You Might Fear Success & Not Even Know It

Do you fear success? Most people don’t have to fear success, because they don’t understand it. They don’t appreciate how painful it is for you to keep dropping the ball just when you were about to carry it across the line. They don’t understand why someone with your abilities keeps messing up terrific opportunities. It’s a mystery to you too.

You know you’re gifted, because you get noticed. You’ve been offered a lot of chances, and the people who’ve offered them weren’t wrong. They saw what you were capable of. Yet whenever you get near what you want, something happens - you lose focus at a crucial moment and turn your energy to something unimportant, or your mood mysteriously drops and you get tired just when you need energy the most.

You’ve got to find out what that something is, because what you don’t know is hurting you. Take a careful look at your life and you’ll probably see a history of missed opportunities that stretches all the way back to your childhood. Your past won’t determine your future if you can find out why you have such an odd relationship with success.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Success Tip: There Is No Such Thing As “Try”

Failure is the refusal to establish a plan and work toward its accomplishment regardless of the obstacles. Most of us were never taught that failure is a matter of choice, just as success is a matter of choice. Failure is not, as many people believe, the result of lack of talent, money, time, or other resources. Failure is simply the refusal to establish goals or objectives in your life and to work toward their achievement. Talk to people who have neither goals nor the motivation to succeed and you’ll find that their lives have no excitement, no purpose. They feel like failures.

The fact that you started a business and it went broke does not mean you failed. For example, in my early thirties, ten businesses that I started eventually ended up going broke. Did I fail in those ten businesses? Absolutely not. I simply found ten ways that a business wouldn’t work, and once you discover them all, it is difficult not to succeed the next time. At any point along the way, I could have quit. I could have said I don’t have the talent for business, and at that point I would have failed. I would have refused to continue, regardless of the obstacles. Instead, I knew that in time I’d learn everything I needed to know to create a successful business.

To succeed, you will constantly find yourself sailing uncharted waters, doing things you have never done before, but if you want any more from life than mediocrity, that’s where you’ll have to go. Any time you break new ground, you are taking a risk. You neither know exactly what’s ahead, nor how you’re going to handle it. The only alternative is not to go anywhere.

When striving to achieve your goals, there is no such thing as trying. We’ve all been told from the time we were children that it doesn’t matter if we win or not, just as long as we try hard. That is one of the greatest lies you can tell yourself or your children. “Trying” is a word meant to rationalize failure. It’s an excuse. In truth, when reaching for any objective, short term or long term, you either succeed or you don’t. There is no in-between. Trying, therefore, is a non-reality.

Lack of immediate success, however, is not failure. It is nothing more than the feedback you may need to modify your target date and even your plan for reaching your goal. “I tried” is a quitter’s statement. It says you have either given up or decided that not reaching your goals is an okay way to continue to live your life. Both attitudes, and they are only attitudes, are devastating to your personal effectiveness. Drop them. Drop the “I tried.” When you run head-on into a brick wall, simply get yourself back in the race with a new plan for winning.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Questions You Should Ask Yourself

A great way to start your self-development program for success is to find out what it is in your current status that needs to be resolved.

For example, what are the ways you’d like to be improving yourself? Have you known for a long time that you might benefit from some personal counseling? Now is the time to schedule it! Have you considered using a personal image consultant or having a make-up makeover? What about video feedback on your personal presentation? What personal growth seminars do you want to take?

Are there educational classes you would like to take? How about going back to school for a degree? And remember those other areas you always wanted to learn more about, and skills you’d like to perfect. A class in swimming, guitar, tennis, drama, speech, cooking, religious instruction, etc., might broaden your horizons. What are the books you’ve been wanting to read? Have you made a list of them, and gotten started yet? Plan a reading schedule. What about audio and videotapes you want to buy?

Popularity: 10% [?]

How To Become Successful By Working Less

You have been told the hard and simple truth: if you aren’t getting much out of life emotionally and financially, then you must look at what you bring into life. Clearly, to get more out of this world, you must make some changes in your life.

Now for the pleasant truth; success has little to do with hard work. The natural order of the world doesn’t dictate that you have to work hard to earn a good living and get more out of life. On the contrary, working fewer hours than most people, and at a more leisurely pace, may in fact help you to get a lot more out of life - financially and emotionally.

Most people over-dramatize the value of hard work for acquiring wealth and happiness. The late Joe Karbo, author of The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches, coined the saying, “Most people are too busy earning a living to make any money.” What Karbo meant was that most people are too preoccupied with their demanding and unfulfilling jobs, as well as with frivolous after-hour activities, to devote some creative effort toward generating alternative, less demanding means of income.

In truth, the most difficult way to make a good living is to work hard for it. Hard work is no match for relaxed, creative action. Unlike people who preach the virtues of hard work, the relaxed achiever knows that important, imaginative projects lead to a lot more impressive financial results and personal satisfaction than does working long and hard. By choosing this route, you become a peak performer. You don’t have to work hard to make a decent living; you have to work smart, however.

Poet W H. Auden wisely expressed his views on work: “In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it: they must not do too much of it: and they must have a sense of success in it.” The second of Auden’s three ingredients is the one that most people in the modern world overlook and violate. Most people in Western societies today put way too much time into their work lives and not enough into their personal lives.

With all the modern technology at our disposal, none of us need slave away to the extent that people did twenty or fifty years ago. Greater opportunity to seek a balanced and wholesome lifestyle exists now more than ever in the history of humankind; unfortunately, most people are too uncreative or too afraid of freedom to benefit, however. Today’s prosperous times should be able to support millions of people seeking their true selves through creative pursuits and self-expression while working only a few hours a day.

Popularity: 28% [?]

Is An Addiction Preventing You From Success In Life?

If you are like many people attempting to live your dreams and become successful, you may find that addictive behaviors may get in the way or prevent your success altogether. Addictions by definition are self-destructive. They erode self-esteem and cause gradual health problems, and impairments in social, occupational, physical, emotional, or spiritual functioning. Our society condones addictions. So much of the social fabric of everything we do involves the acceptance of addictive thinking and behavior that we have become almost unaware of it.

If you may have a problem achieving your goals because of an addition of sorts, then the following list of possible addictive hindrances may help you identify your personal demons and eliminate them totally from your life:

Immediate gratification: All addictions produce instant gratification. You feel better as a result of your involvement with the substance or process in which you indulge. It is enjoyable to experience the altered state (at least temporarily).

Simplistic thinking: You believe that “it” will make everything all right. You believe that “it” is something that is capable of inducing positive psychological, emotional, and physical states, as well as relieving negative ones.

Distorted priorities: Your priorities become distorted, and you become consumed and obsessed with your addiction as the most important thing in life, above and beyond everything else.

Skewed perspective: Your perspective becomes skewed and inaccurate. You are unable to perceive reality accurately. You begin to see people and situations as exaggerations of what they normally are.

Symptoms of withdrawal: As soon as you are deprived of the substance or the process, adverse consequences appear immediately. You experience unpleasant physiological, psychological, and/or emotional symptoms. You experience trauma at the thought or reality of separating from your addiction.

Overwhelming attachment: You are so dependent upon the addiction that you feel unable to function without it. A need/dependency relationship evolves between you and your addiction. You need it to be happy and your well-being is contingent on having it available to you.

Complete loss of power: You feel powerless to alter your situation. You have relinquished your power to something or someone outside yourself. The situation has become bigger than you are, and you are unable to affect a change. You are a slave to your addictions.

Binary thinking: You are a victim of binary thinking. You view situations as black or white, either/or, right or wrong, good or bad, on or off, wonderful or awful. Life is perceived as a zero sum game in which the pendulum swings between two polar opposites with no happy medium.

Popularity: 23% [?]

11 Character Traits Of Highly Motivated & Successful People

Motivation is a powerful tool for success. The degree to which you can remain motivated and continue to make forward progress determines whether you realize the life goals that you establish. But the reward for being motivated isn’t just raw goal accomplishment. The accompanying benefits of being motivated are numerous - and they can change your life.

When you fully understand these benefits of motivation, you can make motivating yourself a lifelong habit. Take a look at the following motivating traits and choose which ones (or all) can help you:

1. Creativity: Motivated people think more clearly. They focus more intellectual resources on their current project, and the result is more creativity.

2. Energy: People who are motivated actually need less sleep - not because they’re on a constant adrenaline rush but because they possess a genuine, energizing excitement.

3. Flexibility: Motivated folks have discovered that flexibility is a developed skill that doesn’t depend on circumstances. When their circumstances change, they’re more open to bending to deal with the situation rather than being rigid about an outcome.

4. Health: People who have a positive feeling about their life and its potential have reason to get and stay healthy. They have experienced the difference in energy and healthfulness during non-motivated times, and they prefer the motivated lifestyle.

5. Magnetism: A motivated lifestyle is attractive, and motivated people have a certain magnetism. Others are naturally drawn to winners who are energizing by nature and habit.

6. Momentum: Motivation is self-perpetuating. It gathers speed as it rolls along in offices, homes, and communities. Living out your motivation gets easier because it becomes a habit.

7. Multiplication: Motivation is contagious - it spreads and multiplies. The people around the one who is motivated “catch” that motivation.

8. Recognition: When people live out a motivated lifestyle, they stand out. Others respect them for their achievements, admire their spunk, and, because they want to be associated with winners, offer their assistance.

9. Optimism: Motivated individuals have found out that optimism opens more doors than negativity. They have discovered a life pattern of finding the silver lining or the potential in any turn of events. They aren’t thrown off course by change. They find the good in everything.

10. Productivity: Motivated people get more done. They move with a spring in their step, and they attack tasks with enthusiasm. They move quickly, deliberately, and with a concern for maintaining a can-do attitude along the way.

11. Stability: Folks with motivation are focused and are not easily distracted or dissuaded from their destinations. They are tuned in to the object of their motivation.

Popularity: 25% [?]

Is Your Comfort Zone Blocking You From Success?

Picture this: You know someone personally who has a thrilling, exotic life. Some friend of yours - maybe your sister, or your spouse - teaches in Japan, or writes in a cabin in the Rockies, or flies to Hamburg to make a deal with Mercedes-Benz. You daydream about how great it must be to live like that, but know it will never happen to you. You’ve stepped back from the exciting opportunities that came your way, because you wanted safety. Whatever courage is required to take risks, you’re pretty sure you don’t have it. You’re hugging the shore, but you can’t take your eyes off the horizon.

A lot of people hug the shore and are perfectly comfortable hugging it - but you are not comfortable. You are full of longing and regret. Deep down, you want adventure. You know perfectly well that you’ve stayed at your job too long. You know you’ve got more of the explorer inside you than you ever use. You know that a different kind of person would have sprung into action, seized the day, moved to new territories long ago, but somewhere you learned to hang on to what you have and not try for more.

So, do you cling to safety or do you have the ripping roar of success inside of you, eagerly welcoming the unknown and willing to risk your comfort zones? By answering the following questions you will learn to determine that answer:

1. Are you always in rehearsal? By that I mean, do you take courses or learn a skill but never really put your learning to any use?

2. When it’s time to take a trip or redesign your bedroom, do you find yourself making endless preparations, constantly hesitating, calling friends to check out their opinions on each action?

3. Do you find yourself fiercely resistant to being pushed or hurried one bit more than suits you? Do you ignore deadlines until they’re dangerously near and become stubborn if someone tries to warn you?

4. Do you hang on to things too long - even bad things, like bad relationships or items of clothing, appliances, memberships that have outworn their usefulness?

5. Do you complain there’s no time to do what you really want - but actually spend a considerable amount of your day watching television or puttering around the house?

6. Do you watch other people’s lives as though they were a spectator sport? People who cling to safety all of their lives are unusually interested in the lives of other people - famous or familiar. This interest may stem from the fact that they feel their own lives aren’t full enough - or maybe they’re watching for tips on how to escape!

7. Do you often think about changing your life, but never get past daydreaming about it?

If you answered yes to three or more of those, you’re a “cling to safety person”, and you’ve got some thinking to do. Safety is riskier than you realize.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Two Keys To A More Successful Career

Are you worried that you might not have what it takes to make it on the job in the future? You’re not alone. In a survey of 100 personnel managers by the Cambridge Human Resource Group, a consulting firm, more than 40% said that their firms’ employees worry about what talents and abilities will be expected of them in the future.

Below are two broad themes to remember for improving your odds of on-the-job success:

1. Further your education. Consider these telling statistics: For every dollar earned by a college graduate, the average high school grad makes about 57%. Holders of doctorate and professional degrees take home roughly twice as much as those who have B.A.’s. A fast-tracker’s learning curve shouldn’t end with any particular degree. By building up new skills at work, you stand to enhance both your career and salary.

What abilities are most sought after in corporate America today? Computer know-how, for starters. Workers who use PCs to ply their trade earn roughly 10% to 15% more than those who don’t. Other top talents include technical writing ability and managerial wizardry. Regardless of your line of work, in our global economy foreign languages can give you added leverage. As a banker, think of the edge you’ll have with a fluency in Spanish; if you’re a corporate lawyer, think of the punch you’ll pack with crack Japanese. Luckily there are plenty of places that can help keep your skills competitive. Hundreds of colleges and universities nationwide offer executive education seminars and short courses. For a quick tune-up in a specific area, say, negotiating prowess, don’t forget community colleges and professional associations; many offer a wide range of career classes.

2. Don’t thumb your nose at lateral moves. “Up” would seem the only logical career climber’s destination. As corporations continue to strip away management layers, however, you can count on more job openings to be sideways moves. In fact, over the next decade roughly half of all job moves are expected to be lateral ones, not vertical. Such career zigzags can carry you farther than you might think.

By testing out new opportunities in other departments and divisions at your current employer, you may gain valuable experience, not to mention great networking contacts and a better view of how the overall firm functions. Although your pay and prestige probably won’t spike right away, such experiences can help stem job boredom, broaden your career prospects, and eventually help you to move vertically. So if you’re in a rut and don’t see much chance for a step up at work, ask your boss for a lateral transfer.

Popularity: 15% [?]

The Benefits Of Moving Along The Road To Success

Continually creating and using empowering messages such as, “I Can and I Will succeed,” “I Can and I Will produce healthy, harmonious beliefs and behaviors” will make you realize that you actively choose your own alternatives in life. When you become more self-determined, accepting and more responsible, you experience the freedom to choose alternatives that will move you forward in overcoming self-defeating behaviors that prevent you from the success you aspire. Empowering messages create the inner strength and determination to remove self-sabotaging thoughts and beliefs from consciousness.

Believe in destiny, and believe that your decisions spring from your inner depths, your “will” to succeed. You determine your destiny just as you create the path that brings you toward self fulfillment. Trusting yourself to make the decision to overcome your self-defeating behaviors is a courageous event. It demands that you take personal responsibility for yourself. Becoming self-responsible assists you in overcoming your resistance to growth. Move forward on your path to success. Use the knowledge from your past experiences to make a conscious decision to change your behavior and communication. Begin to explore the core of your inner self. Decide to take positive action and overcome resistance and obstacles to growth.

Now you have the best of both worlds. Believing that you have the power and option to move forward in overcoming your self-defeating behaviors will give you the freedom to choose your own destiny. Making decisions based on empowering messages from within yourself prevents you from driving the wrong way down a one-way street, or reaching a dead-end in a personal or professional relationship.

To live in a way that is deeply satisfying for you is to begin your journey into the “self”. Your personal journey into selfhood is called individuation, a process whereby you establish your identity as a self-determining person. Your self-determination empowers and enables you to overcome resistance. Self-determining individuals use their inner strengths and resources to create healthy beliefs, behaviors, and emotions to experience life’s abundance.

When you’re self-confident, you accept yourself, and others, unconditionally. Your self confidence and self-determination assist you in finding the right mental and emotional balance to create truly productive and successful relationships. These precious resources help you overcome resistance to growth to ensure your development of positive self-esteem.

As you move along your road to success you’re more fully able to respect and trust yourself, becoming more responsible for your decisions and your life. Becoming aware of, and sensitive to, your inner feelings, and the feelings of others, is a movement toward personal fulfillment and maturity. When you understand that maturity is accepting others for who they are, and accepting yourself for who you are, you’re able to overcome resistances to growth.

Begin now and develop your attitude of complete acceptance. This new awareness of unconditional acceptance facilitates a dynamic process through which we awaken and affirm ourselves, giving new meaning to our relationships with others.

Popularity: 9% [?]

To Gain Success You Must Be Willing To Sacrifice Some Things

Most people think they “need” to work forty hours per week to gain more success and earn more money. For some, that’s true. For others, it’s sixty hours per week. For still others, eighty. (Ask any spouse whose “job” it is to care for the house, or creative person working on a project, or monk in a monastery, or social activist working for change). For some others, it might be five or ten.

Just as “the work expands to fill the time available,” so, too, the “needs” expand to consume the money available. If we are bringing home forty-hours’ worth of money, we will spend it. The rich live hand-to-mouth, too - just on a higher level. If that forty-hours’ worth of work amounts to $150 or $1,500 or $15,000 or $150,000, or $1,500,000 - it will be spent.

Many people are trapped in the myth of a 40-hour work week.

If we define “job” as what we do (that we don’t really want to do) to get money, then the number of hours we work depends upon (A) what it cost us to do what we want to do, and (B) how much per hour we get. What about our basic needs? Good question! Basic needs are often dictated by what we want to do. For example, someone who wants to pray all day and serve God might be able to combine that with life in a monastery and not have to work for even one hour per week at the local fast-food emporium. Someone wanting to make global changes could find the same all-expenses-paid fulfillment of a goal in the Peace Corps, or, if they wanted to do it domestically. The examples go on and on.

The meeting of our basic needs should be based on the fulfillment of our heart’s desire, not on the latest style, or how to intensely fill the few “leisure” hours we have when not working at a job we hate.

To significantly raise your standard of living sometimes requires significantly lowering it for a while. Say you want to write a book, and you have a $25,000 car and a $2,000 per month apartment. You don’t need those to write a book. A $5,000 car (or even a $500 moped) and a $500 per month apartment is all you need.

People who plan to “make it” had better plan to sacrifice - and that starts with creature comforts. It might mean a smaller living space, bringing in a roommate, or turning the current living space into an office. It may mean less dinners out with friends, less trips, fewer new clothes, not as many CD’s, domestic wines, domestic sparkling water (aka club soda), domestic pasta, domestic vinegar - and no domestics.

Popularity: 9% [?]

← Previous Page — Next Page →