Happiness and success: How to become who you are.

Becoming who you are, sometimes you sit somewhere thinking about something and think "Wow, that's kind of special, how did it come to be that way?". For example, the other day I was doing math for work and I remembered all kinds of things. What it felt like and what it was like. For example, I had goals about how many people I wanted to help and how many people I wanted to have in training. I also had revenue goals and the revenue goals I had then, those are the costs I have now

So quite a lot has changed. Including how I thought back then and how I think now. Back then, I wanted to earn that, and now suddenly that’s the cost.

Then I thought, that's kind of special.

Of course, I often calculate things.

Suddenly it kicked in and I looked around and wondered, What happened?

Factors contributing to success

One important thing you don’t hear many people talk about is happiness. Of course, hard work is also a factor.

I also worked in construction. My colleagues and I also worked hard then, but it's not like we made a lot of money either.

On that, if you say "work hard, so you make a lot of money". That's not true at all. Most people who make a lot of money don't work very hard compared to a factory worker, construction worker or you name it.

So I always find that to be a dead giveaway.

I assume that everyone who wants to earn some money will do their best and work hard in their own way.

"You have to put in a lot of hours," he says.

That's right.

Research shows that most people believe success depends on talent, intelligence, skills, cleverness, willpower, hard work, or taking risks.

The interesting thing is that intelligence, for example, is normally distributed across society, but poverty and wealth are not. That already shows that there is something wrong with the idea that you are completely in control of your success. Of course those factors do come into play, but apparently there is another factor. That factor is called chance by scientists[1].

I prefer to call it luck and there are fortunately some other people who name the luck factor in the above list from time to time.

The happiness factor for success

This factor was important to me. I used to lead NLP workshops, and 6–7 people would attend. That’s perfectly fine for a workshop.

Then I gave a hypnosis workshop together with Martijn and it was offered to the same list of people and then 40 people came. That's 5 times as many.

That gave me the thought "oh, that's interesting too."

I already thought hypnosis was cool, but then it got even more interesting. It was also a bit of a lucky break. Because if just as many people had been drawn to it, I would most likely have continued with NLP rather than teaching hypnosis workshops.

Maybe I would have done it a few more times, but if 6-7 people were going to come each time I might as well keep doing NLP. I also thought NLP was more well-known.

So sometimes it's also just a bit of a stroke of luck that 40 people showed up then.

It's also just luck if you have good people around you.

Of course, you can go through all kinds of job application processes and psychological tests. And yes, that can help, but I’ve never used those tricks.

Then you might say that's not smart, but I put my team together more by feel.

Your feelings and success

The funny thing is that when I wasn't feeling well I had lesser people around me who were not a good fit as far as the business was concerned. But so it wasn't because of those people. It was because of how I felt and how I behaved.

I was not completely pure to the degree and then you get people around you who are not completely pure to the degree either.

That's not because of those people then. It's because of you and who you gather. You look through glasses and then you recognize people who also look like you.

For example, I once read a story of a company where it is normal to "hard sell" people and even though they have no money and the product doesn't quite fit those people, just push through.

Then you know what kind of people work there. People who fairly unscrupulously talk some sense into everyone and what do they care.

What happened next. Theft in the company and colleagues scamming each other.

That comes from the top down. What intention or energy are you bringing to it? What is your aura like?

With that, you gather people. If you're a jerk, then you gather jerks around you and you shouldn't find it weird that they scam you if you're also a scammer. Because you do that too.

You somehow find that ok.

I'm not saying I was in it, but I wasn't completely pure to the degree. I led my life in black and white, and I also regret what I did then. But then I also got a lid on my nose because of that. Now you can say Karma is a bitch, but it is my thing.

Learning and change for success

This in itself is not a bad thing either, as long as you learn something from it.

That you know that if you don't change, you will lose everything.

I think it's also a matter of a little luck. Luck getting a^2nd,^3rd or^4th chance. You can say that you enforce that, but sometimes you're also just lucky to get that chance again anyway to do well.

Then I also worked a lot on myself. I didn't want to be like that and when that changed other people joined and now it's a whole different idea.

The same is true for life. Life before that period and life after that period.

No one is to blame for what happens, but it’s always good to reflect on your own role in the situation.

Of course, people can flick all sorts of things. They got to you one way or another and there's nothing you can do about it, but now you can do something about it to change something in yourself so that those people will naturally leave you.

The shadow cannot be in the light. The more light you are, the less shadow around you.

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When luck plays a role

In creative professions, happiness is seen more as a factor important to success, compared to less creative professions. But is this really true? Research has been done on this.

Happiness is particularly influenced by the people you surround yourself with—fortunately, you can use your intention to influence that—and it also plays a role in the timing of major career moves[2].

So in that second way, luck played a big role in my work life, but maybe for yourself you're also like "if I hadn't encountered that person in my life, things could have been very different.".

So, in a way, it’s true that taking risks can help you achieve greater success. Because if I hadn’t taken the risk of leading a hypnosis workshop, that moment with 40 people wouldn’t have happened, and that “timing” wouldn’t have been there.

Getting help with your feelings and actions

Do you currently feel like you've gathered the wrong people around you or that you can't try new things to increase your chances of timing happiness? But not sure where to start to change this?

Then you can get help with hypnosis. An advanced technique taught in our training in the^3rd year helps you visualize your desired future and then come up with some kind of plan on how to get there.

So how this technique works is not covered until later in the training.

Another technique that can help is regression. With this technique, you’ll explore which beliefs cause you to keep attracting the wrong people into your life. You’ll go back to the first moment when you may have sensed that something was wrong, but you stayed in that friendship anyway or couldn’t walk away from that situation. (Depending on your specific issue, you may receive a different suggestion involving a different type of memory.)

You then engage in that moment in your mind. You empathize, for example, with the other people who were there, or you change how the moment went with your imagination. Depending on how and what the hypnotherapist helps you with this.

This can help you change beliefs that cause you to gather the wrong people around you or that cause you to stay in your comfort zone and thus become more open to your lucky shot.

Want to learn more about hypnosis? Then join the free online masterclass on hypnosis.

Or sign up for one of our training programs.

[1] https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219525918500145

[2] https://epjds.epj.org/articles/epjdata/abs/2020/01/13688_2020_Article_227/13688_2020_Article_227.html