If you find yourself wanting to be more proactive or have trouble taking action, then following these steps will give you the boost you’re looking for.

Step 1. Commit to being the deliberate creator of your life.
What it really comes down to is that at every moment, you have a choice of which mindset to be in. If you choose to be in the mindset of “I am the deliberate creator of my life,” then you will choose to be proactive more often than not, and your business will soar.

However, all of us have been conditioned to be in an opposite mindset, which feels like “life just happens to us.” We modeled ourselves after our parents who had the same mindset.

This mindset is often referred to as the “victim” mindset. Because when you’re in it, you really do feel like a victim of life, and circumstances just seem to happen to you. It feels like life is being done to you. Here are a few examples of victim mindsets:

• “I can’t succeed in my business because of the economy today.”
• “I can’t compete with the younger agents because they know so much more about technology than I do.”
• “I can’t succeed in my business because there’s too much competition.”
• “I can’t succeed in my business because people around me are too negative.”
• “I can’t succeed because (fill in the blank).”

Do you see how when you’re in the victim mindset, it’s easy to blame outside circumstances on your lack of success?

Remember that your beliefs create your reality. So whatever you believe becomes true for you. You believe that you don’t have what it takes to succeed, and that is what you will experience. Fortunately, there is a way to clear out all self-limiting beliefs. I will be talking about that shortly.

Step 2. Let go of your perfectionism.
How do you know if you suffer from the pressure of perfectionism?
1. Do you often take a long time to get a project out because you’re busy second-guessing yourself?
2. Do you often slow down so much that it almost feels like you’re paralyzed because you want the project to be perfect?
3. You often feel like you don’t really want to send out something if it has any mistakes in it?
4. You find that you’re not as productive as you could be because you’re trying to make everything perfect?
5. Do you turn this perfectionism on yourself and tell yourself subconsciously “I need to be perfect to be okay?”

If you answered yes to any of the above, then you do suffer from the disease of perfectionism. In fact, in the 15 years I have been coaching real estate agents to double and triple their income, I don’t think there has been a single agent that doesn’t have some version of this old belief that they need to be perfect.

So once you realize that you are suffering from perfectionism, what can you do about it?

This process involves going back to a time when you were conditioned to be perfect. Perhaps your parents expected you to be perfect. Perhaps being perfect is how you were hoping to win your parents’ love. Perhaps your parents were perfectionists themselves. Perhaps making the decision to try to be perfect, at a subconscious level, actually benefited you when you were growing up. Find that early time and see how it may have benefited you then.

Then come back and ask yourself what consequences you would suffer if you continue to tell yourself “I need to be perfect and everything I do needs to be perfect.”

Usually the negative consequences that are revealed to you include:
1. Your income would suffer, which means that your income would either stay the same or go down.
2. Your self-esteem would suffer because you wouldn’t feel good about yourself unless you’re perfect.
3. Your relationships with people would suffer because you would either expect them to be perfect or you would be afraid to deeply connect with people because you would be afraid that they would find out that you’re really not as perfect as you try to be.

There are many other negative consequences of perfectionism like stress and poor health. Once you realize that these survival strategies of “perfectionism” that worked so well for you when you were a child, actually hurt you now, it’s a lot easier to let go of the whole idea of perfectionism.

When working with clients to help them release perfectionism, I help them to install updated empowered beliefs, which you can begin to do now on your own.

These beliefs are:
• “I’m so happy and grateful and realize that there’s no such thing as perfectionism.”
• “I’m so happy and grateful that I am perfectly imperfect like everybody else.”
• “I’m so happy and grateful now that I know imperfect action is better than no action.”

You can, over time, begin to form a new groove in your brain. New neural pathways actually form when you begin to install empowered beliefs such as these, rather than the old toxic beliefs that you grew up with.

Step 3. Be nice to yourself.
If you took on the belief that you need to be perfect, then most likely you suffer from having an overly developed inner critic who believes he or she needs to be hard on you in order for you to succeed.

What does this inner critic look like?
1. You compare yourself to others and then feel “less than.”
2. You are merciless with yourself if you made a mistake.
3. You beat yourself up by saying unkind things about yourself on an unconscious level like “how could you be so stupid,” or “you have to stop being so lazy.”
4. You always have the nagging feeling that you had a judgmental voice in your head that you can’t quiet down.

The solution to this problem lies in being able to practice positive self-talk. In order to practice positive self-talk, you need to become hyper-aware of what you’re thinking from moment to moment.

Whenever you find yourself saying something that is harsh or degrading to yourself, you need to intervene as early as possible and take the following steps.
1. Stop
2. Deep Breath
3. Positive New Thoughts. These include positive self-talk such as:
• “I am proud of you for________________________”
• “You really did a good job when_________________________”
• “Remember, you don’t have to be perfect to be okay”

Even if you made a mistake, it’s not the end of the world. Remember F is for feedback not for failure. Just think of it like this: At every moment you have the choice to be a tyrant to yourself and put yourself down in which case, you will develop an Inner Rebel. How many know the feeling of having an Inner Rebel? It digs in its heels and always wins. The bigger your Inner Tyrant, the bigger your Inner Rebel needs to be.

Step 4. Identify and release your self-limiting beliefs and replace them with updated empowered beliefs.
How can you possibly achieve success or create the income you want when your self-limiting beliefs are holding you back? You see, your subconscious mind is the carrier of these beliefs and your subconscious mind makes up 99% of the mind. So you may be saying “I want to be successful,” but if your subconscious mind is carrying any of these self-limiting beliefs, then you will subconsciously stop yourself from success. This is where coaching can really help; it’s almost impossible for us to see these self-limiting beliefs on our own.

Your conscious mind knows exactly the steps you need to be taking to increase your income. But that is only 1% of your mind. The subconscious mind is blocking you and it is 99% of your mind. It is blocking you with self-limiting beliefs. Most of the time, these beliefs were put in your subconscious mind when you were growing up. That’s why it’s so hard to pick them out, because they are part of you. For example, if I suggest that we do a session to work with your inner critic, this will come as a big surprise to you because you thought you were the inner critic. But by suggesting that you talk with your inner critic, you have already broken a huge attachment—now some transformation can begin.

This is true transformation. This is called “getting clear.” This is creating success from the inside out.

Dr. Maya Bailey, Multiple 6 Figure Income Business Coach for Real Estate Professionals, integrates her 20 years of experience as a psychologist with 15 years of expertise in marketing.