Human beings are creatures of habit.  We tend to repeat what we have done in the past.  It is easy and comfortable, even if those habit are harmful and we are fully aware of the harm those habits are doing to us.

The great news is that this is also true for beneficial behaviors.  Believe it or not, there are truly people that have successful habits that they do just as effortlessly and happily as those less successful habits that many people have.

Think about watching TV and eating unhealthy food.  These are activities that many people get great pleasure from.  They find it relaxing and stress free to watch TV and eat unhealthy food.  I know it is hard for many of us to realize, though there are actually people who get just as much joy and relaxation from doing success related activities and eating healthy food.

I'm getting at the point that the idea of "work hard" or "suffer now to reap the rewards later" are ideas that I don't find to work very well.  These ideas are similar to New Year's resolutions that most people make.  They work up their resolve and use all their strength to bear some undesirable behavior like going to the gym, or eating salads, or calling more prospects.  Each time they do these activities they dislike it, resist it, and maybe curse the fact that they have to do these things, though they continue for a short time because they are hoping for some payoff, meaning more strength, losing weight or having more sales.  The secret is that we are hoping that after we achieve our goal we can relax and let loose a little and not have to be so strict.

This is the big fault with this "diet" or "New Year's resolution" mentality.  What we should be striving for is forming new habits that we will continue to do, maybe for the rest of our life.  If we think this way, that we are trying to form a habit that we will be living with for the rest of our life, it had better be something that can bring you some pleasure.

Ask youself, "How can I enjoy...".  Try and find some way to enjoy what it is that you need to do to achieve your goal.  For example you might say "How can I enjoy going to the gym?"  It's perfectly possible that you can't think of a single way to enjoy this.  Then change what you are doing.  Few people have as a goal "Go to the gym."  What they probably want is to lose weight or gain more strength.  There are many ways this can be achieved, think of another activity you can do that you can enjoy, rock climbing, aerobics class, running, swimming, walking, shopping.  If you keep searching, there must be something you can find that you can enjoy to achieve your goals.  If you can't think of anything, then look at what other people are doing, and ask other people.

We had better enjoy these new habits we are forming, otherwise we will stick with them for about as long as people stick with New Year's resolutions.

The only people who fail are those that stop trying.

As I write that, my mind is wandering about finding a substitute for the word "try" because I have heard several success coaches who say something like "There is no try, only do or don't do."  Hmm, sort of simplistic and not necessarily helpful advice.  I get that their intention is to encourage a positive mindset so that we tell ourselves that we will do something and only be happy if we actually do it instead of being happy with the fact that we just "tried".  I'm not so strict, I think it is perfectly fine for us to "try".

Anyway, the point is that as long as we haven't given up and quit on achieving whatever is our goal, then we haven't failed.  As long as we are alive, we still have the chance to pick ourselves up and work again towards any goal.  Do you want to make more money, have a better marriage, be happier, or healthier?  Have you tried to achieve any of these goals in the past?  Maybe you have read books, attended seminars, made goals to achieve them, even written down goals and possibly even had success and then fallen back down.  That's all great.

Again, if you are alive enough to read this blog, then you have the ability to try again.  Take another step.  Learn something more about what you are trying to achieve.   Ask the question "How...?"  The technique of asking "How..." is a great way to get the most powerful tool that we all possess, our mind, to work for us.  Ask your mind a question like "How can I make more money?", "How can I get in better shape?", "How can I have a better marriage?" "How can I be happy?" "How can I learn to set goals?"

Asking "How...?" gets our mind working on our side to help us achieve our goals.  Ask the question over and over in whatever tone of voice is comfortable to you.  You can ask yourself silently, just in your mind.  You can say it out loud.  You can say it softly or scream at yourself.  There are no rules here, just ask the question to get your mind working for you.

BTW, you can also get the minds of other people working for you by asking the same questions to them.  You may be surprised who was a good dea that can help you achieve your goal.

Be persistent in achieving your goals and keep asking "How.." questions.

Thoughts on success, self-improvement and life coaching is popular among sales professionals.  Does this then mean for us to be successful we have to become a sales person?

On one hand, it does make some sense.  When we say we want to be successful, what we often mean is we want to be happy, and maybe to be in control of the world.  The best we can hope to achieve is control of our thoughts, actions and reactions to what happens in the world.  It is only by controlling their thoughts, actions and reactions has anyone that we might think is successful become successful, discounting of course royalty that have a guaranteed role and status they will achieve pretty much no matter what they do.

I'm assuming that if you are reading this that you are probably a human being, so if you agree that your goal is to be able to control your thoughts, actions and reactions, you are saying that you want to be able to control human thoughts, actions and reactions.  This skill of influencing humans is exactly what sales professionals spend much of their life learning.  How can they influence their customers to purchase their product.  So from that side it makes sense if we are thinking about financial and material success.

How about for other things like health, mental ability or relationships?  If you want to be healthy or lose weight, does that have anything to do with being a salesperson?  Does it require prospecting?  How about learning a new skill, like a new language?  When thinking about these areas of success, the salesperson analogy starts to less clear.

Or, how about yesterday's story about trying to save one's life?  I don't see how being a good salesperson had anything to do with that success story.

So, I think the goal of being a salesperson is not a sufficient or even necessary requirement for success.  Still the current plan of having a goal or vision and taking regular action towards that goal seems like a reasonable formula for success.

I think parts of the pieces that are missing are what keeps us from consistently taking the steps necessary to honestly achieve the level of success we profess to want?

When picking a goal to work towards to be successful, it is OK to choose something small.

Sometimes when we listen to success coaches they talk about that the world will give us what we ask for, so if we ask for something small or large, that is what we will receive.  Hearing this we sometimes think that we must only ask for large things like, having US$1 million, or being a celebrity, or losing 50% of our current weight.  These are all nice goals.

I remember hearing a story about Jim Carrey that before he was hugely successful, he wrote himself a check for a large amount, something like US$1 million and would look at it regularly as motivation until he was able to cash it.  Obviously, whatever success formula he employed, it worked for him.  This technique is a great idea and I encourage everyone to do it and see if it works for you.

I think we should also be open to the possibility of small goals.  Think of it again in terms of a physical workout.  If you were only able to life 1kg, would you continue to do a workout with that 1k even if your ultimate goal is to life 100kg?  I sure hope so.  You can set a near term goal to lift 2kg and leave the larger goal of 100kg to just be in the background.  It doesn't have to be the primary focus.

By allowing our self to achieve small goals, we can then celebrate them.  I am again reminded of the story I heard in the movie "Touching the Void".  It is a great, true life story, about how a mountain climber fell off the mountain, broke his leg and was left for dead.  This climber was an experienced climber and did not have food or water as they had just planned to do a quick climb.  He knew 100% that he was dead, there was no question about that fact.  What he decided was though, despite the fact that he was going to die, there was no reason he had to die where he was lying.

He figured that he was able to move maybe 1 or 2 meters and he would play a game of giving himself 5 or 10 minutes to move that distance.  After he moved that small distance, he would check his watch and either celebrate or curse that he can do better.  After his celebration/disappointment, he would then start again and think something like "Well, I'm not dead, yet, so there's no reason to die here, let's go another 1 or 2 meters in a certain time limit of 5 or 10 minutes."

Despite the fact that he expected to die on the mountain, using this technique of just looking at small goals and celebrating them, or reevaluating how he can do better next time if he didn't quite achieve the goal, he was able to save himself.

I like this mentality.  It's OK if we don't have a 100% positive mental attitude in our ability to achieve our overall large goal.  Let's just set some small, quick goals that will move us ever so small towards this large goal.  It's OK if we don't every expect this to really allow us to achieve the large goal, but let's just do it as a game, because really we all will die some day.

What do you think?

If you could control the outcome of all aspects of your life, would you consider yourself successful?

Imagine you want to get married or find a romantic partner and you can control that output, wouldn't you consider that success?  How about if you want a new house, car, or boat and you are able to obtain them, would that be success?  It sounds reasonable, that being able to control our ability to achieve our goals seems successful.  Of course, we're not talking about how long it might take to achieve these goals.  It might take months or years, though if you knew or felt that you were in control of the outcome then you may feel more successful.

This is related to the idea of learned helplessness.  Imagine that whatever you wanted to achieve, I mean to really achieve that you know 100% that you can and will accomplish this.  Image that you want to have a net worth of US$20 million.  Let's say that is guaranteed.  Now what if you are told that for the next 10 years you must get up at 5 am everyday and learn new skills, expose yourself to uncomfortable situations and have setbacks and periods of complete unhappiness.  Would you continue to get up at 5am and continue to learn and walk through this river of fire to achieve you deep seated desire?  I hope that I would.

I guess part of the issue is that no guarantees like this necessarily exist.  It is very possible that we could do all these things and not achieve the US$20 million.  So because of this, maybe we don't start, or if we do start, we give up after some time.  I think each of us learns certain skills at a young age and we accept that we will be successful in those areas because we have a history of success.  Maybe you are a funny person, or a social person, or an athlete, or good in school.  As you grow up, we learn to accept that this is part of our personality and are reinforced that these are our strengths.  In other areas, we maybe feel that we don't have control over them so maybe we feel less successful in those areas.

Another alternative theory is that instead of being in control of the outcome, we control our reaction to the outcome.  So instead of saying that if we achieve some goal we are successful, we control our reaction to the outcome..

A third theory is that by definition we are in control of most all situations in our life.  Most everyone is in control of how much they weight, how much knowledge they have, what type of relationships they have and how much money they have.  If you are an adult, then most likely you use your own decision to decide what items to put into your mouth, you decide what books to read or classes to take, you decide what people you associate with and you decide what activities you perform for money and how much money you accept for them.  If we truly accept this, that our situation in life is mostly under our control, then we can already be successful today, right now.

We can say "I am a successful person, and now I am going to change what type of success I achieve."

You are successful, now what type of success do you want to achieve?

How much of our desire to be successful is genuine and how much is just a bunch of hot air?

When trying to understand this topic of success, one of my questions was wondering why there weren't more organizations that teach the principals of success.  When I thought about this more, I realized it is not as easy as that.  Maybe if your goal is to make more money, there is maybe not an overload of schools promising to make you a billionaire, but there are other success schools.  In particular, for losing weight and learning English.

As part of these thoughts on success and happiness, success does not have to mean making more money.  It an mean losing weight, learning English, or saving a marriage.  As an American, there is no shortage of overweight Americans, and since I live in China, there is also no shortage of people wanting to learn English.  Also, in American, there is no shortage of "weight success" programs and information, like books, TV shows, diets, and support groups.  In China, pretty much the same thing for English, many schools, programs and support groups.

How successful is the "weight success" program in America?  My general impression is that obesity is still a major problem in the US.  So, despite all of the information, preaching, scolding, support, and every other possible method, the issue still exists.  The positive mental attitude (PMA) philosophy might say that people should "think thin" and then they would lose weight.  Or maybe it is because we focus too much on obesity and being overweight.  If instead all the new reports talked about was being fit or healthy, then maybe we would all be healthy.  Is it really that simple of just focusing all our attention on being healthy?

Living in China, I have a totally different perspective since much fewer people here are fat.  From poor to rich, from lazy to hard working, they are pretty much as a society fit, at least not obese.  So this seems to indicate to me that environment is a major factor in determine how much we weight.  Because of environment, we develop certain tastes and habits, since that is what everyone else is doing, and based on that environment we become like others in that environment.

I really think this is a huge key.  I also mentioned English above, because many Chinese people say they want to speak English, and they generally don't, and the same for many foreigners here in China that say they want to speak Chinese and they can't.  I know a few Chinese who speak good English and everyone of them hangs out with native English speakers on a regular basis.  Same thing for foreigners like myself who speak good Chinese, we hang out with native Chinese speakers.

If you want to be healthy or fit, hang out with healthy or fit individuals and do what they do.  If they don't want to hang out with you because you aren't healthy or fit, then find another group of healthy or fit individuals, and also change your behavior to fit in with some group of healthy or fit individuals.  If you want to learn a foreign language, hang out with native speakers of the language.

One caution is don't think that hanging out with people that want what you want will necessarily be helpful.  I have seen this clearly where someone who want to learn Chinese hangs out with another learner of Chinese and they end up speaking English most of the time.  Find a native speaker to hang out with, even if you have to pay them.

What group of people already have what you want and how can you hang out with them?

Noah St. John's blog today reminded me that it is often when we help others that we are best able to achieve what we want.

It is common for us to focus on our wants, we want more money, we want more happiness, we want more love, we want, we want, we want.  How much time do we spend thinking about what other people want?

When I think about it, it is exactly what Napoleon Hill says in his book "How to Win Friends and Influence People". 

1. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
2. Talk in terms of the other person's interest.
3. Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.
4. Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.
5. Let the other person feel the idea is his or hers.
6. Try honestly to see things from the other person's point of view.
7. Be sympathetic with the other person's ideas and desires.
8. Show respect for the other person's opinions. Never say "You're Wrong."

This advice is all about thinking about other people in order to accomplish what we want.


I was once admonished by a friend that if I would spend more time helping other people get what they wanted, I would have more than enough of what I wanted.

A great leader is also a humble servant.

How can I help you get what you want?

Wouldn't it be great if being successful was an automatic part of your character, I mean if it was as easy as doing any of the other habits you currently possess?

To accomplish this we can do a little investigation.

1. During your adult life what new habits have you formed?
2. How did you form these habits?
3. How can you apply this knowledge to developing a success habit?

During your adult life what new habit have you formed?

  Let's will define adult life as sometime after about 15 years old and habits to mean new behaviors that you do on a regular basis that you previously did not do.

  Here are some habits that I have developed:

• Start Smoking
• Stop Smoking
• Floss during each brushing
• Speak Chinese
• Eat nutritiously

How did I form these habits?

   The creation of habits is not really much of a mystery.  Most of us understand that if we repeat an action over and over enough times, it will become a habit.  For each of the habits above, it is clear to me that I performed each of the actions daily for an extended period of time, so much so that I didn't even have to think about doing the action, it was just a part of my person.

  How long did it take and how do we stay committed to the habit?  When looking online there seems to be some theory about 66 days being a good amount of time to form a habit.  I think that is too short.  I'm pretty sure that when I stopped smoking, after 66 days, I still had strong temptations and if I had let down my guard, I could have easily started again.  For me, I would say 6 months is a more realistic time frame.  During the first 6 months of forming a habit, we should have a strong focus on maintaining the new habit.

  How about staying committed, especially if we "slip up"?  I attended a presentation in high school given by a recovering alcoholic.  That presentation changed my thinking forever.  The presenter mentioned that he IS an alcoholic and will always be for the rest of his life.  He said that he had decided that just for one day, today, he has decided to refrain from drinking alcohol.  He made no promises about tomorrow, next week, next year, or the rest of his life.  He even admitted that to help him get through one day he would sometimes promise himself that tomorrow he could drink alcohol, just not today.  Using this method he had gone 6 years without having any alcohol, though if you asked him to promise to never have alcohol for the rest of his life he would go out and start drinking right now because he could never make the rest of his life without alcohol, though he can make one more day.

  This "One Day at a Time" philosophy also has another powerful benefit.  If you make a commitment to eat no ice cream for 1 month and then after 2 weeks you "slip" and have some ice cream, it is common for people to then give up and think something like "Well, I've already failed so I might as well continue to eat ice cream for the rest of the month and I can start again next month."  With the "one day at a time" philosophy, if we slip, it is only for one day.  We can still use the same thinking though it will only last for one day and then tomorrow we start again fresh and can decide what path we want to follow.

How can you apply this knowledge to developing a success habit?

  So, for me, applying the "one day at a time" formula for a period of at least 6 months seems to have been effective for me to be able to form a new habit.  It seems completely reasonable that this should work towards forming a success habit.

  I am currently performing the following activities to form a success habit:

• Listening to success material for about 45 minutes in the morning 5-6 days / week
• Holding weekly Success meetings with like minded individuals for at least 1.5 hours
• Maintaining this blog.

  The first post in this blog is a reasonable indication of the start of this habit which is 5/30/2012.  That would mean that around 11/30/2012 I should have a well formed success habit.

What is your pattern for forming habits?  What new habits do you want to form?

I am listening to some Brian Tracy materials and one of his recurring themes is that hard work leads to success.  My impression of his advice is the traditional advice: Early to bed, early to rise, makes one healthy wealthy and wise.  Work hard and you will be successful.

By itself, I think this advice is misleading.  Many of you already have heard of the idea of work smart instead of work hard, so there is nothing new when I bring that up.  Maybe Brian Tracy's material I'm listening too is dated and just hasn't been updated to the idea of work smart.

I prefer the idea's of the 4-hour workweek by Timothy Ferriss where he talks about really trying to just do what is absolutely necessary and let others do everything else.  To give Brian Tracy credit, he also talks about this saying that we should figure out what is our time worth and only doing things that make that much money and pay someone else to do everything else.

I'm also cautious about the advice to work hard because I know times in my life when I felt I was working hard and achieved little success and other times when I was barely working and yet achieved much greater success.  I think there are more important factors than simply working hard.

What do you think?

Are success and happiness one and the same concept or can we have one without the other?

I guess this all depends on how we define success.  I started on this thought process as I was trying to optimize this website.  Doing some keyword research it appears that searches for "happy" are many times more popular than searches for "success".  So it seems that according to Google, people are more interested in happiness than they are in success, of course "money" was also up there with happy.

Some friends and I were discussing this and it appears that people generally think about material things, like money, cars, and houses when they think about success.  This is understandable.

When thinking about happiness, they don't necessarily equate that to physical abundance.  Take monks or other devout individuals that specifically deny worldly pleasures in order to achieve enlightenment, which I assume is a form of happiness.

According to The Happiness Project "...money can’t buy happiness, but it sure can buy lots of things that contribute mightily to happiness."  USAToday takes the other view "Money can't buy happiness, but happiness may buy money".

I hope to maintain both states of happiness and success.  The people that I know well personally that are financially successful are also some of the happiest people I know.  I am working to follow their lead.  If I have to choose though, I would choose greater success for less happiness.

How about you, if you had to trade off happiness and success which do you value more?