I was thinking the other day about how it is easy to have a great goal, take positive actions and still not achieve the goal.  In other words, fail.  How can that be?  I thought the Success Formula was a secret plan to guarantee everyone will get whatever they want out of life.  What gives?

First of all, you might want to remember that failure is a critical part of this formula.  Every "successful" person I know has experienced some failure.  There do appear to be some exceptions, like Ron Howard.  I mean, here is a guy that was a celebrity continuously from the age of six, married his high school sweetheart at the age of 21, has 4 children and as far as I know has never struggled with alcohol or drugs.

I admire Mr. Howard, and it is difficult for me to compare my life to his.  I have many more wrong turns and times where my life was not going in the direction I wanted.  I accept this and believe that, unfortunately, Mr. Howard is the exception rather than the rule.  Most people, including successful people, are like me and have setbacks and times where their life is going in a direction they would like to change.

This brings us to where I was thinking about a difference between these other successful people and those who have less success.  The successful people realize that even when their life takes an unexpected turn that if they follow their plan and take actions to improve that they can depend on the fact that they can improve their situation.  They may not be able to predict exactly when things will improve, though they can be confident and depend on the fact that it will improve.

Another way to think about it is like flipping a coin.  When flipping a coin it is not possible to predict what will be the result.  Each flip of the coin is a new flip and there should be about a 50/50 chance of either heads or tails showing up.  Although it is not predictable, it is dependable that if you flip the coin 100 times that, on average there will most likely be a 50/50 distribution of heads and tails.  Of course it is possible to flip 100 time all heads or all tails, though that is going to happen extremely few times.

The same goes for being successful.  If you have a quality goal, take positive actions towards your goal, you may not be able to predict if you will receive the results we want.  Maybe you have a 70% chance of getting the result you want.  What is dependable is that if you repeat this activity 100 times, that you can depend on the fact that more than likely you will get the results we want.

Try and keep that in mind when you are feeling down and think you are failing.  Review your goals, check that your actions are moving you closer towards your goal, and assuming these are true, then realize you can depend on the fact that a little failure is OK because even if you can't predict exactly when you will succeed, you can depend on the fact that you will eventually success.

I used to teach ballroom dance classes.  I was fortunate enough to be learning from a wise and patient mentor.  One thing I will always remember him saying was to avoid using the word "easy".  He said that just because something was simple did not mean it was easy for everyone.

We would always start the very first class with having everyone in class walking in place.  We would then do that to music.  Walking in place, is the most simple movement he could come up with to start the class.  Even though walking in place is simple, it was not necessarily easy for everyone.  Some people coming to class for the first time are nervous and can just barely walk or stand, much less trying to do it to music.  So just because from my perspective it is simple does not mean it is easy.

He also taught me another lesson about if I would put in the time to do the simple things perfectly, then I would be able to do the difficult things easily.  I have looked it up and it looks like this is from a quote by Friedrich Schiller:

  "Only those who have the patience to do simple things perfectly will acquire the skill to do difficult things easily."

As you are reviewing your goals and actions, see if you are doing the simple things perfectly.  You can be less concerned about doing the fancy things and instead make sure you are doing the simple things perfectly.

A questions you can ask yourself is, "What are the most simple things I can do to accomplish this goal?"  Then you can check how well you are doing those things.

I have to admit that by nature I'm a lazy person.  Just like the person that invented the escalator, I often look at challenges and try and find an easier way.  I mean who wants to have to walk up stairs all the time, why not just invent a machine that will do it for us?

It was pointed out to me by a friend that in my search for shortcuts, I may sometimes lose sight of the objective.  My friend explained that I was trying to be efficient without paying attention to how effective I was being.

I'm not sure who was the first person to talk about this concept of effective versus efficient.  I have found that Peter Drucker seems to have also had some thoughts on this idea.  He said "Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things."

I think the key difference between these ideas is that effectiveness is measuring our actions against progress towards our goal and efficiency is measuring our actions as the goal in themselves.  This may also be thought of as "penny wise and pound foolish".  Meaning, we may save a little money today, and in the long run we will lose much more money.

How effective are your actions?  Are they moving you closer towards your goals everyday?

George T. Doran came up with a mnemonic to help you evaluate your goals.  It is SMART.  Each of the letters is meant to remind you of something to consider when making your goals:

S - Specific
M - Measurable
A - Attainable
R - Relevant
T - Time Bound

Specific - This means that the goal should be clear.  You can ask the questions, Who? What? Where? & Why? to help you clarify the goal.

Measurable - This means that we should have some way to determine that we are getting closer to the goal and that the goal has been achieved.  Usually this means associating a number with the goal.  If your goal is "I want to be happy."  You could try something like, "I will laugh, 3 times this week."

Attainable - This means that the goal is something that is reasonably in our reach.  The irony is that harder goals are often easier to achieve than easy goals because they provider greater motivation.  Be aware that there are goals that may be unlikely for you to achieve.  For example, if your goal is "I want to be able to hold my breath for 1 hour underwater.", it might not be very attainable.

Relevant - This means that that goal should be about something important to you.  Your goals should provide significant emotional response for you, when you think about and work towards them.

Timely - This means that the goal should have an end point.  Try and find a way to limit your goals such that you can be motivated to take action now to achieve the deadline.

When I think about this, I realize that some of my goals are not following these criteria.  I will review my goals and see how I can update them to be SMART.

How about your goals, are they SMART?

I was noticing the other day how I was starting to receive quite a bit of marketing emails from people wanting to sell me information about how to be successful.  A few years ago, I was learning about making money online and I also started getting flooded with marketing emails from all sorts of people about making money online.  Both of these times, this was because I had been attracted to something these people were offering and had signed up to receive some information and was added to their mailing list.

I can understand how people could think that the online business and success industries are full of scam artists.  I mean it is possible that a person may purchase many products from these people and not get very positive results and make the conclusion that what these people are selling is to blame.  That they tricked you into buying the material.  Instead of getting any results from "self help" it just becomes "shelf help".

Then I started to think about this some more, and tried to figure out of f all of these people really are just trying to trick me.  Is it possible that these people genuinely have valuable information to contribute and there is something that I am doing that is slowing down the benefits I get from this information?

I thougt about traditional universities.  Well known universities offer several thousand classes each semester.  Imagine of the way the university worked was that each professor would send out marketing emails to prospective students and the students just went to whatever class they felt like.  Now, this might be an interesting change to the way universities work, though do you think it might make it difficult for the university to have some control over what they are certifying with their graduation diploma?

How would the university guarantee that someone that says they have studied electrical engineering, really has studied the proper courses?  What if this student just took one electrical engineering course and the rest of the time took athletic courses?  So what do universities do?  They come up with a plan and say that there are certain required courses and then depending on the goal of the student, there are other courses for the student to choose from.

You notice that the student selects the goal, we call it a major, and the university supplies the plan.  The allows the student to focus their choices of classes.  So even though based on the goal/major the student selected they only end up take less than one hundred classes and there are still several thousand classes, this can still mean that these other thousands of classes are still quality classes, they just don't fit into the student's goal.

In the "real world" you don't always have somebody to choose your goal or make the plan to achieve the goal.  If you have a job, then your company and boss usually choose the goal and make the plan.  To truly be successful, you might want to consider being in control and making your own plan.

The marketing emails I receive, are the marketers trying to make the goal and the plan.  Their goal is obviously to sell the product.  Let's turn that around and follow the university example.  First, work on being clear of your goal.  When you are clear of your goal make some plan, even the most simple plan, to achieve your goal.  Now with your goal and plan in hand, you can now find out what knowledge you would like to get to achieve your goal.  When you know what knowledge you are trying to get you can filter through thousands of marketing pitches to find the few that will be the most benefit to you.

Just like in the university example, if you randomly read and try to follow all of the marketing material you receive, it may be difficult to achieve your goal.  Instead, think about just choosing one or two teachers and learn from them.  This just means that these teachers fit your goals at this time.  All of the other people offering to sell you information, may be offering quality product and at this time, you are deciding that their material will have to wait for another time.

As usual, 1)  Be clear of your goals, 2)  Take action towards your goals, 3)  Review how your goals and actions are working for you, and 4)  Persist in your process of continual improvement.

Part of being successful is reviewing your actions and seeing how these actions are being effective in moving you towards your goals.  When doing this review try and be objective.

I recently was given some straight forward advice from a financially successful person.  The advice is to spend the minimum amount of time to develop a product that can be sold and then to put the vast majority of your effort into selling the product. 

This adviser said that many people that struggle financially, especially the ones that have studied success principals, work hard and still stuggle financially spend much too much time trying to improve their product.  He said that he often sees people improving the quality or content of their website, or trying to make some product a little smaller, faster, lighter or in some way improved.  People may even spend time going to school and learning new skills.

This financial mentor suggested that if these people would take most of the time they are spending improving the product and instead us it to sell their existing product, they would probably be doing much better.  Of course, improving the product, even if the product is ourselves, is important, though even more important for financial success is to find people that are willing to spend money on our product.

So during your review sessions, try and honestly evaluate if your actions are getting you closer to your goals or if you should possibly try a different approach.  This new approach may be quite uncomfortable, and much less fun that what we have been doing.  This is where it is important for us to not necessarily do what feels right and instead try and find out what is the right thing to do and do it no matter how it feels.  I am not advising you to do something that goes against your morals, I'm just suggesting doing something that is uncomfortable because it is outside what you normally like to do.

One way to change your feelings towards a particular activity is to do it enough times.  It has been suggested to me that 100 times of performing almost any activity is enough to dramatically change your feelings towards that activity. 

So, using your best information at this time, try and determine what is a successful action you can take towards your goal, and if that action feels uncomfortable, just do that action 100 times and then see how you feel.  How it was told to me is "Do the right thing 100 times and it will feel right."

The third step step of the Success Club Intl Success Formula is Review.  During this review it is important to check your goals and actions and see how they are working for you.  Are the goals still goals that you want to achieve?  Are the goals too easy or too hard?  Are the actions you taking moving you towards your goals?  Are the actions too little or too much?

In addition to reviewing your current goals and actions, think back in your life to your past experiences.  Review your past successes and times when you were less than satisfied with the results you received.  Let's first start by thinking about your past successes.

Try and think of 3 times in your life where you remember the feeling of being successful or happy.  Maybe it was a time when you were younger in school, maybe you got some recognition by a teacher, maybe you did well in an athletic event or maybe some social function or event you were chosen as a key contributor.   Think again when you were older, maybe job or career related.  Have you had a time when you got a great job, or promotion or something great just happened?  Maybe you had a great relationship, or maybe you went on a fun vacation.  Then try and think of a third time when you felt successful, maybe more recently, like in the last few years.

Pick three times where you achieved what you consider success, look at each of these times and see if you can discover some pattern to your success.  What did you have to do before you got the feeling of success?  Did it take some preparation before you were successful?  Maybe for several months before hand you did some work to achieve your goal.  How long did it take?  3 months, 6 months, 1 year?  For my pattern, I notice that it takes me about 6 months consistently working to get this success feeling, and when I'm truly honest, there are at least 2 years of preparation work that also contributed to the success.

Did anyone help you achieve your goal?  If you did well on a test in school, didn't you take a class on a regular basis to achieve that result?  If you did well in some athletic event, did you train with others?  For me, I notice that all times I have been successful, it has been with the help of others, and I almost always find some way to take a class or training that is in relation to my goal.

How often did you work on your goal to be successful?  If you got a great job, how often did you work towards finding that job?  Did you look at least 3 times per week, or maybe 7 days a week if you were desperate for the job?  Is there anyone out there that can tell me that they got the feeling of success by just taking one action and then waiting 6 months with no more access and they succeeded?  I know that I must do something at least 3 times per week towards my goals to eventually be successful.

Use today to discover your success pattern.  Maybe you use music, singing, pictures, drawing, motion, or exercise in your success pattern.  For the skeleton of success, we are all similar and how our body fills out the skeleton, that is what makes us all unique.

Please share what is your pattern of success.

Taking action is a critical part of being successful.  If you take absolutely no action, you are dead.  The beating of your heart and each breath you take are actions necessary to keep you alive.

If you decide that you want to thrive instead of just survive, than you must take some voluntary actions in addition to these automatic actions.  You must think about some new actions that you can take to get you closer towards your goal.  This is another instance of where asking questions will help you out.

What is there that you can do towards achieving your goal?  Is there anything you can think of that has some probability of getting you closer to your goal?  Try taking the smallest possible step towards your goal.  Just get some momentum.

Who else has achieved something similar to your goal?  It is most likely that someone else has tried to do something similar to what you are trying to achieve.  What did they do?  There is no reason for you to come up with all of the ideas, copy what other people have done.

Who could you ask for help?  Even people that have no knowledge about how to achieve your goal can be helpful.  It doesn't hurt to ask, especially if you can't think of something on your own.  What do you have to lose?

The key is to find some way to take action, on a regular basis.  Think again about if you want to improve your physical condition.  How often might you have to exercise to improve your body?  Once a year?  Once a month?  How about 3-5 times per week, and keep doing that for at least 6 months or longer.  That seems like a formula for success.   Do the same with your mind.

Take action 3-5 times per week and keep up this habit for at least 6 months and you should be amazed at what you can accomplish.

There is a good article on Forbes by Lewis Howes called "Why Thinking Small Is The Secret To Big Success".  The main point of the article is that if you are having problems achieving your goals, then maybe the goals are too big.  I encourage you to check out the article.

I couldn't agree more with his point.  Think of this from an athletic perspective.  If someone wanted to learn how to pole vault, wouldn't it be ridiculous to give this beginner a long pole, set the bar at the current world record level and then tell them to run very fast and get over the bar?  How much success would they experience?  How long until they gave up and said it was impossible?

Wouldn't it maybe make more sense to give this person something that they can achieve, no matter how small?  Maybe give them a 3 foot long pole and ask them to flip over that pole onto a nice soft mat, so they can learn how to flip over the bar.  There must be some beginner activities that can be used to allow a person to gradually work up to being able to break the world record.

BTW, even world record breakers generally use the same approach.  I have never heard of world class athlete structuring their workouts where they start by giving themselves the largest possible challenge and then just keep trying to achieve that result.  Instead, they almost always start with something that, for their current abilities is almost certain to lead to success.  This is sometimes called a warm-up.  After the warm-up, they will then gradually increase difficulty until they are ready to attempt the world record levels.

So when it comes to other areas of your life, use the same idea.  Set some warm up goals.  What are some goals, that at your present level of ability, you are almost certain you can achieve them.  As Lewis says, think small.  Maybe your first goal is just to get out of bed.  That's fine.  They key is that once you achieve your first goal, celebrate, and immediately set another goal.

Keep raising the bar like this and congratulating yourself.  If you hit the bar and knock it off, that's great.  This is what is going to happen and every world class athlete knocks the bar off every so often.  Just reset the bar, set a new goal, maybe a smaller goal if you want, and go again.  Develop momentum and soon you will be amazed at how high the bar is.

Conditioning our mind is similar to conditioning our body.

I'm repeating this to keep me on track.  For me it is a powerful motivational tool.  It is easy for me to want more progress than I seem to be making.  I may think that I have been working hard and taking massive action and the results just aren't showing up.

Now, part of being successful, if the results aren't showing up is to be willing to change our actions, and I also believe patience is just as important.  Let's say, I decided I wanted to run a marathon.  I trained for 6 months for the run and then on race day, I have to stop before reaching the end, is there anything that should stop me from trying again?  As long as I am still healthy, I can train again and try again.

Now with this marathon, does it matter if there are teenagers that are able to run marathons and I'm middle aged?  Should I give up on the goal?  Does it matter that the world record is 1/4 of any time I can ever expect to achieve?  It may take me longer to get trained and find the right formula that works for me, including the right coaches, though if I keep trying it will eventually work.

So, when it come to training my mind, including things like being positive and passionate.  It is easy to see people who have traits that I am interested in developing.  It's perfectly fine that they have these traits, maybe even from a young age, and I am still working to develop them.

It is like when I watch The Dog Whisperer or Supernanny.  I believe both of these people have developed expertise in a particular area and in some sense it can be depressing to see how easily they can change behaviors that maybe you have been struggling with for years.

So actually, my goal is to keep seeking and find people like these two experts, and try and learn as much from them, so that I can have the same expertise.  Once you are clear on what you want, find experts who have what you want and do your best to learn from them.

I got a little distracted from the original idea of conditioning and changed to modeling.  Well, anyway, I still think conditioning is a great idea, to keep taking regular efforts, even small efforts and not be too concerned about the speed of development.