Five Habits William Wood Used to Rebuild His Life
William Wood had been a success coach for years, one of the best, and had already helped thousands of people turn their lives around, when his own marriage, health, and business all collapsed at the same time. He shares exactly what that rock bottom looked like, down to the number on the scale, and the five principles he used to climb back out. Here’s the episode.
Hitting Bottom in Marriage, Health, and Business
Hi, my name is William Wood. I’m the creator of the Max Performance Master Course. I help entrepreneurs take their personal and professional performance to the next level, so that they can reach their goals and live their dream lifestyle. And today I would like to share five critical learnings that can help you open the door to your success and live the life you want. But first, let me share a quote from innovation master Tony Robbins, I think he really hits the nail on the head. One reason so few of us achieve what we truly want is that we never direct our focus, we never concentrate our power. Most people dabble their way through life, never deciding to master what they want to do.
So here’s the question. Are you ready to direct your focus and concentrate your power? Because today I am going to share five of the most important principles that I have ever learned, ideas that can help you achieve your goals and dreams, if you are bold enough to apply them. The sad reality is that most people in the world are not creating the results that they want from life. Their lives are miserable. They are slaves to their past, to their circumstances, and to other people who control them. Some people have even woken up to the reality that things must change, but they don’t know what to do about it, or have a systematic approach to change everything. I get it. I know what it’s like to be stuck.
Just a few years ago, I found some of my closest personal relationships in total ruins. My weight was climbing higher than it had ever been before, and my business suddenly started to take a nosedive, and I watched my income take a major hit after years of steadily and impressively growing. What’s worse is that I should have known better. I had been a success coach for years, and when things were falling apart, I had already helped thousands of people turn their lives around. Truly, I was good at what I did, one of the best, but I had stopped taking my own advice. Ouch. And so I found many of the things that mattered most in my own life swirling down a giant cosmic toilet bowl. It seemed like most everything that mattered most was falling apart fast. Maybe you know what that’s like.
At first I didn’t want to admit that things were bad. I had an ego, not helpful. And I didn’t want to ask for help. I am going to figure it out or die trying, I said to myself. Turns out I almost died trying to do it alone. And finally my ego was beat into submission. There is an ancient proverb that says that you can choose to be teachable, or you can be compelled to be teachable. I had to learn that lesson the hard way. That was painful and unnecessary, and I definitely recommend the easier path. What amazes me is that in the very instant I became open, mentors started to appear out of the woodwork, and the results have been stunning.
I first applied these principles to my marriage, which was on the brink of disaster. If we were in school, we would have gotten a low F minus at our lowest point. Today we would easily qualify for an A. Next, I applied these principles to my health, and last year I totally transformed my body. I went from seriously overweight at 227.2 pounds to now weighing less than I did my freshman year of college. I shed more than 50 pounds and have kept it off. Then I started to apply the same principles to my business, and immediately started to see results. I have seen month-over-month increases in revenue and profits almost every month since I started applying these principles. Last year I personally achieved more than 40 goals using the action principles that I’m going to teach you.
Now I have to confess, I paid more than $10,000 specifically for the advice that I’m going to give you right now, and went through an incredible amount of pain to learn what I’m going to share with you. Here is why I am willing to share my hard-learned, expensive lessons with you. I want to unlock a door for you, a door of opportunity that has stayed closed up until now, and once you step through this door you will find an infinite ocean of possibilities arising. But I must warn you, do not apply these principles unless you are ready to transform your life and reach a new level of success. What I am about to teach you is powerful. It has the potential to totally change your life.
Cultivate Stillness, Then Take Responsibility
So here is action principle number one. Cultivate stillness and silence in your life daily. Anthony Bloom said it best: real silence is something extremely intense, it has density and it is really alive. Let’s face it, there is a lot of noise in modern living. Everything competes for our attention and takes us away from the quiet and the stillness that is available to us right now. But stillness will not attack you, and silence will not just happen. Both must be cultivated with care. Consistently, my most powerful vision and inspiration about how to create massive results in my own life has come from moments of stillness and silence.
If you have never done this before, I recommend starting with an easy practice. Put away all of your electronics, turn your phone off or put it in airplane mode. Find a comfortable place to sit or lie down. If you live in a noisy environment, put on some soft music. Invite your body to be as still as you possibly can for five minutes. Put your attention on your breath. Stop focusing on doing for a moment and just be still. While you do, your mind will probably continue to chatter at you with images and self-talk. This is normal. Stop resisting the chatter, and just let it be while you continually refocus on your breath and the stillness. Once you develop the ability to be still for five minutes at a time, increase the amount of time you spend in stillness and silence. Today I spend around 45 minutes to an hour in stillness most days, sometimes more.
This practice will connect you with your true self and with something beyond you, source, the divine, the infinite. Amazing inspiration will come to you, and it all starts with silence. You may not notice the powerful transformation that occurs the first time you practice this kind of stillness, but most people begin to notice a stunning change after a month or two of practice. When I first started, I was agitated, I was not used to being still. But with time, my ability to enjoy the silence and stillness grew, and my personal power exponentially increased. People who knew me started to comment that I seemed more grounded and stable. It became easier to show love and access peace, which I believe are two of the states of being that are most attractive.
Cultivating silence and stillness aligns your inner being and creates a powerful gravitational field around you that draws people to you, like the planets are drawn to the sun. In this case, your gravitational pull increases every time you enter the stillness, every time you are cultivating personal power. Many of my most powerful personal transformations have come from this one practice, subtle changes, like an ice cube melting a little each day. After I had practiced daily for more than two years, my wife paid me one of the highest compliments I have ever received. She said, I have always loved you, but I was constantly on edge around you. I just noticed this morning that it has been months since I have felt that way. You have changed. Now people consistently tell me that they feel calm and at peace in my presence. That kind of presence can only come through a careful cultivation of stillness and silence, and it all starts with as little as five minutes a day.
Let’s move on to action principle number two. Stop blaming others, and start taking personal responsibility for your life. Blame is like gangrene to your personal power, and it eats away your ability to create the life you want. Break off the shackles of mediocrity, throw off the chains of the weak, stand tall and reclaim your personal power, and that starts with taking responsibility for where you are in life and the results you have created up until now. You always have a personal responsibility to take responsibility for your life. You can’t avoid it. Every thought you think has an energy. Every word you speak produces fruit. Every action planted reaps a harvest. Apple seeds produce apple trees, cherry seeds produce cherry trees. Every thought, word, and action has a consequence and bears fruit after its kind.
The results you have created in your life up until now are a direct result of what you have done with what you were given. Even if your circumstances have been less than favorable in the past, even if you have squandered your own ability to stand up until now, choose a new direction today and take meaningful action. Take your first step forward towards a new destiny. No matter what your past has been, you can decide right now to change. You are not bound to the past. What happened yesterday belonged to the last chapter in the story of your life. This moment begins a new chapter in your story of success, and this moment in time is under your control. So if the storms of life have swept you up into the howling winds of stress and pain, you now have the ability to choose your thoughts, and you can act in a meaningful way. And it all starts with a single step.
Focus, Find Your People, and Get a Mentor
The third action principle is focus. Find one area of your life to change, and decide to focus all your energy on changing that today. Alexander Graham Bell said, concentrate your thoughts upon the work at hand, the sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus. When people are looking for personal change, they typically are looking to improve one of four areas of their life, health, relationships, finances, or time. Sometimes people want to improve them all at once, or even other areas. My experience in my own life has been that it is generally much easier to focus all of your efforts on transforming one area of your life, than it is to dilute your passion, energy, and focus by trying to accomplish too much at once. I remember looking at goal research that compared people who had between one and ten goals at a time. The results of the study were stunning. Almost everyone who had one well-formed goal achieved it. Those that had more than four goals at a time achieved almost nothing. You can change every area of your life, just not all at once. So choose the one area you are going to change now, and pour all of your motivation, all of your energy, all of your focus into that one thing, day after day, until it has changed. You will be amazed at what you can accomplish when you focus.
Here is action principle number four. Surround yourself with people who are creating results. A fire stays hotter and burns brighter when there is ample fuel. Remove all of the fuel from a fire and it will instantly die. Oxygen is to fire as motivated people are to you and I. Simply put, we will both achieve more when we surround ourselves with other people who are creating results and inspiring others to do the same. A hundred years ago this was much harder to do. Today modern technology has made the world a very small place. Here are a few easy ways to start. You can begin to surround yourself with powerful people instantly by exposing yourself to the thinking of the world’s elite. Remember, thoughts create emotion and lead to action. Choose to put new thoughts in your mind, and you will create new results in your life immediately, and that effect builds over time.
Here are a few ways to do just that. Read from a powerful book, or subscribe to a blog about the area of your life that you want to transform, and spend a few minutes there each and every day. The greatest minds in the world can become your best friends in this way. Belief creates results, and you can increase your belief by spending time listening to people who speak life into you. Attend events and conferences, and hang around groups where motivated people are. Over the years I have invested more than $100,000 into my own continuing education and personal development, and every penny I have spent has paid dividends. I both teach and attend seminars regularly. Half of the value I get from a seminar or a weekend event comes from preparing to teach, or absorbing the ideas that are taught in the class. The other half comes from meeting like-minded people and cultivating relationships with other people who are going places, doing things, and teaching others to do the same. It only takes one idea to change your life. One. Meeting the right person at the right time can open the door for a lifetime of miracles.
Now, action principle number five is one of the fastest ways to change your life. Find mentors to guide you. Here is the greatest shortcut to getting results. Find people who have achieved the results you want, and model what they did, and you’ll achieve similar results, sometimes faster than they did, because they blazed the trail for you to follow. Mentors are critical. A good mentor can save you years of struggle, pain, and frustration. Whatever it costs in time, money, effort, and energy to be around a good mentor, it has always paid me back way more than it cost me. A mentor doesn’t have to be some kind of guru, just someone who has gotten a specific result that you want in life, and is a little farther ahead than you currently are. I have two main money mentors and lifestyle mentors, both of whom have accomplished amazing results, and I go out of my way to be around them. I also have several spiritual mentors and relationship mentors.
Nothing brings me more joy than mentoring people to get results, and introducing people to my mentors. Over the years I have been able to mentor more than a thousand people individually, and more than 5,000 people in live groups, and my video and audio programs and blogs have reached tens of thousands of individuals, in at least 64 countries around the world that I know about. I am passionate about what I do. I love to watch the lights come on in a student’s eyes as they wake up to their own greatness. The only thing better than seeing that light turn on is when people I have mentored turn around and light a fire in someone else’s life. Lives change because I lit a fire in someone else’s life.
My vision is to train an army of people to mentor others and help people unlock their own greatness. Together we can lead the world into light and greatness, because the world is hungry for change. The world needs compassionate and caring leaders who have the skills to produce dramatic change in the world around them. Together we can do far more than any one of us can do alone.
As a final word, Jim Rohn said it best: if you really want to do something, you will find a way. If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.
Full episode transcript
Lightly edited from the original recording — fillers removed, nothing added. Income disclaimer.
To truly give you the gift of freedom as you walk along the path of each Daily Shortcut episode, you'll discover that it's the people who you mastermind with that give you the power to transform your business. You'll take off in your business when you decide to slow down time and connect with other great mentors. When you decide, today decide to embrace fully the transformational information from one of my mentors. As we open a new door to a vehicle, you can step inside and smile, taking one step and then the other. As we open a new door to a vehicle, as you walk on a stage so we can celebrate you, pay attention to William Wood in this special episode as he shines a light on the power you have inside so you can immerse yourself in the principles of success, lift your hands in the air, and be free.
Hi, my name is William Wood. I'm the creator of the Max Performance Master Course. I help entrepreneurs take their personal and professional performance to the next level so that they can reach their goals and live their dream lifestyle. And today, I would like to share five critical learnings that can help you open the door to your success and live the life you want. But first, let me share a quote from innovation master Tony Robbins.
I think he really hits the nail on the head. Pay careful attention. One reason so few of us achieve what we truly want is that we never direct our focus. We never concentrate our power. Most people dabble their way through life, never deciding to master what they want to do, never thinking about what they want to do.
So here's the question. Are you ready to direct your focus and concentrate your power? Because today, I am going to share five of the most important principles that I have ever learned. Ideas that can help you direct your focus and concentrate your power so that you can achieve your goals and dreams, if you are bold enough to apply these principles into your life.
The sad reality is that most people in the world are not creating the results that they want from life. Their lives are miserable. They are slaves to their past, to their circumstances, and to other people who control them. Some people are still living in the matrix.
And they don't know how to escape. Some people have even woken up to the reality that things must change, but they don't know what to do about it, or have a systematic approach to change everything. I get it.
I know what it's like to be stuck. Just three years ago, I found something that I really wanted. It was a wind power. I had to stop things. But now that I have a system of control, I know what to do.
That's what I am. We have to go on a journey. Years ago, I found some of my closest personal relationships in total ruins. My weight was climbing higher than it ever had been before, and my business suddenly started to take a nosedive, and I watched my income take a major hit after years of steadily and impressively growing. What's worse is that I should have known better.
I have been a success coach for years, and when things were falling apart, I had already helped thousands of people turn their lives around. Truly, I was good at what I did, one of the best, but I had stopped taking my own advice. Ouch. And so I found many of the things that mattered most in my own life swirling down a giant cosmic toilet bowl. It seemed like most everything that mattered most was falling apart fast.
Maybe you know what that's like. At first, I didn't want to admit that things were bad. I had an ego. Not helpful. And I didn't want to ask for help.
"I am going to figure it out or die trying," I said to myself. Turns out I almost died trying to do it alone. And finally, my ego was beat into submission. There is an ancient proverb that says that you can choose to be teachable or you can be compelled to be teachable. I had to learn that lesson the hard way.
That was painful and unnecessary, and I definitely recommend the easier path. What amazes me is that in the very instant I became open, all of a sudden, mentors started to appear out of the woodwork. And the results have been stunning. I first applied these principles to my marriage, which was on the brink of disaster. If we were in school, we would have gotten a low F- at our lowest point.
Today, we would easily qualify for an A. Next, I applied these principles to my health, and last year, I totally transformed my body. I went from seriously overweight at 227.2 pounds to now weighing less than I did my freshman year of college. I shed more than 50 pounds and have kept it off. Then, I started to apply the same principles to my business and immediately started to see results.
I have seen month-over-month increases in revenue and profits almost every month since I started applying these principles. Last year, I personally achieved more than 40 goals using the action principles that I'm going to teach you as you continue to pay attention. If you are willing to invest a few minutes of your time and listen with an open mind, be sure to check out my other videos, and don't forget to subscribe to my channel for more videos like this one.
And here is why I am willing to share my hard-learned, expensive lessons with you. I want to unlock a door for you, a door of opportunity that has stayed closed up until now.
And once you step through this door, you will find an infinite ocean of possibilities arising. But I must warn you, do not pay attention and apply these principles unless you are ready to transform your life and reach a new level of success. What I am about to teach you is powerful. It has the potential to totally change your life.
If you are content with mediocrity and want things to basically stay the same as they are right now, I must warn you again, do not pay attention to the end of this message or apply what you are going to learn with precision and focus, because if you dare to apply the principles that I am going to share with you now, you may unleash the creative powers of the universe to assist you in achieving your vision. Your own heart may wake up, and you may find a power inside you to create results in your life that goes far beyond anything you have dreamed or imagined. So as you choose to apply the principles, do not pay attention to the end of this message or apply them to your life. Remember, you have been warned.
You are now in danger of changing your life and waking up to what is possible. So here is action principle number one: cultivate stillness and silence in your life daily. Anthony Bloom said it best: "Real silence is something extremely intense."
It has density, and it is really alive. Let's face it, there is a lot of noise in modern living. Everything competes for our attention and takes us away from the quiet and the stillness that is available to us right now. But stillness will not attack you, and silence will not just happen. Both must be cultivated with care.
Consistently, my most powerful vision and inspiration about how to create massive results in my own life has come from moments of stillness and silence. If you have never done this before, I recommend starting with an easy practice. Put away all of your electronics, turn your phone off or put it in airplane mode. Find a comfortable place to sit and relax, or lie down.
If you live in a noisy environment, put on some soft music. Invite your body to be as still as you possibly can for five minutes. Put your attention on your breath. Stop focusing on doing for a moment and just be still. While you do, your mind will probably continue to chatter at you with images and self-talk.
This is normal. Stop resisting the images and chatter and just let it be while you continually refocus on your breath and the stillness. Once you develop the ability to be still for five minutes at a time, increase the amount of time you spend in stillness and silence. Today, I spend around 45 minutes to an hour in stillness most days, sometimes more. This practice will connect you with your true self and with something beyond you.
Source, divine, the infinite. Amazing inspiration will come to you, and it all starts with silence. You may not notice the powerful transformation that occurs the first time you practice this kind of stillness, but most people begin to notice a stunning change after a month or two of practice. When I first started, I was agitated. I was not used to being still.
But with time, my ability to enjoy the silence and stillness grew, and my personal power exponentially increased. People who knew me started to comment that I seemed more grounded and stable. It became easier to show love and access peace, which I believe are two of the states of being that are most attractive. Cultivating silence and stillness aligns your inner being and creates a powerful gravitational field around you that draws people to you, like the planets are drawn to the sun and like the galaxy revolves around a powerful gravitational field.
In this case, your gravitational pull increases every time you enter the stillness. Every time you are cultivating personal power. Many of my most powerful personal transformations have come from this one practice. Subtle changes, like an ice cube melting a little each day. After I had practiced daily for more than two years, my wife paid me one of the highest compliments I have ever received.
She said, "I have always loved you, but I was constantly on edge around you. I just noticed this morning that it has been months since I have felt that way. You have changed." Now, people consistently tell me that they feel calm and at peace in my presence. That kind of presence can only come through a careful cultivation of stillness and silence.
And it all starts with as little as five minutes a day practicing stillness. Let's move on to action principle number two: stop blaming others and start taking personal responsibility for your life. Now, blame is like gangrene to your personal power, and eats away your ability to create the life you want. Break off the shackles of mediocrity.
Throw off the chains of the weak. Stand tall and reclaim your personal power. And that starts with taking responsibility for where you are in life and the results you have created up until now. You always, always have a personal responsibility to take responsibility for your life. You can't avoid it.
Every thought you think has an energy. Every word you speak produces fruit. Every action planted reaps a harvest. Apple seeds produce apple trees. Cherry seeds produce cherry trees.
Every thought, word, and action has a consequence and bears fruit after its kind. The results you have created in your life up until now are a direct result of what you have done with what you were given. Even if your circumstances have been less than favorable in the past, even if you have squandered your own ability to stand up, up until now, choose a new direction today and take meaningful action. Take your first step forward towards a new destiny, no matter what your past has been.
You can decide right now to change. You are not bound to the past. What happened yesterday belonged to the last chapter in the story of your life. This moment begins a new chapter in your story of success. And this moment in time is under your control.
So if the storms of life have swept you up into the howling winds of stress and pain, you now have the ability to choose your thoughts. And you can act in a meaningful way. And it all starts with a single step. The third action principle is focus. Find one area of your life to change and decide to focus all
your energy on changing that today. Alexander Graham Bell said, "Concentrate your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus." When people are looking for personal change, they typically are looking to improve one of four areas of their life: health, relationships, finances, or time. Sometimes people want to improve them all at once, or even other areas.
My experience in my own life has been that it is generally much easier to focus all of your efforts on transforming one area of your life than it is to dilute your passion, energy, and focus by trying to accomplish too much at once. While I have long since lost the reference, I remember looking at goal research that compared people who had between one and ten goals at a time. The results of the study were stunning. Almost everyone who had one well-formed goal achieved it. Those that had more than four goals at a time achieved almost nothing.
You can change every area of your life, just not all at once. So choose the one area you are going to change now. Pour all of your motivation, all of your energy, all of your focus into that one thing day after day until it has changed. You will be amazed at what you can accomplish when you focus. Here is action principle number four.
Surround yourself with people who are creating results. A fire stays hotter and burns brighter when there is ample fuel. Remove all of the fuel from the fire and it will instantly die. Oxygen is to fire as motivated people are to you, and simply put, we will both achieve more when we surround ourselves with other people who are creating results and inspiring others to do the same. A hundred years ago this was much harder to do. Today modern technology has made the world a very small place.
Here are a few easy ways to start. You can start to surround yourself with powerful people instantly by exposing yourself to the thinking of the world's elite. Remember, thoughts create emotion and lead to action. Choose to put new thoughts in your mind and you will create new results in your life immediately, and that effect builds over time. Here are a few ways to do just that.
Read from a powerful book or subscribe to a blog about the area of your life that you want to transform, and spend a few minutes there each and every day. You can do just that by scrolling to the bottom of this page and entering your email address and subscribing to the daily inspirational and motivational messages we put out every week. The greatest minds in the world can become your best friends. Belief creates results, and you can increase your belief by spending time listening to people who speak life into you. Attend events and conferences, and hang around groups where motivated people are.
Over the years, I have invested more than $100,000 into my own continuing education and personal development. Every penny I have spent has paid dividends. I both teach and attend seminars regularly. Half of the value I get from a seminar or a weekend event comes by preparing to teach or by absorbing the ideas that are taught in the class. The other half of the value I get comes from meeting like-minded people and cultivating relationships with other people who are going places, doing things, and teaching others to do the same.
It only takes one idea to change your life. One. Meeting the right person at the right time can open the door for a lifetime of miracles. Now, action principle number five is one of the fastest ways to change your life: find mentors to guide you. Here is the greatest shortcut to getting results.
Find people who have achieved the results you want, and model why they did what they did, do what they did, and you'll achieve similar results, sometimes faster than they did, because they blazed the trail for you to follow. Mentors are critical. A good mentor can save you years of struggle, pain, and frustration.
Whatever it costs in time, money, effort, and energy to be around a good mentor, a mentor has always paid me back way more than it cost me. A mentor doesn't have to be some kind of guru, just someone who has gotten a specific result that you want in life and be a little farther ahead than you currently are. I have two main money mentors and lifestyle mentors. Both have accomplished amazing results, and I go out of my way to be around them.
I also have several spiritual mentors and relationship mentors. Nothing brings me more joy than mentoring people to get results and introducing people to my mentors. Over the years, I have been able to mentor more than a thousand people individually and more than 5,000 people in live groups. And my video and audio programs and blogs have reached tens of thousands of individuals, in at least 64 countries around the world that I know about.
I am passionate about what I do. I love to watch the lights come on in a student's eyes as they wake up to their own greatness. The only thing better than seeing that light turn on is when people I have mentored turn around and light a fire in someone else's life. Now, that's powerful. Lives change because I lit a fire in someone else's life.
My vision is to train an army of people to mentor others and help people unlock their own greatness. Together, we can lead the world into light and greatness because the world is hungry for change. The world needs compassionate and caring leaders who have the skills to produce dramatic change in the world around them. Together, we can do far more than any one of us can do alone. Are you ready to take the next step forward towards change?
If the answer is yes, here is what you need to do next. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the screen and click on the link below, and enter your name and best email address to subscribe to get access to daily shortcuts to motivation and inspiration. When you do, you're going to get a free PDF of today's message, one that you can print. Reading this message can be a powerful way to reinforce these success principles in your subconscious mind.
You will also get a free audio recording of this video, the one you're hearing right now. And you can listen to it again and again to absorb these ideas into your subconscious mind.
You'll become more powerful because you're reinforcing the principles that will create the success and lifestyle that you want. Enter your name and best email address below. Simply fill in your name and best email at the bottom of this page. Then click the button that says give me the total shortcut, and you'll immediately be taken to download your three powerful bonuses. Bonus number one, download your free PDF transcript of today's episode.
Bonus number two, grab your free MP3 of today's message so that you can transform your unconscious mind as you listen again and again. Bonus number three, get a free MP3 download of today's video. Bonus number four, get a free MP3 download of a powerful 50 minute training that will teach you the key to make your words powerful and double your personal and professional influence. When you learn to change your words, you will change your world. As a final word, Jim Rohn said it best.
"If you really want to do something, you will find a way. If you don't, you'll find an excuse." Remember, finding a way starts by entering your name and email below. Your future is waiting.
One email opens every transcript on the site. No card. You’ll land right back here, logged in.