“I know the price of success: dedication, hard work and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.”
—Frank Lloyd Wright.
Most people want to have a wonderful life. After all, it sure beats a life of mediocrity. If we only have one life, why not make it all it can be! Heck, even if we have multiple lives, why not make this one powerful and productive and fill it full of joy and success 🙂 There are some great strategies here to help you Achieve Success in your life.
Unfortunately, many people are unknowinglytheir own worst enemies in their quest for success. They utilize habits and stratagies that actually are undermining their success. We often unknowingly take on behaviors and beliefs that undermine our ability to have a great life.
If you are not achieving the success you want, you will likely need to make internal and external changes to achieve your goals. The solutions are often right in front of you, but you are so accustomed to the existing behaviors that you may not see where you’re sabotaging yourself.
Understand that success is a process and has many pieces. This post will provide practical strategies that can help you be more successful. Hopefully, you have already adopted some of these strategies, and if so, that’s Great!. Others may be new to you or are ideas that you may have overlooked.
Here’s a shortlist of powerful techniques to support you be successful:
1) Adopt a Clear Vision and Goals to Achieve Them!
Many people sabotage themselves by not being clear about what they want to create in their lives. The famous motivational speaker Zig Ziglar used to call people with no goals “Wandering Generalities.” He implied that you could end up virtually anywhere if you didn’t have a clear vision with measurable objectives to achieve them. Unfortunately, this is generally what happens to most people.
Having a clear vision for your life and the goals to achieve provides you with something to work towards and something you can measure results against. Achieving your goals will help you believe in yourself and keep you moving towards your vision. This will also help to give you a sense of self-satisfaction and meaning. Having a clear vision and goals can provide you with terrific motivation that can be enough to keep you going when the times get tough.
How To Set Your Vision:
Ask yourself: “What is it I want to achieve in my life?” This will include business, relationships, finance, health, life purpose! Start by simply asking yourself, “What do you want to achieve in these areas, in both the short and long term?
Write these down in as much detail as possible. Then, review your vision and goals and analyze what you need to achieve these results. Ask yourself questions, such as: “What do I need to learn?” How much money is required?” What resources do I require? “Do I need other people, and if so, who and with what skills?” “How long is this going to take?”
Remember, if you don’t have goals, you’re just a “Wandering Generality!“
Hint: One thing that can help you internalize your vision and goals is creating a “Vision Board.” You will find lots of great information online on making one of these.
2) Build Your Self-Confidence:
It can be hard to reach your vision if you lack confidence. In the early stages, especially if you are new to what you’re attempting, you may come up against obstacles you don’t know how to overcome. Many times when you start a new project or business, it will be your will (and ignorance) power that keeps you going.
3) Adopt a Daily Process of “Gratitude” and Start With Yourself!
To help build your confidence quickly, adopt a gratitude ritual and incorporate it into your daily actions. Learn to be grateful for any success, no matter how small. When you are expressing gratitude, it is crucial to include yourself! Be thankful for anything you have been able to accomplish that day! Doing this daily will help it to seep into your subconscious mind!
My Personal Process:
I went to a commercial printer and designed a unique “daily” note pad. It includes 10 lines for gratitude, 3 lines for sending positive thoughts (to break up negative energy), and 6 for my daily goals.
I work religiously to use the pad daily. Incorporating a gratitude process into my daily rituals helped me acknowledge my accomplishments and see more joy in the world. Using a gratitude process has way more wins than the short bit of time it takes you to use it daily.
4) Become Aware of Your Self Talk and Remove Negative Self Talk
So many things we do/don’t do in life are fuelled by our internal dialogue. I’m sure you know that our internal dialogue virtually never stops. It will help you become more conscious of what you’re saying to yourself and take control. Many people with desires to do something amazing counteract themselves by what they say to themselves with their internal dialogue.
Give yourself a few days and just observe your inner thoughts.
What percentage of your internal dialogue is positive based and will support you in creating what you want? What percentages of your internal dialogue have a negative focus that can work against you?
Starting right now, becoming more aware of what you’re saying to yourself is even more critical. You want to focus on “I can” versus I can’t. As soon as you catch yourself using negative self-talk, stop yourself and simply use “Cancel, Clear!” Then quickly replace what you were saying with something positive that will help you create your goals.
5) Commit a Continual Learning!
The world changes, and these days it seems to change quickly. We very quickly fall behind if we don’t keep up with it! As a result, It is paramount that you commit to continually upgrading your skills and knowledge.
Continually upgrading your skills will help you stay at the forefront of what’s going on, especially in your own industry top of your industry!
This does not mean that you need to go back to college/university to learn go of these institutions may offer some great programs for graduate learning. These days there are many ways where you can find information related to virtually any topic. Instead of putting up “Cat” Videos, YouTube has become a great source of “answers” for almost every issue.
Additionally, you can find the answers to virtually anything, either online, through books, through various forums, etc.,
You must have a belief that you need to continually upgrade your skillset. If you can think you can coast along without being aware of recent changes, it is a recipe for eventual disaster. Instead, commit to a regime of continual learning.
6) You Will Need Money and Energy
Too many people think that you can succeed without investing in yourself, both with energy and financially. Sadly, a common reason why people fail is that they underestimate the hard costs.
No genuine long-term business can thrive without initial and growth capital. There are a few real businesses that you can start and run with minimal capital outlay, but they do still need some money to grow them. To get going in today’s world, cutting corners is not likely to help you.
If you have goals, huge ones, you’re going to need to invest some money and put lots of effort into reaching your vision! As a side note, the good news is the money doesn’t have to come from you! Always know that if you have a great idea, you will attract many investors!
My Personal Experience of Starting A Business, Raising $34 Million, While Having No Money
There was a period when I was going through a rough time financially. The markets had crashed, and I lacked money. It was so bad that I had to apply to the government for social assistance, which came to about $500 per month. Sounds rather bleak, doesn’t it? It doesn’t sound like it would be an excellent time to start a business.
I want you to know that with all of this going on, I found an idea, found partners who provided me with an office and support, assembled needed documentation, and then raised $34 million.
Though I didn’t have a lot of $, I invested in myself and the idea by bringing in partners and then taking lots of action. You can also do this. You just have to be creative.
If I had not taken lots of action and invested the energy, this period of my life would likely have sailed by where I accomplished virtually nothing. Always remember, no matter how much money you have on hand, you can still do amazing things.
7) Overcome Your Fears
Everyone has fears to some degree. There are many reasons that you may have fears. In essence, fear is really a belief about a possible outcome.
We often adopted these beliefs when we were young due to what was going on in our lives. When you feel a fearful response surfacing, ask yourself some questions: “What am I feeling?” “When was the first time I felt this?” and How old was I?” “Is this fear real now?” You can often get to the root of the fear and understand that it does not apply today.
I like the quote, “Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure”.
If you face a “temporary” setback on your journey towards success, learn from it, pick yourself up, and soldier on towards your dreams. “Remember that short-term discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.” And you sure learn quickly what not to do next time!
8) Have a Strategy to Overcome Procrastination!
(Please check out our recent post for more details about overcoming procrastination which you can find HERE)
One way that people sabotage themselves on their journey to success is by procrastinating! Basically, you set a vision and goal, and instead of taking action to achieve this, you do virtually anything else. Common avoidant behaviors are Social Media, Video Games, Browsing the Internet, Addictions, etc.
You must recognize when you are procrastinating as it is a clue that there is something that you need to address that may be below conscious thought. Try to remember that your procrastination is trying to get your attention and let you know that you likely have an internal conflict. This conflict is between your conscious mind, which wants you to take a specific action and your subconscious mind that does not.
(Again check out our post on procrastination for strategies to effectively overcome this destructive habit.)
9) Have a Clear Focus
With the advent of the Internet and information overload, it’s so hard to stay focused in today’s world. You can have clearly laid out goals you want to achieve, but if you do not focus, you will soon sabotage your success. I going off course.
For me, sometimes I’m working on something online, and the next thing I know, I have 25 other windows open in my browser. I had to teach myself to only open items related to what I’m working on now.
To help you stay focused, start with this:
10) Clean out Your Inbox and Spam Folder:
There are a lot of ‘business opportunities that will arrive in your inbox daily. Every day for inbox seems to be inundated with new opportunities. Unfortunately, far too many of these are scams, and you will waste your time and money.
Miles Beckler is a successful online entrepreneur I follow online in the “make money online” marketplace. (FYI, Miles gives away tons of great information for free, and you can find him HERE) In a couple of his videos, he shared that his life/success improved dramatically when he went through his inbox and deleted himself from virtually every email list he was on. Almost instantly, many, many distractions evaporated, and he could get a lot more accomplished. He also shared that the vast majority of things were coming into his inbox were wasted time and money.
9. Embrace change:
In some ways, this is a continuation of the continual learning topic above. Change is going to happen, and you can either resist or embrace it! Trust me, you’re not going to stop change! You will be far better off if you look for new opportunities to unveil the change. Make it a habit to stay on top of recent developments and constantly look for new ways to operate and grow your business.
11) Renew your dedication to your vision constantly.
Create a process for yourself that helps you continually reinforce you achieving your goals. Start by dedicating time at least one day a week, pull out your goals and review them. Then visualize yourself as if you have already achieved all of your dreams.
- If you have achieved all your goals:
- How do you feel?
- How is your life different? What have you accomplished in the process?
- How do you feel about yourself?
- How do you feel about others?
Reinforcing your conscious and unconscious commitment to your goals will help you continually work towards your vision! If you want something badly enough, it can and will be yours. Too many people fail because they fail to reinforce their desire to achieve their dreams in a way that their subconscious mind understands. Always remember that your conscious mind is only part of the process. You need to get your subconscious mind on board which is very doable!
Closing Comments
Being successful is more than just establishing a vision and goals and hoping you will achieve them. You need to keep these at the forefront of your mind.
Having a process to keep your goals and vision in front of you and constantly remind yourself where you’re going makes it a lot easier to achieve your dreams. To effectively achieve your vision, you need to reinforce your actions with a “success mindset” supported by appropriate beliefs and actions.
If you can incorporate the strategies and overcome any obstacles effectively, you will be a much more successful life.
“A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him. “
Take massive action and achieve your dreams!
If you can incorporate the strategies and overcome any obstacles effectively, you will be a much more successful life.
“A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him. “
Take Massive Action, Achieve Success and Achieve Your Dreams!
