(1) What is desire? Something you want to create, or have. Let’s face it –– you have to want something before you can get it! Otherwise, you just shrug your shoulders and say, “so what?” So the first thing to do is decide what it is you want.
(2) You have to know exactly what you want and what it will look and feel like when you have it. These first two steps are the most important in becoming successful at anything. Why? Because action follows thought! If you don’t know precisely what you want AND have a do–able plan to get it, then you won’t be able to make that plan work, no matter how hard you try. You have to align yourself for success BEFORE you go into action! Otherwise, you work very hard and get nowhere, like this:
You need to do four things:
1) Figure out and write down the overall Vision for your undertaking.
2) Figure out and write down the Goal of your undertaking.
3) Figure out and write down the Purpose for your undertaking.
4) Figure out and write down Why you want to be, do, or have it.
Definitions:
Vision: What do you want and how will you feel when you have it?
Goal: The end result of your undertaking. What will it look like after you are done?
Purpose: What are you trying to accomplish?
Why: The motivation or reason for your undertaking. Why do you want to do it?
You need to state each of these succinctly and clearly. If you can’t write each of these steps in at most two or three sentences, you still aren’t clear enough about what you’re doing.
(3) Joe is a very good chef and he wants to start a restaurant. However, Joe has almost no knowledge about the restaurant business. Jill, on the other hand, is a CEO and has always liked food, but she has no clue about cooking. How successful do you think Joe or Jill will be in the restaurant business?
In order to succeed you have to know the tools of the trade. That requires some basic knowledge. You can either get that knowledge from personal research and experience, or find people who have the knowledge you lack and hire them. However you do it, you have to get up to speed in the area in which you want to have success.
The primary purpose for knowledge is to develop an Action Plan. Without a plan of action, all of your theory is just a lot pf daydreaming. People who know what they want AND have an action plan to get it are the most successful. Just as action without a vision is useless, so too is theory without a workable plan to put your theories into practice. Successful people are almost always passionate, and passion is not possible without knowledge AND a way to practically use that knowledge in the accomplishment of the goal.
(4) You can have all the skills and knowledge in the world, and be immensely talented to boot, but it will all come to nothing if you aren’t organized. I don’t care whether you are starting an automobile company with thousands of employees, or you are a one–man consulting company working out of your basement. You have to organize your thoughts and your life, otherwise your actions are inefficient, and you won’t get anywhere. It is impossible to bring any endeavor to fruition without organization. Those who neglect the organizational part of an enterprise usually work ten times as hard as necessary until they “get their act together.”
(5) This is so important that it could have gone first. What is integrity? It’s always keeping your word. It’s staying true to your goal and not allowing critics or nay–sayers to deter you. It’s making sure that the product you are selling is the absolute highest quality that is in your power to make it. Why is integrity so important? Because it keeps your conscience clear. It keeps you inspired, and aligned with the creative energy of the universe. Nothing will slow you down faster than the knowledge that you cut a corner or cheated someone. Unscrupulous people always fail, because their products or services don’t measure up.
(6) Intention simply means the conscious application of the will to a defined goal. You can’t create something by waving a magic wand. If you want something, you have to apply yourself! You have to work at it. The guy who wants to start a computer consulting business, but spends most of his time at the beach, is going to fail. Intention is directed focus. Action that is not aligned to the goal is wasted effort. Intention keeps you focused on the goal and not on things unrelated to the goal.
Having a strong desire, knowing exactly what you want, and having a plan to get it breeds passion. Successful people are always passionate, because they are focused very intensely on what is wanted, and are highly motivated. Both Mother Theresa and Joe Stalin were passionate people, and successful. Stalin was a scumbag and a murderer, but he knew the Mental Keys to Success. Guys like Stalin always go down, however, because their lust for power eventually conflicts with their personal integrity. Interestingly enough, an “evil” person can be successful if he or she is always true to the goal. The saying “honor among thieves” just means that a successful thief honors his obligations. The more successful an endeavor, however, the more integrity it has and the less evil it is! The universe is set up to reward honorable people and punish scumbags.
(7)Persistence just means, carrying your intention and your passion through time long enough to make it happen. Mostly, persistence is thought of in the context of struggle against large odds, but that’s not what I’m talking about. if you think your task is that difficult, you are already not aligned to the goal and you will probably fail. You are also setting yourself up for unnecessary sweat and strain. A motivated, passionate, knowledgeable and organized person can accomplish the task with a minimum of turbulence. Nevertheless, no one is perfect. When roadblocks appear, you have to overcome them. Persistence is the key quality that allows you to do that.
Multi–billionaire Ross Perot said, “"Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game one foot from a winning touchdown." This statement expresses the idea that you sometimes don’t know when you’re going to have a breakthrough. Sometimes, you quit before you see the manifestation. As the old saying goes, “it’s always darkest just before the dawn.”
““Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race” –– Calvin Coolidge (30th President of the United States, 1872-1933)
Maybe old Calvin went a little too far with that statement. But there is no denying that when you study the lives of successful people, persistence is one of the qualities that almost always shows up.
Summarize
The seven Mental Keys to Success:
· Desire
· Vision
· Knowledge (Action Plan)
· Organization
· Integrity
· Intention
· Persistence
These qualities lead to confidence, certainty, and success
Cheers to success
Friday, October 19, 2007
Three Things You Must Know to Attract Success
Everyone wants success.
Some people spend their every waking moment pursuing it, to the detriment of all else.
For others, attaining success seems impossible. They conclude that it is destined for a select few. The rest of us are to remain “content with such things as we have”. Having it all is not “in our stars”.
However, the above assumptions couldn’t be further from the truth. When you strive for success with the wrong assumptions, you will never reach it.
It’s like travelling somewhere with the wrong map.
Zig Ziglar says that, “Success is a process, not an event,” “a journey, not a destination.”
Jim Rohn describes it as “…a condition that must be attracted not pursued.”
Do you see the pattern?
“…a process, not an event.”
“…a journey, not a destination.”
“…a condition that must be attracted not pursued.”
You can’t hurry success, catch it, or find it by chance. You can’t inherit it, gate-crash on it, or take it from some one else.
Success is something you must work hard and long to earn, for yourself. It has a price, sometimes a very high one. And most people aren’t really and truly ready to pay that price, to do what success demands.
If success has eluded you so far, perhaps you should try changing your assumptions.
You need to accept that:
(1) You must go through a growing process, which will require time and patience, in order to achieve success. There are no short cuts. Anything else is a temporary illusion.
Success that will remain with you, and bring you joy rather than sorrow, requires a learning process, a time to grow out of old habits and into new ones, a time to learn what works and what doesn’t.
And you must pay your dues, in full, in advance!
So don’t be in a hurry.
(2) You will need to acquire traits and skills that attract it.
What does success mean to you? Identify, in specific terms, what you regard as success. What traits or skills will you need to achieve this goal? Set clear, written goals.
Devise plans to acquire the needed traits and skills. Learn to do what you need to do, to get where you want to go.
What kinds of people have what you want? What do they do, or not do, that helps them get and keep it?
If you do what they do and avoid what they avoid, there’s a good chance that you will end up with what they have.
Find 2 or 3 people who have what you want. Write down the habits that have made them successful and resolve to copy them.
Starting now!
This is called mentoring, learning from others who have arrived where you want to go.
Mentoring can cut out the heart-aches of trial and error. A mentor can keep you focused and on track.
Once you learn to do what it takes, you qualify. And when you qualify, success comes looking for you. You just can’t be denied!
What a relief from the days when you ran after it! You fulfill the requirements and attract success to yourself. Opportunities open up to you, and when they do, they find you ready to grasp them.
(3) You must be ready to travel the road to success, oftentimes alone. It’s been said that, “At some point in time, the pursuit of your goals becomes secondary and what you have become in the process…..is what is most important. It’s not the distance you go…so much as the going itself” (Les Brown).
Parents, remember when you tried to teach your children to crawl? You put their favourite toy in front of them and teased them forward, inch by inch. They were after the toy, which kept them motivated.
But you wanted to strengthen their muscles and teach them a new skill. When they became good at reaching the toy, they had learned to crawl. After that, they could reach any destination they wanted, without you and the toy!
The DESTINATION was less important. They became champion crawlers in the PROCESS!
That’s what the journey to success does to you. It causes you to learn habits and skills that make you “full of success”, or “successful”.
Because you have now mastered the skills and the process, you can keep on reproducing success. You now have what it takes. But if you try to “gate-crash”, you don’t get to learn the process and the skills.
You cannot reproduce success, in the same or different scenarios. You do not have the tools for acquiring it; you only have a mirage. In other words, you have not become successful.
Should calamity strike, you are back to square one, and you’ll quite likely be there a long time.
Anyone can identify what success means to them and go after it. If you don’t mind the hard work and waiting, success can be yours. You can become the kind of person who attracts what he or she wants rather than running after it.
Funny enough, when you are ready for success you attract it, with little effort.
When you are not, it runs from you, no matter how hard you chase. In other words, you repel it!
Most likely, this is the reason that success eludes people.
Now that you know how to attract success, why not get started on the journey or process that will take you where you want to go? Any one can succeed, but unfortunately not every one will. It’s your decision to choose. Fate does not foist it upon you. You can have anything you want in life, if you’re ready to pay the price. But if you consider the process too hard, too slow, or the distance too long and lonely, you have qualified your self as a looser; painful but true.
So don’t short-change yourself with short-cuts and counterfeits. You can have the real thing.
Go out there today and start attracting success.
It’s literally yours for the taking!
Cheers for Success
Some people spend their every waking moment pursuing it, to the detriment of all else.
For others, attaining success seems impossible. They conclude that it is destined for a select few. The rest of us are to remain “content with such things as we have”. Having it all is not “in our stars”.
However, the above assumptions couldn’t be further from the truth. When you strive for success with the wrong assumptions, you will never reach it.
It’s like travelling somewhere with the wrong map.
Zig Ziglar says that, “Success is a process, not an event,” “a journey, not a destination.”
Jim Rohn describes it as “…a condition that must be attracted not pursued.”
Do you see the pattern?
“…a process, not an event.”
“…a journey, not a destination.”
“…a condition that must be attracted not pursued.”
You can’t hurry success, catch it, or find it by chance. You can’t inherit it, gate-crash on it, or take it from some one else.
Success is something you must work hard and long to earn, for yourself. It has a price, sometimes a very high one. And most people aren’t really and truly ready to pay that price, to do what success demands.
If success has eluded you so far, perhaps you should try changing your assumptions.
You need to accept that:
(1) You must go through a growing process, which will require time and patience, in order to achieve success. There are no short cuts. Anything else is a temporary illusion.
Success that will remain with you, and bring you joy rather than sorrow, requires a learning process, a time to grow out of old habits and into new ones, a time to learn what works and what doesn’t.
And you must pay your dues, in full, in advance!
So don’t be in a hurry.
(2) You will need to acquire traits and skills that attract it.
What does success mean to you? Identify, in specific terms, what you regard as success. What traits or skills will you need to achieve this goal? Set clear, written goals.
Devise plans to acquire the needed traits and skills. Learn to do what you need to do, to get where you want to go.
What kinds of people have what you want? What do they do, or not do, that helps them get and keep it?
If you do what they do and avoid what they avoid, there’s a good chance that you will end up with what they have.
Find 2 or 3 people who have what you want. Write down the habits that have made them successful and resolve to copy them.
Starting now!
This is called mentoring, learning from others who have arrived where you want to go.
Mentoring can cut out the heart-aches of trial and error. A mentor can keep you focused and on track.
Once you learn to do what it takes, you qualify. And when you qualify, success comes looking for you. You just can’t be denied!
What a relief from the days when you ran after it! You fulfill the requirements and attract success to yourself. Opportunities open up to you, and when they do, they find you ready to grasp them.
(3) You must be ready to travel the road to success, oftentimes alone. It’s been said that, “At some point in time, the pursuit of your goals becomes secondary and what you have become in the process…..is what is most important. It’s not the distance you go…so much as the going itself” (Les Brown).
Parents, remember when you tried to teach your children to crawl? You put their favourite toy in front of them and teased them forward, inch by inch. They were after the toy, which kept them motivated.
But you wanted to strengthen their muscles and teach them a new skill. When they became good at reaching the toy, they had learned to crawl. After that, they could reach any destination they wanted, without you and the toy!
The DESTINATION was less important. They became champion crawlers in the PROCESS!
That’s what the journey to success does to you. It causes you to learn habits and skills that make you “full of success”, or “successful”.
Because you have now mastered the skills and the process, you can keep on reproducing success. You now have what it takes. But if you try to “gate-crash”, you don’t get to learn the process and the skills.
You cannot reproduce success, in the same or different scenarios. You do not have the tools for acquiring it; you only have a mirage. In other words, you have not become successful.
Should calamity strike, you are back to square one, and you’ll quite likely be there a long time.
Anyone can identify what success means to them and go after it. If you don’t mind the hard work and waiting, success can be yours. You can become the kind of person who attracts what he or she wants rather than running after it.
Funny enough, when you are ready for success you attract it, with little effort.
When you are not, it runs from you, no matter how hard you chase. In other words, you repel it!
Most likely, this is the reason that success eludes people.
Now that you know how to attract success, why not get started on the journey or process that will take you where you want to go? Any one can succeed, but unfortunately not every one will. It’s your decision to choose. Fate does not foist it upon you. You can have anything you want in life, if you’re ready to pay the price. But if you consider the process too hard, too slow, or the distance too long and lonely, you have qualified your self as a looser; painful but true.
So don’t short-change yourself with short-cuts and counterfeits. You can have the real thing.
Go out there today and start attracting success.
It’s literally yours for the taking!
Cheers for Success
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