perfection is the lowest standard you can ever set for yourself because it guarantees pain.” When I heard that, I was like, “Wow,” because I was trying to be perfect, I would always want to make sure that I knew how before I started. Even if I did achieve, it didn't feel like enough.

At this point, working with over 10,000 people, what I've discovered is that perfection guarantees pain in three ways. This is one of the biggest things that slow down your success and your dreams. The first way perfection guarantees pain is that you likely won't even start because you're too focused on how. “How do I make sure I don't fail? How do I figure it out?” It's like reading a book about swimming instead of getting in the pool. You're trying to study swimming when you have to get in there and surround yourself with people that they're going to make sure you don't drown. You have to get in the pool if you're going to learn how to swim.

With perfection, most people are focused on studying, “How do I make this work? In network marketing, how do I send the perfect invite? In business, how do I make sure this launch is perfect and exactly as I want?” They get into what's called personal development paralysis. They study but they don't act. They sit there feeling this hole in their heart, knowing they're meant to be so much bigger than they are right now. They should be living their life out loud, way more than they are right now. They aren't living up to their potential and they feel like they're dying inside because they're craving the how. You don't even start and you feel so much pain that way.

What I've discovered is that when you know what you want and why you want it, the how will reveal itself. You'll figure out how. You'll just do it. You'll figure it out and you'll go for it. There have been times in everyone's life where they've said, “I don't know how this is going to go but screw it. I'm in. Let's find a way or make the way.” That's where success comes.

The second way that perfection guarantees pain is that you won't allow yourself to fail. Every time you do, which is guaranteed, you will feel like a failure. Instead of collecting data on what didn't work, you will feel like you are a failure, which is not true but that's what you'll feel like. Think about this though, if you try to avoid failure, you will never thrive. If you try to avoid failure, you will never succeed the way you could because success comes from good judgment. Good judgment comes from experience and experience typically comes from bad judgment.

We have a fantastic business that serves lives all over the world, but what isn't seen is the seven years of trying to figure things out. It's either failing or a little bit of a taste of success and it's not happening. Seven years of that, trying to figure it out. That perseverance in the face of failure, having the courage to show up even when you're afraid of failure, that's where you thrive. If you feel like a failure, it won't even matter what you achieve. It won't feel like enough.

If we can't find a way to appreciate where we are right now, then we're going to miss the lesson. 

The third way, perfection guarantees pain. Even if you do achieve, you will bounce from peak to peak going, “Where's the joy?” You'll go, “I thought the success was going to be here. I thought I'd feel alive when I reach this goal.” Like what Krissy shared in the beginning. Where's the fulfillment? I work with a lot of network marketers and typically, in every network marketing company, there's this thing you hit each year that is celebrated. If you hit this, you're in the top 1% of whatever. Every network card company has something like that.

I know many people that will hit that number and be stressed out they have to do it again. I know many parents that make a to-do list, finish the to-do list, and are stressed out they to make one again the next day. They'll even add things to their to-do list that they've already done to check it off and feel successful. That's perfection. It makes you feel horrible because you go, “I thought that success would be here.” What's happening is that you're basing your worth on more and when you base your worth on more, you never hit it.

If you think about what worth is, worth is love over time. That's the equation for worth. Worth equals love over time, but if you're living in perfection, it's you fearing that you're not enough. That means your self-worth is rather low if you're craving that perfection. No judgment if it is. I had to work on this myself. If you increase the love that you give yourself over time, your worth goes up tremendously. Procrastination disappears, you'll start doing the things, and you don't even have to think about it. There's no inner conflict holding you back. You just do it and you move. Nothing's holding you anymore.

If you live in perfection, those are the ways that you're going to experience pain. You'll either A.) never start because you don't know how, B.) feel like a failure when you fail which is guaranteed, or C.) even if you do achieve, it won't feel like enough. You're guaranteed pain either way, so you start getting resentful of the vehicle that was the key to your freedom.

You start going, “I thought there was more than this. I thought this would be fulfilling by now. I thought this would light me up.” You start to take a look at either you're inviting or your coursework, or whatever you're doing. Whatever your action steps are is a chore, so you lose the joy. When you lose the joy, that goes into your family, marriage, bank account, and your money story, everything is affected by it.

You wake up one day going, “What happened to me? Where was I? What happened to the real me that feels alive?” That's what perfection does. You've always heard progress over perfection but if you think about it, one of the biggest antidotes to this is the value efforts instead of just the result. That’s the thing, you celebrate the result, the valuing effort. If you think about what makes you happy, it's progress.

If you have a goal of losing 100 pounds and you lose five in your first two weeks, you feel amazing because you're on the right track to the goal. What if you value that? That's how you started to feel fulfilled from your big goals and big dreams that we talked about in point number one. One, success mistake that slows it down. Number two, perfection kills dreams. The Krissy Chin, what are your thoughts on this one?

That was all so good and this is something we talk about ongoing on the podcast because if you don't know one of my mottos, it’s done is better than perfect. Since you're on here, you're going to get a mug that says that on it as a guest. This is a strength that I have found in myself that I have and identify that it certainly has led me to generate success faster. I'm good at seeing that end vision, that big goal and dream, and be like, “I have no idea how I'm going to get there but that's where I see us going.” I start and I'm going, and I'm like, “When we hit a roadblock, we'll deal with it then.” That is something where I'm not a perfectionist.

Brad knows this because I'll come to masterminds and be like, “I need a name for a course.” There are times where even though I don't consider myself a perfectionist, I get lost in this and I have to come back. Done is better than perfect. Good enough is good enough. There may be some better titles than others, but it's not going to make or break the success of this next course launch or whatever.

What also resonated is not knowing, and I get this with a lot of students, what to do next, so they just freeze. You're right, they don't want to do the wrong thing. They want it to be perfect, but I see it holding them back. If there's a way for you to overcome, which I know if you continue to work with Brad, there's a way for you to overcome this perfectionism. You will see everything skyrocket and it will be super powerful. I love this topic. We talk about it all the time on the podcast.

High achievers out there that aren't feeling the fulfillment, I want to drop a little quote for you about how my wife changed my life. We all get into these slumps from time to time. We're human, everyone does. Give yourself a little bit of credit if you are. Every high performer out there falls back into old tendencies that make you normal. I got into one of those states where I was like, “I want this bad but I'm stressed out about the success I'm going after. I'm not getting there fast enough.” Insert perfection.

My wife said something powerful, “Brad, the greatest mistake you could ever make is to create something amazing but never see it.” It hit me like, “I haven't taken a moment to look at what we have done and how we have served. I'm focused on what hasn't been done yet. I haven't stopped to see what we have done and celebrate it.” I want to add that to point number three.

The “Should” Mindset

Let's go to number three. It’s one of my favorites. One of the greatest mistakes people make on the path to success is this mindset of, “I should be further along. I'll be happy when.” “I should be at that rank. I should be at that income level. I should be here. I should have this amount of money in my bank account,” and you end up shooting all over yourself. That is what most people do. They say, “I should be there. I'll be happy once I have more money.” Really? Are you sure about that? You'll be happy when you have more money? What do you think came first, the chicken or the egg? Is it the business that creates the mindset or is it the mindset that creates the business?

If we can't find a way to appreciate where we are right now, then we're going to miss the lesson that's the key to our freedom. Even if you magically stumble upon achievement, it's not going to feel like enough. If you’re mean with little money, randomly getting more money will make you even meaner. Money is an exaggeration of your character. That's all it is. It’s an exaggeration of who you are. With business, it’s the same thing. If you feel like you're not enough, before you have a big business, even if you randomly achieve and you haven't worked on that side, it won't be enough. You won't feel like enough and you'll still think, “I'll be happy when.” Success becomes a moving target.

People live in this land of, “I should be further along. Where I am right now is not okay. It needs to be different.” There's nothing wrong with dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction is a gem if you use it, instead of being used by it. Life likes to teach us lessons. Did you notice that the lesson life is trying to teach you to get louder and louder until you stop and listen?

I learned this from a man named Scott Harris and it made a big impact on my life. He said, “Life is full of what's called feathers, bricks, and trucks.” What that means is life will dust you with a feather and say, “You should probably pay attention to this. This is probably important. Take a look.” It's just a feather dusting, so you let go of the tickle and move on with your life.

You don't pay attention to what life's trying to teach you. It keeps us with the feather and you're not listening. It keeps saying, “Pay attention. Look at this.” What does life do? Life says, “I got to get your attention about this.” It writes a note on a sheet of paper and it wraps that note around a brick. It throws that brick through your living room window and it says, “Pay attention, dummy.”

All suffering in life comes from experience that it should be different. 

What most people do is that they're ticked off at the window is broken and that it shouldn't be broken. It should still be there in their living room. “The window shouldn't be like this. The problem is it shouldn't be here. This problem is getting bigger. This problem is getting worse. That window, the glass shatters everywhere, cut my foot open. My kids are going to crawl on it. It shouldn't be like that.” Their focus is going to the problem, the broken window, what shouldn't be, instead of looking at the thing that caused it, which is the brick with a note that's sitting in their living room. With the lesson that's the key to their freedom but instead, they choose to avoid it because they're ticked off about the window.

Life's like, “I need to get ahold of you. This is important.” Life is always rigged in our favor. Life's always trying to teach us something. Life is always giving us a gift to move towards what we want. Life keeps throwing bricks and we keep on that paying attention. What life does is it takes some paint and it paints the lesson in the front of a Mack Truck and it runs you over as it blares its horn. You have to listen and you have to pay attention.

My hope is you don't get to that point. When you live in the land of, “I should be further along. My marriage and bank account should be different. My business should be further along,” then you're not seeing the beauty in where you are right now. You're exactly where you need to be to learn the lesson that life is trying to teach you. When you make it wrong to be where you are, then you are resisting the gift that’s the key to your freedom.

Every business owner in the world felt anxiety. When it comes up, what do most people do? They make it wrong. They say, “This anxiety shouldn't be here.” They start getting anxious that they're anxious. They start getting feelings about feelings because whenever you resist, persist. When you pause and accept the anxiety and say, “I'm anxious. Why is that?” Something interesting happens.

First of all, the anxiety gets lighter and you start to get curious about the cause instead of the symptom. You start to focus on the thing that's causing the anxiety and you can change it. The same is true in your life with these lessons. There is a lesson there. Whatever problem you're experiencing over and over again, whether it's money or business, or whatever it is, there's a lesson there. Take a look at the areas of your life that are not where you want them to be. What keeps coming up? There's something there that you're resisting. That's the key to your breakthrough. Once you start practicing appreciation for your challenges, you receive the lesson that allows you to change those challenges.

The last thing I'll share about this, when we were $92,000 in debt, we started practicing appreciation for being in debt and everyone around us looked at us like we are nuts. “Why are you grateful you're in debt? Aren't you going to be grateful when you're out of debt?” Yeah, of course, I'd be grateful when I'm out of debt. If I'm not grateful now, then how am I going to get there? We started to notice something. We started to notice that all of a sudden, we had a good time again and our business started growing, even though we were doing similar actions. It’s because of our energy change. People are receiving something different. From that energy alone, we ended up getting out of debt in over 1.5 years.

Everything shifted from this because we started appreciating the biggest challenges of our life instead of resisting the biggest challenges in our life. Learn to appreciate where you are now. It's teaching you a lesson and you're exactly where you need to be. Let go of that should and that expectation because all suffering in life comes from the expectation that it should be different. Tony Robbins says, “If you trade your expectations for appreciations, your life changes in an instant.” Everything shifts me to live this way and you will succeed so much faster. Krissy, I hope this adds tremendous value to you, guys. This is one of the biggest things that are most important in speeding up success. It's all mindset. What are your thoughts on this one?

It's good. That third point, I wrote down, “Mindset coach gives you the tools.” It's important to have someone to bring this to light but right here, even in this third mistake that we make that slows our success, you gave us a tool right there. I want to highlight it and point out that example of someone getting anxiety and then saying, “Why is this happening?”

It could be a decision that you make in your business or you're not making. “Why am I unable to make this decision and dig deeper?” It’s right there and you take it back and back. “Why am I feeling this way? Why am I thinking this way? Why can't I come to this conclusion faster? What's holding me back?” Being able to take that process and do it every single day will help you overcome many obstacles.

You gave everybody a tool that can already change their life in a day, so I appreciate that you do that for people. This is what mindset coaches do. This is why I love and appreciate the mindset training that I've had in the past and will continue to do in the future because it gives you more awareness, helps you refocus, and gives you the tools to continue to be better and do better. Also, live in joy and happiness, and all the success will come with it.

I've loved everything that we've talked about, the stories that you've shared. You've already given people some tangible things that they can go and do moving forward. You have something exciting that's happening, so I'm excited and I appreciate you so much for offering this to my people as well. I want you to talk a little bit about Success Accelerator, which is a ten-day challenge. Guys, don't get scared about the challenge. Embrace a challenge.

If you're going to decide to do this, which you should, and Brad probably thinks that you should, go in it full-heartedly. Dedicate yourself to it and complete it. Set that goal to do the ten-day challenge, be intentional about it, and don't be scared about maybe not getting the result. You will get the results that you want if you go in, be intentional about it, and do the work during the challenge. I'm going to do the challenge with you because I haven't done the challenge yet, but I know about it, so I'm super excited about it. Tell us a little bit more if there's anything else you want to add to why people should do this ten-day challenge.

It’s going to be fantastic. We've done it many times now. Thousands of lives have changed from this and yours will, too. It's the mindset that slows people down from what they want most. If you have all the strategies in the world on how to build a business but you don't have the right mindset behind it, it doesn't even matter. If you have the right strategy, you want to apply it or you won't put your all into it. It's like weight loss. When you think about weight loss, is it complex to lose weight? No, it's super simple. You have to look harder to not know how to do it. You have to look harder at how to stay out of shape because there are weight loss strategies everywhere.

The reason that it doesn't happen is because the mindset that we approach weight loss with and we as a society approach weight loss with, over complication. The mindset of, “I don't deserve to be healthy,” whatever it is. We need to fix the mindset going on behind the scenes so that we can succeed faster. What is this ten-day challenge all about? It's called the Success Accelerator. It's all about how do high performers achieve their goals faster and with less stress than all their peers?

How do you do that so that you can experience more success and happiness? Here's the key, without working more hours. Most people have the belief that success requires more sacrifice. If you think you have to sacrifice time with your family, husband or your wife to build a business and succeed, then you're not going to want to do what it takes. It doesn't require more hours. It requires alignment and the right mindset going into success.

We're going to learn the single biggest key on how to 10x your level of success. We're going to learn how to believe in possibility. You're going to become driven by this compelling vision of a future. You're going to learn how to narrow your focus, how to say no, and how to increase your daily energy like that so that you feel alive. You'll learn how to strive for so much more while also loving and appreciating where you're at.

You're going to learn how to give up perfection forever so that it doesn't become a part of you, which is a skill called anti-perfection. You learn the art of fulfillment. How do we feel fulfilled before we're at the level of success that we desire? This is one of the greatest keys to achieving more. How to take more time off and be more present while increasing your income and decreasing your hours?

Lastly, I teach something powerful called The Magnetic Success Formula. How do the highest performers that you know attract the biggest goals into their life? The time, money, spouse support, and everything, how do you attract that and what you want into your life? It's free. It's something I do a couple of times a year to serve, give, love, and get you into our world so you can start experiencing success faster.

We start on Monday and it's going to be in a private Facebook group where you're going to get live videos from me. I'll be interacting with you every day. You deserve to give yourself this challenge. You deserve to succeed faster, feel less stress, and feel fully alive on your path. Come join us. Join the thousands of people that will be in there again this time. It's going to be such a privilege to serve you. Success Accelerator is going to be an amazing experience for you guys.

Everyone who's reading already wants to work less and enjoy more. That’s something I say in my podcast intro and I still say it in the new one. I'm saying it all the time. They already want that. You know that I teach how to create in the logistical things, how to automate, and how to do things to save yourself time. This is also another missing piece to what's going to skyrocket your success. I have mindset coaching. I partner that with the other things that I learned and I teach you. It only made sense for me to bring Brad in and say, “Yes, this is awesome. My people need this because it's the piece that I touch on but I don't go deep.”

In Build A Blissful Business, we touched on mindset and we talked about not being enough, but I don't go deep. Even this ten-day challenge is going to go deeper than I've gone with you. It’s super important. If you want to move forward, be successful, and be happy and joyful doing it all, then this challenge is going to be what you need. 

Just a thank you. Thank you to them for reading. I thank you for being one of the most incredible people ever. I'm incredibly grateful.

Thank you. Brad, I appreciate you for being here and for taking the time. If you're on YouTube, in the comments, share with us something, a light bulb went off, a little takeaway, something that you're going to use moving forward. Let us know how excited you are to join this ten-day challenge. We will be there with you. Continue to have Brad on your journey with you. Thank you for being here. This was awesome. Remember, imperfect action every single day. Done is better than perfect.

Important Links:

• Brad Bizjack
• YouTube - The Krissy Chin
• Build A Blissful Business
• TheKrissyChin.com/success
• https://www.Instagram.com/bradbizjack/
• https://www.Facebook.com/BradBizjackCoaching
• https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/bradbizjack/
• https://podcasts.Apple.com/us/podcast/the-path-to-mindset-mastery/id1435519731