Thoughts on Success and Happiness
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Doing what feels right versus what is right

7/12/2012

8 Comments

 
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."
8 Comments

What patterns do you have for your success?

7/10/2012

3 Comments

 
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.
3 Comments

Learning versus Studying

7/4/2012

15 Comments

 
Do you have any negative emotions associated with going to school, doing homework and taking tests?  I mean, who wants to be told they must study certain subjects.  Where is the fun in that?

Instead of focusing on studying, I propose you focus on learning.  It may sound like a small difference, though for me it is a huge difference.  I know many people that say they want to be able to speak a foreign language.  Most of them talk about how they are going to start studying the language.  For me, the more powerful approach is to focus on learning the language.

What is the difference between learning and studying?  The difference is that studying has no goal except for the action of studying.  If I take language classes for 4 years, I can say that I have been studying for 4 years.  If I now go to a country that speaks that language and I can't use any of what I was studying, than the amount of learning is much less.

Most people who are naturally successful, don't study about success, they just learn.  Learning means that we are trying to achieve some goal and therefore are trying to acquire a new skill to achieve the goal.  If my goal is to be able to converse in a foreign language, or understand foreign films in their native language, than my amount of learning will be clearly measured by how close I am to achieving these goals.

I try to never use the work study.  Instead of telling people "I am studying success", I prefer to say, "I am learning about success."  Learning implies some progress and results.  Studying can just mean book smarts and still unable to tie your own shoes.

To be clear, part of learning can be going to classes, taking tests and doing homework.  They key thing is that these are not the goal.  If you do well or poorly on a test, it is not as important as how you are making progress towards your goals.  There are great teachers out there who are willing to help you.  Use their help to achieve your goals.

I encourage you to have fun and be a lifelong learner.
15 Comments

If you fail to plan you are planning to fail.

6/26/2012

26 Comments

 
I am unable to find a reliable source of who originated the saying "If you fail to plan you are planning to fail".  I have seen it attributed to Benjamin Franklin and Winston Churchill.  Either way, I can understand the logic of the saying.  In essence, if we don't have a clear method to get from where we are to where we want to go, then we are less likely to get there.

As I reflect on my past experiences, I'm not so sure that I can 100% agree with the saying.  When I think about areas in my past where I consider myself to have been successful, for none of them did I have a plan.  If I was lacking a plan, then how was I able to succeed?  What is luck, like winning the lottery, or is planning an optional part of being successful?

For the areas that I was successful, I did have a sense of my goal and I took regular action towards the goal.  Sometimes massive action and other times small action, though it was regular action.  I also spent much time reading information about my goal and talking to others about my goal to get ideas about how it can be achieved.  I was also open to try all sorts of different things to achieve the goal.

Maybe planning is just another type of action, that has various levels of usefulness, depending on the person and what they are trying to achieve.  This also reminds me the saying by Carl von Clausewitz "No campaign plan survives first contact with the enemy."  When making plans, it is not so important if we actually end up following this exact plan.  The process of planning will help our brain to think about different options and what we might do when things don't go the way we want.

So, I am removing planning as a critical step for success.  Instead, I am going to add "Review".  Meaning that after you have set a goal and taken some action you should take the time to review your goals and action and see how is it working out for you.  If you think there should be adjustments then make them.
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