Strategic Discipline Blog

When I was five or six years old, I remember standing in my kitchen while adults talked in the other room about my starting first grade that fall.

I suddenly became aware of myself—inside my body. I was conscious of my thoughts, my surroundings, and time all at once. It was as if I woke up to the realization that I was here… and that I was responsible for my life.

First grade no longer felt like a simple milestone. It felt like the beginning of a long journey filled with obligation, responsibility, and accountability.

That moment of awareness never left me.

The Scary Truth About Life

The physical world is powerful. So powerful, in fact, that most of us never stop to question our role in shaping our own lives.

Yet the truth is simple—and unsettling:

You and I create our lives.

Every outcome we experience is the result of a succession of choices—some conscious, many unconscious—that we make every single day.

Your life.
My life.
All of it.

Created.

When Responsibility Becomes Real

In 2012, when I was diagnosed with cancer, that early sense of responsibility came rushing back.

(A very good friend of mine, Wade Hiner, recently shared his experience with Change Your Mind. Create New Results training, and more specifically, his experience with me, and reading Dr. Joe Dispenza’s Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself.

He recorded a video with the help of another friend, Teeg Stouffer, at Fascination Film Studio.

I wanted to share this video because it explains how when I got cancer, I knew, unconsciously or consciously, I was responsible for getting it.)

I didn’t blame bad luck or circumstances. Instead, I asked a harder question:

How did I create this?

That belief surprises—and even offends—some people. I have close friends who strongly disagree with the idea that someone could be responsible for something as serious as cancer.

I understand their reaction.

It is a harsh idea.

And for the first few days after my diagnosis, I turned that belief inward with judgment. I criticized myself for being unaware, for not listening sooner, for not recognizing how my lifestyle, stress, and emotional patterns may have contributed to my condition.

Shouldn’t I have known?
Why did I put my family at risk?

But here’s the truth we often miss:

We don’t know what we don’t know—until we know.

And once you know, you can never go back.

Awareness Changes Everything

That’s why self-awareness is the foundation of real change.

Not just change for survival—but change for creation.

If you’ve spent your life complaining…
If you’ve blamed others for your circumstances…
If you’ve told yourself that life just “happens” to you…

There is still time to change.

When you take responsibility—not blame, but responsibility—you reclaim your power.

If you can learn to master suffering, you can learn to master joy.

How Change Actually Happens

Yes, change requires work.

But the raw materials for change are already within you.

Your thoughts.
Your choices.
Your behaviors.
Your emotional responses.

When you change your thoughts, you make new choices.
New choices create new experiences.
New experiences generate new emotions.

And over time, your brain rewires itself.

You don’t just achieve the future you want—you become the person capable of living it.

In fact, you’ll feel it before it ever arrives.

Once you internalize a new identity, once you emotionally experience the future in advance, it begins to manifest in ways you could never predict.

Ready to Create Your Future?

Now is the time to choose you.

At Positioning Systems, we help leaders and teams break free from the familiar past and build cultures of inspiration, accountability, and growth.

If you’re ready to rewire your thinking and step into your envisioned future, explore our NCS – Change Your Mind. Create New Results training.

Challenge yourself.
Challenge your team.
Challenge your business.

👉 Contact us today for a free exploratory meeting—and begin becoming the hero of your own story.

Growth demands Strategic Discipline.

How do you feel elevated emotions before what you deeply desire arrives?

That’s the subject of our next blog, which is appropriate for those of us to experience the Christmas season. The easiest elevated emotion to feel is gratitude.

Christmas is perhaps the easiest time to feel grateful!

Building an enduring great organization requires disciplined people, disciplined thought, disciplined action, superior results, producing a distinctive impact on the world.

Discipline sustains momentum over a long period, laying the foundations for lasting endurance.

A winning habit begins with 3 Strategic Disciplines: Priority, Metrics, and Meeting Rhythms.   Forecasting, accountability, individual, and team performance improve dramatically.

Meeting Rhythms achieve a disciplined focus on performance metrics to drive growth.

Let Positioning Systems help your business achieve these outcomes on the four most Important Decisions your business faces:

Positioning Systems helps mid-sized ($5M - $500M+) businesses Scale-UP. We align your business to focus on Your One Thing! Contact dwick@positioningsystems.com to Scale Up your business! Take our Four Decisions Needs Assessment to discover how your business measures against other Scaled Up companies. We’ll contact you.

NEXT BLOG – Christmas Wish – The Elevated Emotion of Gratitude