Richard Flint Teaches WIN Members to Have the Great Year of Their Lives

On Tuesday, February 11, the Women’s Industry Network (WIN®) hosted its first webinar of 2020, featuring Richard Flint who discussed “Having the Greatest Year of Your Life.” Flint focused on the three D’s: Desire, Determination and Discipline, which “build the foundation to having your greatest year ever!” Flint said.

Flint began the webinar by talking about how much he enjoyed presenting at the 2019 WIN Educational Conference and how he’d been looking forward to the webinar. “During this year, your life is going to go in four different directions, and one will determine how your year goes.”

The four possible directions are growth, maintenance, retreat and self-destruction. Regarding growth, Flint noted, “There are always opportunities for growth, but we’re not always prepared to accept those opportunities. In maintenance, we accept the status quo, but if you’re not seeking to improve, it creates a circle of sameness. Retreat is when you know what you need to do but decide not to do it, and self-destruction is where you choose, because your life is a choice, to bring those behaviors into your life that sabotage your goals and take your passions away from you.”

Flint emphasized, “Success does not just happen! It takes a sketch, a plan, and a commitment to yourself and what you must do to achieve what you have said you want for your life and business.”

Defining success as “putting one foot in front of the other on a consistent basis, with a defined purpose, agenda and commitment,” Flint also identified goals as a series of written thoughts you say you are committed to achieving, but he asked, “What good is what you write if you don’t implement the behaviors that make it possible?”

Roadblocks are “situations or events that get in your way and cause you to lose belief, trust and faith in yourself which allows the fear and doubt that is being thrown at you to take control,” Flint stated. “The more you trust yourself, the more faith you’ll have in taking that next step. When your belief becomes shaky, you replace it with doubt. When your trust is not strong, you replace it with worry, and when your faith is not there, you live in a world of uncertainty. This battle happens in your life – you know it does because you’ve been there. You only have that clarity when you have that trust, belief and faith.”

Fear is an emotion that is both positive and negative, depending on how an individual reacts to the feeling. According to Flint, “When the negative side takes control, you are paralyzed; when the positive side is in control, you slow down, face the fear, find the connection, and move forward. Fear can be controlled.”

Resistance means losing belief, trust and faith in yourself, and Flint cautioned, “The greatest year of your life is all about moving forward. It’s about seeing, seeking and implementing the opportunities that are there for you, but when you resist, it’s because your belief, trust and faith are weak, and your doubt, worry and uncertainty are strong. Every day you resist, you stop your life from going forward and trap yourself in acircle of repetitive behavior. Each year of your life is 365 days to either work against yourself, or work to take your life forward with purpose, agenda and commitment.”

Asking webinar participants to consider what type of year 2019 was, Flint urged them to ask what they really want for their lives this year, why they want it, what price they are willing to pay, and what behaviors they’ll need to change. “It’s all about the choices you make. Your year is controlled by the direction you choose to take with your life – you either move in an exhausting circle, or you move forward through freeing your vision with the right behavior.

“You must never forget: you are either a hostage to your yesterday or a pioneer for your future. You’re either going to resist and stay the same, or you’re going to choose to improve and move forward. That’s the only two directions for your life,” Flint continued. “Yesterday is a reference library, not a room to live in. Yesterday is where we store our experiences. Every experience has a positive and a negative, and whatever that experience means to your life depends on whether you take the positive and free yourself, or if you take the negative and hold yourself hostage.”

Flint encouraged attendees to use positives to build the foundation to strengthen self-belief. Each situation presents lessons which can be viewed from a negative or positive mindset. “Yesterday can be a motivator for today. When you see the improvements yesterday brought to your life, it strengthens your belief, trust and faith in yourself.”

Moving onto the three D’s that “build the foundation for the greatest year of your life,” Flint taught, “We all fight a battle every day. There’s an old you that wants to stay the same, but there’s a new you that hungers for change. They are fighting for control of your life. When you live with doubt, worry and uncertainty, you can’t manage the pace of your life, and it’s going to overwhelm you.”

Flint discussed the four rooms of life next. The first three are the business room, the family room, and the social room; the fourth is the personal room where “you get to know yourself,” Flint explained. “Everything you want in life is born in your personal room and acted out in your other rooms, but people are afraid of the personal room since you have to be honest with yourself. If you can do that, the personal room will be where you strengthen your belief, trust and faith in yourself.”

Flint added, “Writing goals are a big part of creating a mindset for success, but if they are not supported by a foundation built on the right behaviors, they are simply words on a page without a direction for your life to connect to.”

Proceeding to the three D’s, Flint began with desire, “an inner hunger to move beyond where your life has been.” Desire’s demands are digging deep inside yourself to find your true passion, enthusiasm, managing the pace so you don’t get ahead of yourself, attention to details, not giving in because things got tough, doing things in a timely fashion, and staying true to the course.

Determination, “the inner strength to resist the moment of fear, doubt, worry and uncertainty,” is what helps people fight against their fears. It also has demands: the desire that continues to strengthen your focus, every day’s plan to move you forward, managing moments of fear, attitude enforced with the right behaviors, not surrounding yourself with the wrong people, don’t quit because of shifting terrain, and staying true to your course.

Discipline is “behaviors that keep you putting one foot in front of the other that results in you holding your feet to the fire,” according to Flint. He identified the demands of discipline as desire and determination that keeps getting strong, expectations are truly believed in, making decisions that keep you focused on your path, aligning yourself with supportive people, never allowing yesterday to take over today, don’t procrastinate with what must be done, and stay on your stage for success.

As the webinar concluded, Flint shared a final thought: “Your life will be your design! You can talk about all the things you want to achieve and the things you plan on doing, but without a strong foundation of desire, determination and discipline, you will spend each day struggling with yourself, finding a point of blame for what didn’t or isn’t happening, and missing the success there is for your life. Having the Greatest Year of Your Life begins with you being honest about who you are, where you are, and what you are really committed to.”

For more information on Richard, visit www.richardfint.com. For more information on WIN, visit www.womensindustrynetwork.com.