“So many people hold their future hostage to their pasts,” Lisa Nichols says on the phone a week before she’s set to take the stage with Tony Robbins and others at the Unstoppable in 2016 motivational speaking tour at Comerica Theatre.  “The goal is for this [conference] to be the catalyst for long-term change.” 

In 1994, Nichols couldn’t afford Pampers for her son and was kept afloat by public assistance and food stamps. Realizing she had hit rock bottom, Nichols sought solutions by reading about the mindsets of successful people and attending inspirational speaking conferences. 

“When you get a bunch of like-minded people in a room and you set them on fire, people start running at a pace they’ve never run at before,” she says. “I went to a conference in 1997 that changed my life… it shifted my thinking and opened up possibilities I hadn’t seen before; I am who I am today because I went to that conference…”

Nichols has now authored six award-winning books, and her newest seventh, “ABUNDANCE NOW,” is a follow-up to her New York Times bestseller, “No Matter What.” She also founded, “Motivating the Masses, Inc.,” a multi-million dollar publicly traded company. At the conference, she says she wants to “ignite” the audience and inspire within them a positive and lasting transformation.

Until then, though, she’s dishing out some of her best tips to becoming improved, upgraded, and UNSTOPPABLE with the readers of AZFoothills.com.

1. Abundance is for everyone – Abundance…is not about focusing on possessions and money. Wealth is about money and possessions. True abundance is a 360 experience that will impact four areas of your life; (it’s about) the quality of your relationships, the quality of your health, the depth in connection of your spirituality, and finally, your finances. What’s your contribution to the planet? What do you need your finances to do in terms of furthering humanity?
2. You don’t have to hit rock bottom to initiate change – You don’t have to be in a rut to change. Change is growth. Growth is transformation. I’m not in a rut right now, but I can’t wait for my life to transform. We’re often pain-based motivators. What I’m excited about is the opportunity for people to no longer be pain-based motivators and be possibility-based motivators. (Rather than) trying to manage pain, come at it from a different angle; do it because you want to create more joy in life.
3. You have to want change – I think so many of us try inspire people to change when they don’t want to change, and our job is to respect that if they don’t want to change, they don’t want to change.
4. If you want change, start with your mindset and education – If you do want to change, the first thing to do is to change your mindset. To change your mindset, you have to learn something new. Go somewhere to learn something extra. Unstoppable…is designed to open doors, and it’s designed to make you think really differently. It’s designed to begin to shift your mindset. Wherever your mindset goes, your lifestyle has to follow.
5. Get specific about your goals - Limited belief systems lead to a limited life; ambiguous beliefs and goals lead to ambiguous results. ‘Someday!’ we say. ‘One day!’ Well, can you circle someday on the calendar? If you can’t…it doesn’t exist. Become crystal clear about what you want. A lot of times people create these crazy, macro goals but they don’t create micro wins to get to the macro goals. I tell people, when you set a by when date, don’t just set a by when date. Pick the date on the calendar, and not only the date on the calendar, pick the time of the day on the day and what time zone that’s in.  How clear is that! How powerful is that? (Then, combine) clarity along with action.
6. Avoid spending dollar time on penny tasks – Only spend your time on the highest revenue-generating activities that you should be doing.
7. Take responsibility – Take responsibility for your thoughts and your actions in 2016, but more importantly, take responsibility for your reactions.
8. Plan based on information, not emotion – When you’re making decisions, do it based on knowledge, not longing, and decide to do something or be something because you’ve done your homework, and it makes good sense, versus it just makes you feel good. Emotions should be our turbo boost, but it shouldn’t be our barometer to make decision on. It should be the thing that accelerates and adds meaning to our decisions that we’ve made based on data.
9. Give yourself permission to fail, but fail forward.

For more information about Lisa Nichols, visit her site MotivatingTheMasses.com or attend Unstoppable in 2016. Tickets available by clicking here.