Ep 125. Secrets to Success

Hello there lovers. My name is Erin Aquin and today I want to teach you my secrets to success.

Let me back up before I dive into this. My son was in a little bit of a grumpy mood the other day and so sometimes what I do when we're all feeling a little bit down, is we open up my phone and we start to flip through our favorite pictures.

Our favorite pictures are always of our trip to hawaii, which we did this year in February and March, and I was scrolling through and came across a video that I had recorded for myself.

It was part pep talk, part dreaming, part possibility, and I actually remember walking on the beach by myself that morning recording this video and then right afterwards I turned on one of my favorite walking songs—it's very inspirational and beautiful, I'll link to it in the show notes if you're curious about my playlist—but I was walking and I was listening and I just started

crying when I was on the beach.

And the reason I was crying was, in that moment I felt free. I wasn't searching for anything and for the first time in my life I didn't need something from anyone else around me.

I didn't need my husband to be different. I didn't need my kids to do something other than what

they were doing. I just felt like I had everything I wanted.

And I remember the feeling of just liberation in my body feeling like I had just dropped off a suitcase I had been carrying with me for a lifetime.

Now immediately after we left HawaiI we came home and everything started shutting down because of Covid and things definitely got hard. Things were scary. We were missing people who we love, we couldn't see people who were really going through some tough things, and we couldn't be there in person because of all the quarantines.

But that sense of freedom and love did not waver.

And I realized that the three things I'm going to tell you about today are the reason that I felt

anchored in love, even when there were storms raging all around me—even even while so many people around me and sometimes myself. Sometimes I was having a bad day, sometimes I was having a hard moment, why I didn't lose that connection to that love and that freedom that I felt that day walking on the beach in HawaiI before I knew what was about to happen.

So I'm going to teach you this. And I say that these are the secrets to success because these are things that I can really identify and trace not only the success I've had in becoming a six-figure business owner, not only to become a Master Certified Coach. But these are the ingredients that have contributed to me having a beautiful marriage, to being a mother and having amazing children, and having a relationship with them that is very beautiful and that I would not change.

So I really hope that this episode supports you if you are wanting more success in any area of your life. I really do hope this inspires you, but most of all I hope that it reminds you that you probably already have everything you need to do this—whether it's create the business of your

dreams, whether it's to finish your book, whether it is to create something that has never been done in the world before—you already have the raw ingredients.

And with a little bit of alchemy you can totally find your success and find out what that looks like for you and then really create it.

This is not some 10 step copywritten process. It does not require inhumane levels of hustle and drive.

You don't have to work 20 hours a day. You don't need to jump on the newest spiritual bandwagon. But these three things have helped me create the life of my dreams—from a wildly successful business to a beautiful loving marriage. Are you ready to know my secrets?

They can all be traced back to these three things. 

Number one. This one may not be a shocker to some of you who've been listening for

a long time but the first one is to invest in yourself.

You have to be committed to finding solutions to all of the fancy artisanal excuses and obstacles that you keep putting between you and your goal investing in yourself.

That means that you are making your well-being, your goals, your preferences in this world more important than your excuses, than other people's opinions, than the fact that maybe you've never done this thing before.

You have to be invested in you and your dreams. 

You have to be willing to look at all of your beliefs and all of the assumptions and all of the expectations that you have been using as a shield to hold yourself back and finally maybe

be vulnerable enough to admit that you haven't really been working on this project.

You have to have your own back enough to invest in the life you want.

So for me this looks like about 15 hours a week, at least, of personal development work. It means that I pay attention to how much I'm sleeping, how much I am exercising. It means that I take regular breaks from other people.

I am an only child so being in a home with my husband and two kids was a huge adjustment to me when we created a family. So I need to have a little bit of alone time every day.

I don't need it but it really does help me recharge. And putting things that are important for my

well-being ahead of the expectations of others. 

In my business that means hiring an assistant, and having someone in our home who helps us

and making sure that we're eating beautiful food and that our children are well cared for when my husband and I are working.

It also means I have my own team of coaches. I get coached.

I'm a master coach and yet I still invest with other coaches because it is so hard to continuously and relentlessly move forward when you don't see some of the shady shit your brain is doing.

So I know I have all the fancy artisanal excuses just like every other mortal in this world.

So instead of wallowing in that and letting that drain me, I have a coach—a few coaches actually—who I work with to help me move through those see what's going on.

And I do it.

Lovingly investing in yourself is not yelling at yourself. It is not being a drill sergeant to yourself. It is loving yourself. And it is taking the time you need and knowing the difference between when you need time to recharge and when you are just procrastinating.

So learning how to make that distinction has made me a lot of money, has helped me

with a lot of my relationship issues.

I think everyone should have a coach. You guys know this. This is something that is essential to me and if it's not your thing that's totally fine.

Maybe for you it's daily meditation and yoga. I love those things too but working with some kind of a methodology that can help you overcome the things that you are putting in your way that

maybe you don't even see is very important to success.

The second secret to success, this is really a good one, it's caring about people and making the world better.

Okay, I might cry a little bit as I say this, but when I die I want my last thought, my last

conscious thought that I have, to be that who I was and what I created made this world a

better place.

I really love people.

I would not be here recording this podcast if I really didn't love you. I love you and I think that we all deserve to have wildly beautiful relationships.

If you have decided that you want to go through this life with another person, if you want to have this adventure with another human, I think that deserves to be a sacred thing.

I think you deserve to have an amazing experience in that partnership. And watching how many people self-sabotage or subscribe to really harmful fairy tale myths that prevent them from having the thing they so desire, that breaks my heart.

So this is a secret to my success, is that I actually care about teaching people what

I know. I care about it. I'm very passionate about teaching and that not only helps me to

keep going when things are hard or when I feel confused or I don't know what program I'm going to create or how I'm going to finish this chapter of my book. 

The drive to become more skilled, to be more creative with my craft so that I can support more and more people has created the side effect of a six-figure business.

I think that a lot of people are missing this one, but you actually have to care about people and making the world better if you want to be successful.

That's the only thing—that deeper purpose is the only thing that's going to get you through the tough moments.

Finally the last secret, the last key as essential as the other two—because if you're not self-investing you're going to be burnt out. If you don't care about people and making the world better you're not going to find the stamina to keep going when things get hard.

And the last piece of this is that you must become your own source of recognition.

I think this one's kind of the hardest for most people. Because it's really nice to have a round

of applause, it feels nice when you're recognized by your peers or by your family. When you do something nice in your household and someone acknowledges it, of course that's lovely. But I think we have found ourselves living in a culture where when you thrive on the acknowledgement of others, you're actually creating an open loop. 

What I mean by that is if you're only doing something to elicit a reaction from someone else then you're leaking energy. Then your brain starts to be externally focused. You're just trying to get replenished with the shiny gold stars coming from the world around you.

And if to you success only exists in the eyes of the world looking at you, not only will you find

out that's actually really hollow, it doesn't actually feel good when you get all the accolades. You won't get the feedback that you need to keep going. 

A lot of the time when you're starting out a new business you can work really hard—you can work 40 hours a week and you may not have any clients. When you are in a relationship where

you're trying to do something and make some adjustments, maybe your partner doesn't

really even notice at first.

So I have learned this one through a lifetime. I've learned not to wait for anyone else to give me a gold star for a job well done. And I know some people have told me that sounds a little bit sad.

It's like, “Oh you don't expect any recognition. You know that's got to be rough.”

But the truth is I actually think that this is so empowering. No one else can ever know the depth and degree of inner work that it takes to create something that looks like a success on the outside.

So when you become your own source of recognition you can own every win, big and small, whether the world notices or not. You close the loop of validation and you just keep feeding

yourself.

You know I put in four hours to write something beautiful and no one's going to see it for six months. This is something that other authors will understand. 

I'm working on the tail end of finishing my book right now and I've been working on this thing for hours relentlessly. Sometimes it's very hard. Sometimes things don't flow so beautifully, as my editor will find out next week.

And I'm not going to get any positive feedback from that effort probably for another couple of months.

It may not all be positive. Someone may not like my book and that's okay. But if I needed the constant accolades—if I needed someone to say, “Oh this part of your book is so fantastic,” reading it over my shoulder, I would never finish it. 

Because going back to these two other points I've made, this is an investment in my future,

in making the world a better place—becoming your own source of recognition means that you're turning inward and fueling yourself in a very closed loop, self-regenerating.

It is so beautiful and I believe that this is the source of the deepest confidence you can ever find.

When you don't need the world to recognize you and you're so full and you're so ready and you keep going every single day, that to me is the ultimate success. 

That's actually the feeling most people are looking for when they try to do something big in their lives: they're looking for a feeling of satisfaction. 

They want to feel the gold star energy. But you don't need to wait until you hit six figures. You don't need to wait until your wedding day. You don't need to wait until your relationship is perfect. 

You can experience that every single time that you invest in yourself, that you think about creating something beautiful in the world. And you can be your own source of recognition which

also just happens to be pretty much the sexiest thing in the world.

Because I promise you this: your partner does not want to sit there and tell you over and over again that you're doing a good job.

You know you don't want to become the little engine who could in your relationship.

You can do all of this for yourself.

These are my success secrets. I hope that this has inspired you to really think about how you can bring more self-investment, how you can find a deeper purpose in the world, and how

you can become your own source of recognition. 

Have a beautiful week.