Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Applying the Mosquito Principle to Your Life w/John R. Miles EP 7

Episode Date: March 5, 2021

In today’s show, John explains applying the Mosquito Principle and its impact on maintaining your forward momentum. You will learn how the many “mosquitos” are sucking the motivation and impetus from your life The tiny mosquito is the most dangerous animal in the world and the cause behind diseases like malaria and the Zika virus.  Just as these inconspicuous insects can wreck up our health, there are many tiny “mosquitos” in our life (read acquaintances and habits) that rob us of our forward momentum. Because these “mosquitoes” are cleverly disguised, John shares the 4 different kinds of mosquitos in your life so that you can swat them out. Tune in now! What You Will Learn in This Show Why having sharks in your life is a good thing Why the “mosquito” is more dangerous than a shark The 4 different kinds of “mosquitos” and how to swat them out And so much more… Follow John R. Miles Here: Website - https://passionstruck.com/ ​Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_life ​ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Johnrmiles.c0m ​ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Milesjohnr ​ Medium: https://medium.com/@JohnRMiles John's Website: https://johnrmiles.com/ - John's New eBook - The Passion Struck Framework https://passionstruck.com/coaching/

They are afraid to take on that same opportunity. And so they want to cast doubt for you when it's your opportunity ahead of you. They are the ones who have gotten into this plateau career that I often talk about. They're plateaued. They go from portfolio job to portfolio job. But because they've plateaued,

they want you to have the same outlook in your life. Welcome to the PassionStruck podcast. My name is John Miles, a former combat veteran and multi-industry CEO, turned entrepreneur and human performance expert. Each week we showcase an inspirational person and message that helps you unlock your hidden potential and unleash your creativity and leadership abilities. Thank you for spending time with me today and let's get igniting! Welcome to Momentum Friday! American self-help author Napoleon Hill said, without doubt, the most common weakness of all human beings

is the habit of leaving their minds open to the negative influence of other people. And self-help guru, himself Tony Robbins, said, the quality of a person's life is most often a direct reflection of their pure groups expectations. Now there is so much truth to both of those quotes today. How often do we let what other people think about us or our habits get in the way of truly life-changing opportunities. Why do we let that happen to us?

And how will we prevent it in the future? In this episode, I'm going to do over something that I call the mosquito principle and why it is so important for you to conduct a mosquito audit in your own life. This is one of my most requested topics and I am so happy today to be able to discuss it with you. I was recently driving home and listening to the radio when I heard the announcer ask a pretty profound question, what is the most deadly animal on the planet? And like most of you, my mind probably jumped to,

is it that giant crocodile that they have in Australia? Is it that jellyfish that they have, that tiny one that with one bite can kill you and lock you away forever. Or was it a great white shark? Or was it a tiger, a lion, or some type of snake? As it turns out, I wasn't even remotely close. None of those predators even make a small dent on the total number of human lives that are taken by the mosquito. If you look at the comparison between shark deaths and a mosquito, there are more mosquito deaths in a year than there are in a century of shark deaths. In the US, a shark kills someone every two years. In comparison, the mosquito is responsible for nearly millions of deaths over the same time period. So, the

question you were probably asking is what makes these mosquitoes so dangerous. And why am I talking about this with you on a self-help podcast? Mosquitos are so dangerous because oftentimes we don't know they are even there until they inflict their damage. And other times they're flying around us and trying to get our blood and we have to swan them away. But regardless, they bring such a toll on human life. It's unreal. These little pesky animals carry so many different viruses and other things inside them that play havoc on the human race. If you thought it was just malaria, then you're so wrong. There's the West Nile virus, the Zika virus, the Chikkunwa virus, Dungae fever, Japanese encephalitis, and malaria as well are all mosquito-borne illnesses. As old, these flying insects kill over 1 million people a year, and they account for over 17% of the world's infectious diseases. Worse, they can pass these diseases onto parasites, which then can spread it even further to humanity.

And yet, these insects are so ben benign and you wouldn't think twice about swanning them away. So it got me thinking about why do we have such a hard time swanning away those things in our lives that are causing us from living the lives that we need to live. There are so many examples in our personal lives and in our business lives that we are so busy trying to stay out of the way of our perceived threats that we feel to diagnose and realize the enemies that are right around us enemies that are right around us, sometimes in the closest places that we might not even recognize. And these predators are sucking the blood out of us right before our very eyes. If you're confused, let me explain through another analogy. First, I'm going to talk about

the sharks in our life. And when we think about sharks, we normally think about them as these predators in the sea that are doing havoc to us or scare many of us to even want to enter the ocean or go diving, get on a boat, et cetera. Some of us are so petrified by these sharks, yet the chances of them doing damage

are absolutely slim in comparison to other species that are out there. In a business setting like Shark Tank, those sharks are responsible for guiding the pathway of our lives, in the case of Shark Tank, the entrepreneurs who are on the program, but in the business context, we often look at our bosses, a mentor, or something as a shark, who is guiding us down the path of success, giving us sage advice, telling us what we need to avoid, etc.

In a personal setting, it could be a life coach. It could be a personal friend of yours who's giving you advice. It could be your parent or could be another family member who is giving you sage advice on how you should live your life and how to avoid danger and other things in it and to prosper. However, the truth is regardless of the setting, the sharks in your life are the ones who are helping to propel you forward. They're the ones who are giving you advice. They're the ones who are acting as your guide and helping you on your pathway to be successful.

Regardless of how you interact with them, the result is very much the same. They are the ones who are giving you motivation to continue on your way to make the most of the opportunities that are set forth in front of you and to give you that advice, that deep mentorship, that encouragement, that motivates you to continue on your passion journeys. They give you

that impetus to take that dream forward, to commit to it and execute on it. Whereas in comparison, the mosquitoes are just the opposite. And they get in the way of all those positive things that the sharks do. Human mosquitoes are not as easy to distinguish as those sharks. And some of them may be some of the most influential things in your life. It could be your beliefs. It could be your beliefs. It could be your friends. It could be family members. It could be activities you're doing. We let so many of these things get in the way of truly life altering possibilities. We let them get in the way of us facing the true

brutality of what is actually happening in our lives. And they get in the way of us acting on that. And these mosquitoes come in different guises. Many of them are hidden and you wouldn't even see them. And some of them are right before your eyes, but you don't even know the blood that they're taking out of you and the impact that it's happening. So, at this point, I'm going to go through what I consider are the three different types

of mosquitoes in your life. The first type of mosquito that you need to avoid is something that I refer to as the blood sucker. These are the people that think that they've made it. They think that they're the only ones in the room that matters. And they let their ego get in the way of your happiness, your success, your motivation, and they create obstacles that they put in the path because they are so jealous of your success and how it may make them feel lesser that they would rather inflict blood sucking activities on you than for you to achieve what you are capable of achieving.

They're the ones who cause you to ease off that strict work out routine. They're the ones who get you to go out and party when you could be writing your book. They're the ones who get you to get out of your routine about how you're eating and out of that diet that you are so wanting to achieve. Being attacked by this type of mosquito will leave you plateauing in your life and in your career. These are the ones who will make you miss deadlines. They will make you miss achieving that work out that you want to.

They're the ones who will keep you from working on your relationships. They're the ones who will make you get off your diet plan. In other words, they rack havoc on all the goals that you were trying to achieve. The issue with this mosquito is that they are truly motivated by self-identity and self-preservation. They don't care about you. When it comes down to it, they care about themselves. And they would rather see you fall so that it builds them up and doesn't crumble the tiny empires that they have created in their minds. They tend to use manipulation tactics to orchestrate events, circumstances, and other things that all

bowed in their favor, but not yours. This type of mosquito is one that I experienced first hand at Dell, where we adopted a policy from GE, wherever year we would like 10% to 15% of all our employees go. And what would happen is there was the old boys or girls club and there were the new people who were trying to bring change. And I saw so often when those who were trying to protect their jobs, those initiatives from a long time ago, those people would actively sabotage those who were trying to make the changes of that. They would actively try to sabotage those who were trying to bring about real change.

And I saw A-level performers all the time knocked out just because these people were so concerned about self-preservation that they would rather take people out who were gonna help DelGro, than they were on potentially seeing it interfere with their career path. How many of us have seen that exact situation play out? Or it's that workout partner who you count on, but then after a week or two, just stops disappearing.

Doesn't return your phone calls. And you're trying to get better. You're wanting to proceed on that workout. You want that partner, yet they don't show up. And instead, they say instead of going to the gym, how about we go grab a drink? Or instead of going to the gym, I'm doing something with my boyfriend,

and they do it at the last second, so you're left just standing there on the sidelines, not meeting your personal goals. Are you ready to overcome your fears and start committing yourself to mastery and growth in your life and career? If you are, we're ready to help you. Go to passionstruck.com slash coaching right now and you'll be able to download the passion and connect with a member of our coaching team. Oh my gosh, these are the glass half empty, type of mosquito. These are the very ones when you're offered a promotion at work.

Who you think are your friends, but come to you and say, how are you possibly gonna take on that promotion? Look at the impact it's gonna have on how many hours you're gonna have to work. Look at the impact it's going to have. On how many hours you're going to have to work. Look at how it's going to change the dynamics that you have with your peers today. Look at how it's going to affect your family life.

Look at how much more you're going to have to travel. They put so many doubts in your life because they are afraid to take on that same opportunity. And so they want to cast doubt for you when it's your opportunity ahead of you. They are the ones who have gotten into this plateau career that I often talk about. They're plateaued. They go from portfolio job to portfolio job, but because they've plateaued, they want you to have the same outlook in your life.

They don't want to do something great. They don't want to push boundaries. They're not ambitious. They don't want to move up. They want to cast out in your life, too. You can't let them do it. These people are so much easier to identify on the outside looking in than when it comes to you identifying them in your inner circle or in people that you think that you trust.

If you feel that your career has stalled or you're not getting the opportunities that you think you should get, or you're locked in your current reality, look around you and look at who is influencing you. It just may be these invisible suffocators who are all around you, who up until now you haven't thought twice about. Let me give you some questions that you can ask yourself. Are these people at a similar level to you? Do they ridicule you for putting in extra work, going overboard, doing that extra bit to put you ahead?

Do they want to keep everything in your social circle and workplace the same that it has always been? This leads me to one of the initial quotes that I talked about. When I was working with one of my personal mentors, Tony Robbins, he said to me, the quality of a person's life is most often a direct reflection of the pure group's expectations. And if those expectations stay the same all the time, how are you ever gonna grow? If those expectations are here and you wanna be here, how are you going to achieve them? If those expectations are to get drunk three,

four nights during the week and you're trying to build a killer, rear, how do those two things possibly mesh? As I have said so many times before, comfort never leads to breakthrough results. And apathy is the next thing that falls. And they are both absolutely the enemies of that passion, journey, you so much want to take if you're listening to this podcast. A great example of this is when I was at Catalina Marketing. This is a company that was at one time

billion dollar plus in that work. And they had discovered the ability to do personalized advertising on a paper printer that sat next to a cash register. And when I got there, we were trying to change the dynamics so that we would move away from that to creating a digital network and a full digital transformation. But do you know what? But there were so many invisible suffocators in that company who constantly were settling for the status quo rather than doing the hard work that it took to push us forward. And as I tried to weed them out of the organization, the ones who were left continued to try to grasp on with more strength and protest even harder about the direction we were going. And I think it was because they feared for their jobs and they feared for the new reality

that it would cause. But as a result of their influence, that company continued to flatline because they would fork every initiative that we would try to implement. And although they would say with their mouths that they wanted to make the change, their feet showed the exact opposite. And they put roadblock after roadblock into the path of us achieving something great. And how often have you seen that same thing happen in your personal life? And so now that I've talked about the blood sucker and the invisible suffocator, let me talk about the third type, which is the one you probably are most familiar with. I call them the

PETIS or acronym for the pain in the asses in your life. And not only are they a pain in your ass, they can be a royal pain in your ass. And I first learned about this dangerous mosquito when I was a teenager taking over the truck crew at giant foodmarts. food marks. The PETA may be difficult to spot at first, but they are one who say something to your face and then they go about doing something absolutely different. They could be that friend, boss, peer, who asks you for advice and then you give it to them and it could be great advice, but because it doesn't come from them, they don't take it.

And then you hear five, six months later, when they finally do, it becomes their idea and the best idea that has ever existed. Or it could be a promising client that you're picking up who expects to be the biggest fish in your pond. And is a complete pain in your butt because they disrupt everything that you try to do in the day because they think that they're more important than anything else that's happening in your ecosystem. A real-life example of this could be a job that you go to and on your first day you show

up and there's nothing ready for you. They're scrambling because they weren't prepared to have you there. They're not ready to train you. They don't have the paperwork ready for you and they don't necessarily know what to do with you. You have just entered the pain in the ass environment and right then and there you need to realize that's not your tribe, and you should probably get out before it gets much worse. Few years ago, I joined the board of a tech startup, and the CEO of this company is a personal friend of mine. He still is, but he became such a peed at to work with because everything about this company had to be his

idea or it was nothing at all. And I just watched time and time again, and as his own hardheadedness got in the way of progress because he wouldn't listen. He wouldn't listen when I tried to tell him that he was trying to create too large a product before he even had tested it to make sure that he was trying to create too large a product before he even had tested it to make sure that he was going in the right direction. He was hard-headed about how he should approach venture capitalists and other investors. He was hard-headed about how he was giving out equity in his company and the impact it was having on his balance cables.

And he failed to listen to me or any of the other members who were on his board. And so after a while, because I was so frustrated and it was consuming so much of my time, I decided to leave the board when after a trip to GoC, West Coast VCs, he came back and reported that, oh, I wasn't approaching the VCs the right way. And we need to have a minimal, viable product before we build this huge thing so we can test it out and a whole bunch of other things because he was completely wasting my time and the advice that I was trying to give him. Here is something that you need to pay attention to if you're listening to this podcast and you are a current leader or you want to be a future leader.

You have to look for these mosquitoes in your life and you have to know how to identify them and more importantly, you need to know how to audit for them. And these are not just people in your life. They are activities. They are activities that steer you away from doing the things that you need to do to ignite your potential, commit to it and stay on the path to achieving it. These could be bars you'd go to. It could be that pub at the end of the street.

It could be, like I said, that friend who's supposed to be showing up with you when you're going to the gym and then fails to do so time and time and time again. It could be the friends who are staring you away from, you know, maybe spending your Saturday afternoon working out a passion project and get you to go out day drinking with them instead. Whatever it is, you need to have the courage inside to do something about it. And maybe start small on your audit journey, but then begin to audit with more and more force and surround yourself by people, activities and influences that are going to take you to where you want to be, not further away from where you want to go.

So make sure you start performing a mosquito audit at your earliest opportunity. Because if not, you are likely franticizing with the most dangerous animal on the planet. I hope this episode has provided some guidance for you and I hope that you will apply this to your life and conduct that mosquito audit right away. So the mosquito principle has been one of the most asked for episodes and chapters from my book. And I think it's because so many people today are facing outside influences, peer pressure, and consuming themselves with things that keep taking them away from living their passions,

unlocking their potential and unleashing their creativity and leadership abilities. And I hope through today's episode, I was able to help you distinguish who they are and how to find them and give you the courage to do something about it. Thank you so much for joining us. A purpose of our show is to make Passion Go viral. By sharing the knowledge and insights you can use to unlock your hidden potential.

To hear more, please subscribe to the show in iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you'd love this episode, we'd appreciate a five-star rating on iTunes, where if you'd simply tell free of your most driven and motivated friends about the show and post to your social accounts, that would help us grow our passion struck community too. If you want more tools to unlock your potential, please make sure to also visit our website, passionstruck.com, sign up to our email list, as well as check out all the links and resources in the show notes. Be sure to tune in on Tuesdays and Fridays for our next episodes, and remember, make a choice, work hard, and step into your sharp edges.

Thanks again, and I'll see you next time. you