PowerGoals / Chapter 6 / The Ten Environments of You.

Even though it is important to reverse-engineer the transformational process, as I've explained in the previous chapter. You start acting from your present reality, in other words, your environment.

If you are not consciously creating an environment that aligns with your PowerGoal? and the other levels of transformation, your environment will keep you stuck. Many people get tripped up by their environment. They do not understand how powerful the influence of their environment is, and they do not recognize all the environments that are influencing them. So they stay stuck.

However, the opposite is also true: there is immense power in taking control of your environment. Changing one small area of your life changes everything else.

The ten environments.

I learned the framework in this chapter from the late Thomas Leonard. He is widely recognized as the founding father of the life coaching industry. Thomas Leonard taught about the nine environments of you. Because I recognized the major role that technology is playing in my life and those of others, I took the liberty to add it to those of Thomas Leonard. These ten environments – the nine originals plus technology – provide a framework for you to think about all the areas of your life and how they influence you.

Working with these ten environments also allows you to focus on the specific ones that you need to change to set you up for success.

The picture below shows the ten environments.

Everything starts with you right in the centre. When I am referring to you, I am not referring to your body. Most people associate themselves with their bodies. They think it is who they are, which is not the truth. When I say you, I am talking about the energetic you, your soul, the part that continues after death.

Part of that you are your memetics. Your memetics is your inner world: your metaprograms, thoughts, feelings, emotions, habits, and so forth. In other words, it is everything that happens within you, most of it unconsciously.

Then you get the outer world – the spokes in the graphic above that touch your memetics.

The outer world consists of the rest of the ten environments: the self, the spiritual, the relational, networks, the financial, the physical, nature, technology, and the body.

Key principles.

Before we dive deeper into each environment, there are five key principles that govern our environments that we need to understand.

The first principle is that everything is an environment.

The word environment is used in different ways by different people in different contexts. It is often used to refer to nature. For example, we say that the environment, meaning nature, is suffering because of pollution.

We also use it to refer to physical space. For example, you might speak about your home environment or your work environment. It is not wrong to do so, but there is some ambiguity when you use it this way. You might be referring to the physical space, like the desks and couches and coffee cups and so forth. You might also be referring to the relationships that you have there, and even to your thoughts and feelings about what happens there. You might, therefore, think of it as a positive or a negative environment.

None of these uses is wrong. But in the context of how we are using the word here, an environment refers to one of the areas of the current reality of your life. There are ten environments so that we can isolate and talk about each one.

In the example of your office, there are different environments at play. The physical environment at your office is the desks and the chairs and the building. Your memetics, or your thoughts and inner dialogue, about the office is another environment. Then there are the relationships and networks at your office, two more environments. We use the word environment to refer to one of these things so that we can isolate them. Because everything is an environment, everything is part of one of the ten environments.

The second principle is that everything is energy. I go into more detail about the science that has proven this principle in Chapter 10, but, in short, science shows that all matter is essentially energy. Applied to our lives, this principle means that something is either giving you energy and moving you closer to your goals, or it is draining your energy and keeping you further away from your goals.

The third principle is that all environments are connected. Another way to put it is that they are intertwined. We are only labeling our environments to make it easier for us to think about them and take action to change them. In reality, everything is energy and therefore connected. If you walk into your physical office space, you are in that physical environment, but you are also in that relational and network environment at the same time. And, of course, you have thoughts and feelings about all of those things. They are interconnected. The great thing about this principle is that if you change just one aspect of an environment, it affects all the other nine environments.

The fourth principle is that your environment is always stronger than your willpower. I have touched on this principle in the previous chapter, and I explain the science behind it in Chapter 9. If your environments are not aligned with your PowerGoal?, you will be swimming upstream, and you will get tired. You cannot swim upstream every moment through willpower. Your environments will override your willpower. Eventually, you will grow tired and give up. One of the major reasons why people do not achieve their goals is because they rely on their willpower to do it.

But some of you can experience a significant breakthrough right now if you take hold of this principle. You have been relying on your willpower, and it has been letting you down. Instead of relying on your willpower, find the stumbling blocks in your environments and remove them.

Workbook Q6.1: Have you been trying to reach your goals through willpower?

Follow the prompts in the PowerGoal? Workbook to reflect.

The fifth principle is that if the outside world is not in alignment with the inner world or vice versa, it causes friction or conflict. Many people do not achieve their goals because they self-sabotage themselves, often subconsciously. I have seen it many, many times. Self-sabotage happens because you are trying to achieve something in the outer world, but it does not align with what you actually believe on the inside. Your mind subconsciously comes up with ways to protect you from what it sees as bad or undesirable and keeps you from reaching your goal.

The opposite can also happen. You firmly believe something, for example, that debt is bad and that you never want to make any debt. But in the environments of your outer world, you are constantly being told that debt is good and normal. The people closest to you have debt. You walk into their houses, and most of their possessions were acquired using debt. The financial systems which you rely on are built on debt.

The friction between what you believe in the inner world and your outer environment will cause one of two things. Your inner world will conform to your outer world. You will start telling yourself that debt is not so bad, that there are certain types of debt that are good, or that this one specific reason for making debt is good and noble even. You will make debt and believe that it is the right thing to do.

The second thing which might happen is that you start distancing yourself from those environments. You will visit those friends less often and make new ones. You will tell the bank not to phone you again to sell you their latest credit card. You will pay cash for your purchases, and every time you look at them, you will know that you did so and that it is possible.

If you are experiencing inner conflict, it is likely that your inner and outer worlds are not aligned. You need to ask yourself whether you are trying to achieve something which is conflicting with what you believe deep down inside. You might need to work on your inner world, your memetics. You might hold some beliefs which are holding you back.

It could also mean that your outer world is in conflict with what you value and that you need to make some changes there. Perhaps you need to spend less time with certain people and more time with others. Perhaps you need to go so far as to change jobs or careers. This fifth principle is a great gift that allows us to recognize and remove obstacles in our path to achieving our PowerGoal?.

Workbook Q6.2: Are you experiencing inner conflict?

Follow the prompts in the PowerGoal? Workbook.

Now that you know these five principles, let us look closer at each of the ten environments of you.

Memetics.

The word memetics comes from the Latin word meme. A meme refers to a unit of social information that identifies beliefs and ideas and that is transmitted from one person or group of people to others. Your memetics includes your beliefs, values, ideas, thoughts, and cultural norms. It is the lens through which you view the world. It is the way through which you change your outer world into your inner world. Memetics includes your beliefs, values, ideas, thoughts, and cultural norms. It is the lens through which you view the world. It is the way through which you change your outer world into your inner world.

Our senses allow us to see, feel, taste, hear and smell. Through those senses, we convert the outer world into thoughts. Those thoughts lead to feelings and to emotions which, in turn, lead to our actions which become habits. Our actions and habits lead to our results. In the diagram, all the other environments touch our memetics because our memetics is linked the closest to each of those environments. Our inner world relates to each of the environments that make up our outer world.

Many people think that they are their thoughts and feelings. Like they think they are their body, they think they are their memetics. The great news is that that is not the case. If your memetics is the programs that you run about life, you are the programmer. You are the creator. You get to choose. You can change your beliefs and design the life that you want.

The fact is, your memetic environment, in other words, your ideas, value, thoughts, beliefs, paradigms, and habits have been passed down from generation to generation. Unless you step up as the programmer and start changing your memetics, you will probably have the same kind of life as your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents.

Some years ago, I wanted to do a second Ph.D. I felt very strongly that poverty is a man-made creation and that if it is manmade, we can unmake it. But I ran into a serious problem, so big that I decided to let go of the Ph.D. I realized that I could not help the majority of people because of these belief systems that are passed on. The sad thing is that the poorest of the poor have been poor for generations. Unless a person is willing to let go of that belief system of poverty which has been ingrained into them by their environment their whole life, they will not get out of poverty. It is certainly possible to get out of poverty, but it depends on the person. And very few people are willing to let go of these ingrained belief systems because all their environments work against them.

Your memetic environment also includes information like your knowledge, the books and magazines you read, the websites you visit, and the movies and television that you watch. One thing I would love you to do is to give up television completely, especially news. If you watch it, you are allowing yourself to be programmed, mostly with negative propaganda. Almost all television is based on beliefs about life that I do not want. The media industry wants you in a negative state of mind because then they can control you. If they can get you in a state of fear about some catastrophe that has no or very little impact on your life, you will keep on buying their products to keep informed about this thing that you think is so important.

You don’t have to give up television. It is your choice. But one of the first things I would do to improve my memetic environment is cut out television completely. Instead of the time that you spend watching these things, doing courses, or reading positive books. Put knowledge and thoughts into you that is aligned with whom you want to be. It is part of being the programmer, the designer of your own life. Watching television is also an act of design, but you are giving the programming rights over to someone else, and you need to think about what they are programming into you.

This life that you’ve got is by design. It is not by default, except if you give up your right to design and hand it over to others. That is where the problem lies for many people. You have to take responsibility. We are conditioned not to take responsibility. The financial and political powers do not want us to take responsibility. They want us to be dependent on them so that they can profit from us. But one of the traits of a true wealth creator is to take full responsibility for all our actions. Then you do not have to accept the status quo of most people’s lives. You can design your own, as long as you take up the responsibility.

My passion is to show people that they have the power to make all their dreams come true simply by taking that responsibility. I, therefore, want you to take some time to meditate and think about this environment. Ask yourself, What is my memetics? What do I believe? How do these ideas impact my PowerGoal?? Is it helping me move forward or not?

Take responsibility to create a memetic environment that will serve you. How can I program myself? How can I stop allowing outside forces to program me for their good rather than mine?

Take responsibility to create a memetic environment that will serve you.

Workbook Q6.3: Take stock of your memetics.

Follow the prompts in the PowerGoal? Workbook.

Self.

The second environment is the self. It includes your strengths, talents, personality, passions, and skills.

One aspect of this environment is about truly knowing yourself. If you know yourself, you can redesign the rest of your environments with this knowledge to be in alignment with our goals. If you are a skilled copywriter, you can use this skill to make money in your financial environment to get closer to your goals. If you are an extrovert who loves people, you can use that characteristic to build your network in the areas that are important to you. If you are passionate about problem-solving, you can use it to solve technical problems that you and those you know have and even build a business around it.

If you do not know yourself, you are much more likely to set yourself up for failure. If you start a business selling copywriting services, but you do not know a thing about copywriting, and you do not take responsibility to learn about it, you are probably setting yourself up for failure – no matter if someone else made money with their copywriting business.

The great thing about the self environment is that you were not born with all the skills and passions or even personality traits that you will ever have. You can develop yourself. You can learn new skills and become passionate about things that previously bored you. You can even develop your personality.

For example, many of my students start with no interest in having their own business. They tell themselves that it is not their strength, that it goes against their personality, and that they do not have the ability to learn the skills of sales or finances or whatever it is that they see as a stumbling block. But on their journey to their goals, they start seeing that business can be a powerful tool to get them there, not only financially but also to have freedom. So, they begin learning the skills. As they apply the skills and see results, they become more passionate about business. Someone who was a timid, introverted person becomes much more confident as they see what they are capable of.

Never limit yourself to what you can currently do and whom you think you currently are. Yes, be honest about what you can do and who you are now, but also challenge yourself to grow and be more.

Workbook Q6.4: What do you bring to the table to get to your PowerGoal??

Spiritual.

The next environment, the spiritual, is very important to me. Because of negative connotations, many people do not pay a lot of attention to it.

The spiritual environment includes our connection to a higher power – God or Spirit or the Universe. It is that invisible connection that we feel towards other people and the universe. It is where all our energy comes from. It also includes our spiritual practices. Because we are, in essence, spiritual energy first and foremost, we can tap into low spiritual energy or higher spiritual energy. The effect makes all the difference.

The emotions we experience are generated by our spirituality. In the same physical environment, you can experience overwhelm, clutter or fear. Or you can experience peace, calm, and joy. Your state of being is not dependent on your physical environment or any of the other environments. It is dependent on your spirituality.

Religions form to help us with our spirituality. Many people think that spirituality is a religion and vice versa, or that it is the specific religion that they have been exposed to. But religion is not spirituality. It is there to help you in the process. You might follow a certain religion or spiritual practices already, or you might not. If you do, become aware of what those practices are and what their effects are.

Also, become aware of your connection to a higher power in life, however, you think of it. Many people are completely numbed to this reality in their life, so they find it hard. Use some of the other environments to get you started – spend time in nature and become aware of what you feel inside of yourself. Talk to someone whom you see as a spiritually aware person and check what is stirring inside of you. A spiritual practice that I find extremely valuable is meditation. There are many kinds of meditation and different ways to do it. If you want to explore it, find one which resonates with you. Over time, your meditation, like many of your spiritual practices, might change. That is normal and good.

Do not neglect the spiritual. It is a powerful transformation source to tap into.

Workbook Q6.5: Grow your spirituality.

Follow the prompts in the PowerGoal? Workbook.

Relational.

The fourth environment is relational. The relational include those people in our lives that are closest to us and with whom we have intimate connections. These might be our family, close friends, close colleagues, mentors, and neighbors. They are people with whom we spend our time and with whom we share our lives.

The people in your life act as mirrors to some part of yourself. We become like the people with whom we spend time. It is a powerful revelation if we are willing to accept it. You might be spending a lot of time with negative people, those whom I sometimes call energy vampires. Simply by removing yourself from that environment, that is, by spending less time with those people or breaking the relationships completely, everything can change in your life. Immediately your life will start to change for the better. The converse is also true: spend time with people whom you admire. Make friends with people who have already achieved what you want to.

This principle is the reason why I believe in the power of a mentor and why I offer mentoring courses to my students. Yes, you can achieve results if you do a course where I teach you how to do something in six weeks. But if you do a year-long mentoring course with me, you will experience what and how I do it daily.

Do you want to have a great marriage? Identify a couple that you think has a great marriage and take them out for dinner. Spend time with them. Learn from them. Ask them questions, but also observe them. Become friends with them. Surround yourself with such people. And you will become like them.

But, Hannes, what about my family? I can’t choose them.

Yes, that is true. Many adults experience that when they spend time with their parents and siblings, they fall back into the habits and the thinking that they had when they were children living at home. But, remember, you can take responsibility. You can choose when, where, and how you spend time with your family, even your immediate family. You can choose what your mindset will be when you spend time with them. There might be some family members whom you choose to spend less time with or only at certain times. In extreme circumstances, you might even cut ties completely with some family members.

But you might also be surprised what happens in certain relationships when you take responsibility. You might become the one who influences them rather than the other way around.

Workbook Q6.6: Determine the influence of your relationships on your PowerGoal?.

Do the exercises in the PowerGoal? Workbook.

Network.

The next environment is your network. Your network is an extension of your relationship environment. It consists of people with whom you are on a first-name basis, yet you do not have a deep or intimate connection with them. It includes business associations, community organizations, and support groups.

The purpose of a network is usually to provide an exchange of information or to build bridges to people who can support you or whom you can support. Such networks are often found in the business or personal development space. Networks can be a great place for relationships to start. I have seen that some of my students use the network that they built through doing courses and programs together to start friendships and business partnerships.

Networks can propel you forward, but they can also hold you back. You might have joined a network to learn something or to get experience in something. When you are ready to move to the next level and your network is not, or if your network is focused on a specific level, you need to let go and move on. You are not doing anyone else a service to stay put. We sometimes have a misplaced sense of loyalty to a group or organization to which we belong to. It is a fine balance. Do not leave because you are being challenged and required to grow. But sometimes it might be time to leave if you are being held back from growth. Your departure might enable those who stay behind to be better off than if you were to stay.

The purpose of networks is to build bridges, so be careful of burning bridges when you leave. Just because this network is no longer serving a purpose for you does not mean it will not ever serve a purpose for someone else. You might even benefit from it again. But always be aware of where you are in your journey and the influence of a network on you.

Workbook Q6.7: Determine the influence of your networks on your PowerGoal?.

Financial.

The financial environment includes your money, bills, credit cards, investments, stocks, bonds, properties, and so forth, and the people who support your financial well-being – accountants, brokers, financial planners, etc. It also includes the tools and support services or systems you use to achieve your financial goals, which could be computer programs, systems, budgets, and/or banks.

Money makes the world go round, the saying goes. “Money isn’t everything, but it ranks right up there with oxygen,” Zig Ziglar said. The reason money and all the other aspects of the financial environment is so important is because the way that our society functions does not allow us to do the most basic things without it involving money. For 99% of us, our most basic necessities like food, water, shelter, and basic clothing must be bought. Even if you grow your own food, you need to buy or rent the soil in which you plant your seeds – that you also paid for. Even if you get something as a gift, it means that someone else is paying for it.

The same applies to the higher pursuits of life. Because we need money to pay for our basic necessities, most people trade their time for money, leaving them with very little time to spend on relationships, spirituality, looking after their body, enjoying nature, and knowing and growing themselves. One of the big reasons financial freedom is so desirable to so many people is because it gives them time freedom.

I could write an entire book about what money is and how it works. For this book, I will limit myself to defining money as a method through which we exchange value. If you want to improve the way that you think about money, think about it as an exchange of value. Value is relative because it is a perception. Because the value of money is based on perception, we can trade. I can give the Ferrari company my dollars in exchange for a car because that Ferrari has more value to me than my money and that money has more value to them than the Ferrari that they manufactured.

When exploring the financial environment, it is important to look closely at the relationship that you have with money. Your belief systems around money and financial wealth have a profound influence on your relationship with all the things which form part of this environment. Money has energy, the energy that you assign to it through your belief systems. If you have any problems that relate to the financial environment, there is a good chance that it relates to your beliefs about money. So always be open to examining these beliefs if you want to experience a financial breakthrough.

All environments affect each other, but the financial environment might be the one that does so the most because it is one of the environments that we understand the least. Let’s take relationships. Statistics show that as much as 65% of all divorces are caused by financial problems. Almost all couples have had a fight about money or about something that relates to it. One of the reasons for these fights is the relative value of money. What one person sees as financially important is not important to the other one. Most likely, both people do not know how to manage their money effectively, causing stress and strain.

When you examine your financial environment, ask yourself first what you believe about this environment. Along your journey, you might also discover that what you told yourself you believe and what you actually believe is not the same thing. Be willing to own up to it, and be willing to change those beliefs which are not serving you.

Also, ask yourself whether all the aspects of this environment are serving you and your goal. Think of your investments, your service providers, your tools, and the people who work with you. Are they adding energy to you and your goal, or draining energy from you? Are there any changes you can make that will help you along your journey?

Workbook Q6.8: How can you optimize your financial environment?

Do the exercises in the PowerGoal? Workbook.

Learning more about this environment is one of the most powerful ways to make a positive impact in your life and to get you to your PowerGoal? faster, even if your PowerGoal itself is not financial. If you have the opportunity to do so, go for it. If you do not have such opportunities, look for the right ones. A note of caution: many advisers, gurus, and experts want to teach you about money. Be wary. Just because someone has a qualification or presents a course does not mean they know what they are talking about. The way that I determine whether I can learn anything from someone is to ask whether they have successfully done what they teach. It is especially true when it comes to the financial environment.

Physical.

Your physical environment provides visual clues of what is going on in your inner world. If you walk into a person’s office and see a lot of clutter, it could indicate that there are other problems in the person’s life. The same with a person’s car or the clothes that they wear. Clues are not always correct, but they give you a good indication. Your physical environment provides visual clues which allow you and others to discover more about your beliefs, thoughts, energy, and behaviors.

The same as with everything else in your life, your physical environment is what it is for a reason, and that reason is you. Whatever excuses you might give others or yourself, you are responsible for your physical environment. The great part about taking responsibility is that you can change your physical environment. Simply changing your clothes gives you a different experience and puts you in a different situation. You feel different, and other people look at you differently. It is why we wear certain clothes in certain situations. Most people do not wear the same clothes on the beach as they do in a client meeting.

Your physical environment includes things that are under your control and things that are not under your control. For example, the items in your home are under your control because you own them. If you are an employee, most of the items at your office are not under your control. The road that you drive on and the neighborhood in which you live is not primarily controlled by you.

Many people tend to make the mistake to think that because they are not primarily in control of something, they have no control or influence over that thing. That is not true. You have complete control over yourself and therefore over everything with which you come into contact. If you do not like the physical space in which you work, you can do something about it. If you cannot change the minds of those who do have control, you can change jobs or start your own business. If you do not like your neighborhood, you can move.

Most importantly, you have control over the thoughts and feelings that you have about those things. If you do not like a certain outfit that your spouse wears, you can tell them that you do not like it and offer to buy another one to replace it. It might be a good strategy for some people, but definitely not for everyone. But what everyone can do is to change the thoughts and feelings they have about it. Instead of thinking, There is that ugly outfit again, you can think, There is the outfit that (s)he likes so much. You are in control, and through the energy of your thoughts and feelings, you have much more control than you think.

Even those things that you own might end up controlling you instead of you controlling it if you are not aware. Acquiring anything – your house, your car, your clothes, your boat, whatever it is – required you to go through a process, the same transformational process we have been speaking about. It changed you, and it often causes people to attach to that thing. It makes them feel as if a part of their identity is tied up with that thing.

Allowing that to happen can hold you back. Being attached to a thing means that that thing controls you instead of you controlling it. It keeps you locked into being the person that you had to become to acquire it. It might have been a great transformation at the time, but you cannot become stuck and stay that person forever.

When you examine your physical environment, ask yourself what clues it is giving you about those beliefs about life that you might not be owning up to. Ask yourself what clues it is giving others about the person you are and the one you want to be to reach your PowerGoal?. Making changes in your physical environment to line up with the person who is able to achieve your PowerGoal? can be very powerful. I am not talking about buying things in debt so that you can feel successful. It is usually much smaller and much more subtle. It is about using small things to signal to yourself and others that you are becoming the person that can achieve your PowerGoal?. Always remember that you are responsible and that you are in control. You have more control over changing those things in the physical than you think, and if you cannot change those things, you can always change your thoughts and feelings about them.

Designing your physical environment often involves getting rid of things rather than acquiring things. It is great to enjoy the things in your life – the houses, cars, boats, helicopters, and clothes. But always make sure that you have them and that they do not have you.

Workbook Q6.9: How can you set up your physical environment for success?

Nature.

The eighth environment is nature. It includes the natural world, its beauty, and seasons. I get immense energy from nature. The moment I am in nature, I am a different person. I immediately relaxed. I can just be. It fills me up on many different levels.

For that reason, my wife and I love to camp. We have a camping vehicle with solar panels that allow us to be totally off the grid. From where we currently stay in Pretoria, South Africa, we can go on trips to many wonderful and beautiful nature sites in our country and neighboring countries. We often stay in these remote places a couple of weeks at a time. It is where we charge and from where we get our energy. We love the silence and the sounds of nature. We love the smells and the atmosphere.

I do not only spend time in nature when I go camping. An aerial photo of my house shows that our house is surrounded by green trees and bushes. I have set up my home and my office to be as close to nature as possible. Even though we live in a city, we bought a piece of property large enough that you cannot hear the sounds of the street at our house.

We planted trees and keep a large garden. I have some of my best ideas walking around outside on our property.

A few years ago, I bought my wife a game farm for her birthday. We set up our Wealth Creators University campus on it, and I presented many courses there for years. It was only about a two-hour drive from our home, so we could go there at any time to experience nature on a completely different level. I also knew that putting my students in that environment allowed them to have powerful transformational experiences. Being so close to nature soothed their souls and caused their minds to calm down so that they could experience breakthroughs.

Your relationship with nature will look different than mine. I am not saying you should have a large garden or buy a game farm. When circumstances change, we sold our game farm. As much as we loved it, we needed to transform again. It was no longer aligned with our journey. We let it go with happy hearts and much gratefulness for what it meant to us.

What I can tell you is that your life will be poorer if you do not incorporate elements of nature into it. For you, it might be to take time to go to the beach if you live close to it. Or you might choose a route to work that takes you along lanes of beautiful trees in bloom during spring. Or you might choose to live somewhere close to a park so that it is easy to get away from the concrete world of your daily life.

Choose those things which will add energy to your life.

Workbook Q6.10: Is nature adding energy to your life?

Do the exercises in the PowerGoal? Workbook.

Technology.

The ninth environment is technology. This environment also includes electronics, virtual spaces, software, hardware, and networks. Electronics refer to computers, tablets, phones, music players, televisions, game consoles, and GPS systems. Virtual networks include social networks, video conferences, and online networking.

I added this environment to Thomas Leonard’s nine environments because of the profound and ever-increasing impact that technology has on all of us and the other environments. We build and maintain relationships and networks via technology. We bank online rather than in person. Our businesses run on the internet. Even our physical environment is arranged according to elements of technology. Your desk has a computer on it, and your living room has a television, all of it connected to the internet, even some kitchen appliances these days.

Technology is an enabler, but it can also be a stumbling block. We have gotten to the point that if our technological systems do not work, we cannot be productive. Yesterday when I sat down to work, we had some major problems with our electricity, internet and office network. In the end, irrespective of those challenges, we got done what we set out to do that day. But it impacts other areas of life.

Technology can also be a distraction. Technology is wonderful, but we can mindlessly give away much of our time to it. Do you know how much time you spend on social media, watching online videos, or playing games per day? How does it add up per week, especially if you take weekends into consideration? I deserve some entertainment, you might be telling yourself. But are you consciously assigning time to it, or are you mindlessly losing yourself in it? What else could you have spent that time on – your business, your loved ones, your spirituality, or knowing and developing yourself?

Looking at screens too much is also not good for your physical health. Your posture is compromised by sitting at a desk typing for too long periods or looking down at your phone in your hands all the time. Your sleep is affected by the blue light that emits from most screens.

Technology is great. It has propelled my life and my businesses forward momentously. We have endless possibilities in our day and age that previous generations did not have all thanks to technology. But technology is what you make of it. It can be a powerful tool in your hand that brings you closer to your PowerGoal?, or it can keep you from ever reaching it. Be conscious of what it is in your life, and make the necessary adjustments to ensure that it is propelling you forward instead of holding you back.

Workbook Q6.11: Is technology propelling you forward or holding you back?

Body.

The tenth environment in the body. This environment includes your body, hair, nails, skin, health, and, the most important part, your energy levels.

Your physical energy depends on the nutrition that you give your body, in other words, what you put into the body. It is therefore very important that you look at what you eat. What is the energetic value of what you eat and drink? Like with everything else, what you consume either adds energy to you or takes energy from you. We put many things into our bodies simply because it is part of our society and because it feels good. But what feels good is not necessarily good for you.

For many years now, I have not been consuming any sugar. It might be a very drastic step for some people, but, for me, it was clear that sugar does not add any substantial energy to my life, and it takes a lot from me. So I stopped taking it completely.

I recently did an experiment and stopped drinking coffee too. I am not a coffee connoisseur, so I do not drink my coffee very strongly. But I like to have a few cups a day. I heard that coffee’s effect on certain parts of the brain can negatively influence certain meditation practices. Because I am working on my meditation, I decided to test it. For a few weeks, I gave up coffee completely. However, I did not experience any benefits to my meditation, so I started drinking coffee again after a few weeks. For you, giving up coffee might have many benefits. For me, it did not. But I felt great knowing that coffee does not have any hold on me. I can let it go if it serves me.

One of my mentoring students this past year decided to give up alcohol. He was not an alcoholic, but he felt that all his social interactions were always based on alcohol, and he wanted to change that. He experienced a very positive effect on his physical body. Even though he had been exercising regularly and eating well, he battled to lose about 10kg, which he felt would put him in a healthier bracket. When he gave up alcohol, he lost that weight without even trying. He was very chuffed with himself. The whole exercise gave him much more confidence in his abilities, which had a very positive effect on his PowerGoal? of becoming financially free through property investment. After a while, he started drinking alcohol again on occasion. But like me with sugar, it was not hard for him to say no to alcohol knowing how much better his body does without it.

I am not saying you should give up sugar, coffee, or alcohol. I am saying you should be aware of the effect of whatever you put into your body.

You are not your body. Many people fixate on their body because they find their identity in what their body looks like. Other people feel trapped in a body that they do not like. Your body is not you. It is something that you have. Therefore, you can design it.

The same applies to your brain. It is part of your body, and you can design it. Many people think that they are their brains. They think so because their brains and their bodies dictate what they feel and how they react. They have been given control over their body, which includes the brain. But you are not your brain, and you are not your body. It is an environment. The real you is a spiritual being. You are energy. Your brain and your body are physical manifestations of your spiritual energy.

I go into more detail on the brain and the body and how they work in Chapter 9. However, if you have ever meditated, or even just spent time reflecting, you would have experienced what I am describing here. In that state, you are on a spiritual plane. In that state of meditation or deep reflection, you can observe your brain and your body. You can observe that you are feeling and thinking certain things. You can feel certain sensations in your body.

You are not those thoughts, feelings, and sensations. You are spiritual energy observing those things. Those things are manifestations of you, and you can take up control and change them. You can control your brain, and you can control your body. You can decide whether you are going to eat a piece of cake or not. You are in control. You can also choose whether you are going to feel sad or whether you are going to feel happy. You are in control. Controlling your brain and your body is a skill we do not often learn much about. Because it is a skill, you learn it, and you become better at it. It is one of the reasons why I like to meditate. It helps me to grow this skill.

However you decide to do it, remember that you are in charge of your body. And the good news about that is that you can design your body the way you want it to be.

Workbook Q6.12: What body are you creating?

Where you are.

Now that you know more about each of the environments, your assignment is to apply this knowledge to your life. If you need to, review the environments, and even memorize them. For your transformational journey, you need to become aware of where you are. The ten environments give you a framework to plot where you are at the moment. It gives you a way to know where to start this transformation.

You need to identify what is positive and what is negative in each environment. You need to take responsibility for the fact that you are in control of all of it and that you are able to change it. If you have not done the exercises for each environment, go back and do them now.

The exercises ask you to identify changes and implement them. If you are feeling overwhelmed by all of it, identify one to three environments where change is needed the most or where change will have the biggest impact on your PowerGoal?. You cannot neglect any of the environments forever, or it will cost you in the long run. However, it helps to focus on one to three of them at a time.

Go through the exercises of those three environments again. From the exercises, choose one to three actions that will have the highest impact on you and your PowerGoal?. They could all be from the same environment or from three different environments. Some of them might be once-off actions. Do them immediately. Once you have done them, identify one to three actions that you need to repeat to see the necessary results. In other words, you need to create a new habit. As you read the next chapter about Perfect Days, set up your own 91 Perfect Day Challenge around those habits. Do them each day for the next 91 days. If you do it, your life will change.

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