Upgrade Your Life. Divilly Pat

something I realized when Ciarán told me that the company's Chief Operational Officer, Sheryl Sandberg, was going to be in attendance. The event was to be the first Facebook Small Business Council, so they wanted to bring together a small handful of business owners who were using the platform effectively. We were all from very different industries, but with Facebook as our primary means of publicity.

      On the morning of the event, I headed up to Dublin, not so much with butterflies in my stomach, more like hyperactive bats! Sheryl Sandberg is an icon and meeting her in person was just too surreal to comprehend.

      The event itself was exclusive in size but massively significant in terms of impact. The world's press were also in attendance. As Sheryl walked into the room, she looked at the crowd, smiled, and asked, ‘Is Pat here?’ She spotted me in the front row where I was sitting, and to my shock added, ‘Does everyone know Pat's story? Would you like to tell your story, Pat, or will I?’

      I let her do the honours.

      To this day, I still find it hard to believe!

      I mean, Sheryl Sandberg…standing in front of a room full of people…telling them the story of how I, a boy from Barna, had used Facebook to grow my fitness brand from five clients to 5,000. I honestly thought it couldn't get any better than that!

      I was wrong!

      Fast forward two years and I was on Necker Island hanging out with Richard Branson. A photo of me with Branson appeared in the local newspapers in my home city. In it, I'm dressed as Bowie – face paint and all – while Branson himself is dressed in a similarly garish costume. I should point out here that he had thrown a fancy dress party, hence the dress code! A week later I was flying out to Nepal, where I had been invited to give a talk on entrepreneurship.

      Not half-bad for a guy who failed in his first foray into the fitness business. Experiences such as meeting Sheryl Sandberg and Richard Branson only furthered my belief that if I had the courage to dream and the willingness to do the work consistently, anything was possible.

      I was absorbed in the whole self-improvement genre as a teenager but I didn't apply the information I was reading, which was why I wasn't enjoying results back then. That's a big problem with these types of books. Application is crucial but it's the one thing most people fail to do.

      I'm a student of self-development and as nerdy as it might seem, I spend a lot of my free time attending seminars all over the world. Often I will leave a full-day seminar after just an hour because I will have acquired the one piece of information I need to take action on an idea. I believe if we took action on 10 % of what we already know, we could be incredibly successful. Most of us have the information we need to do things like lose weight, make money, enjoy better relationships, etc. Where we fall is in the application of this information.

      Self-development books will either raise your self-esteem or your shelf-esteem. So are you buying them to have a more impressive book shelf or are you buying them because you actually want to improve your life in ways you never thought possible? Unlike other books, Upgrade Your Life will force you to apply everything you learn within these pages. The success journal at the end of the book will further help you turn my advice into life-changing habits. While I often reference business owners and entrepreneurs throughout the book, it is certainly not limited to those who are self-employed. In fact, the Upgrade Your Life rituals can be implemented right across the board.

      Most books get read and left on the shelf. I want you to scribble all over this one. I have created exercises I want you to fill out, and left spaces for notes I want you to make. It's important that you do these. Don't skim over them. They are there for a reason. As kids in school, we drew, we wrote, our imaginations ran free. We spent as much time dreaming with our eyes open as we did with them closed. Let's get back to that creative process. If you don't want to write on the book itself, then get yourself a notebook and complete the exercises in that, so that you can repeat this routine for future goals in different areas of your life.

      Remember, everything comes down to thoughts, words, and actions, especially success. When you write something on paper, it becomes a little more real, when you verbalize it, the idea starts to grow because you talk it into existence. When you take action, however, that's when you start to see the biggest change. The success journal will help you with those three crucial elements.

      The success rituals, guidelines, and principles I share with you in this book are to be carried out for six weeks straight. If you heed my advice and implement them for those 42 days, then there is no doubt about it – your life will change. You might be wondering why six weeks? I chose six weeks because I know from my own experience that you will witness tangible results in that timeframe.

      None of these rituals will work in isolation, however. It's not enough to carry out just one guideline, you must implement them all over the six-week period. Don't worry, the success journal at the end will help keep you on track.

      As you make your way through Upgrade Your Life, you will understand that the key to accomplishment is through a combination of consistency and the compound effect (i.e. small steps carried out on a daily basis over a consistent period of time). Once you make these rituals a non-negotiable part of your daily routine, you will see one result: success. Everything becomes a lot easier. You become more productive, your relationships are better, your health improves, you are more focused, more grounded, not to mention less stressed. And those are just some of the side effects!

      People are not taking time to think about what they want. If you don't think about what you want, then you just fall into receiving whatever is left. Upgrade Your Life will not only help you establish what you want from your life, it will radically change and improve your mind-set so you are best placed to achieve your goal.

      By the time you have finished this book, you will be a different person. In the meantime, start preparing yourself for a big change and above all, don't be afraid to think big! Your ideas are free, your thoughts are free, you have nothing to lose and an amazing life to gain.

      CHAPTER 1

      THE RECIPE FOR SUCCESS

      ‘The mind is a powerful force. It can enslave us or empower us. It can plunge us into the depths of misery or take you to heights of ecstasy. Learn to use it wisely.’

– David Cuschieri, author

      The one thing I always try to help people understand is that there's a recipe for everything. Wealth, weight loss, success, a cake…everything! If you think the great success stories and entrepreneurial billionaires of our age were all heirs and rich kids who were given lucky breaks by the dozen, then think again. Some of them had very little; some of them had absolutely nothing at all, but here's the thing. None of them waited until they had everything or until ‘the time was right’. They simply made the best of what they had, and now as a result they have the best of everything. The secrets of their success lie in their attitude and self-belief, not money or circumstances. They set their sights on what they wanted, followed the recipe, and simply didn't give up.

      There's a misconception out there that you need to have a full plan in place before you can take action, but in my experience all you really have to do is take one step forward. Just one.

      When I talk about this at my personal development seminars, I always liken the journey to walking a spiral staircase. It's only as you progress further that the steps start to unfold. Clichéd? Perhaps, but it's true. You are never going to see 10 steps ahead but you will always see the next one, so take it regardless of how small it may be. I genuinely believe this is what deters people from taking the big leap into entrepreneurship. It is human nature to want to assume full control and protect yourself from oncoming dangers, so naturally some people are going to feel uncomfortable with only being able to see one step ahead at any given time. Don't let this discomfort deter you.

      In 2014, I was running a gym in the west of Ireland, and even though we were considered small fish in the fitness industry, myself and a number of others still managed to bring the world's biggest team to an adventure race in Dublin and raise €165,000 in the process. It all started off as an idea, a crazy idea in fact, and one I put out there with no clue as to how we would go about achieving it. We just set the intention and made it public.