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?

The success principals of the teachers on our Resources page, are a new concept to some people.  A common concept taught by most of them is the idea of a positive mental attitude (PMA).  In particular if you watch The Secret it's primary message is that PMA is the key to success.  So is that all it takes to be successful?

Some people I have met laugh at the idea of PMA.  The say something like "I want 2 BMWs.  Ok, where are they?  See this PMA stuff is garbage."  I see this as a complete misunderstanding of what PMA means.  PMA is not wishful thinking.  Wishful thinking is the belief that just thinking something will make it to effortlessly appear.  PMA does not mean that we don't have to do something to achieve our goals.

Think of it this way, if you learned a new exercise to increase your strength or a new diet to lose weight.  Wouldn't it be silly for you to try the exercise or diet for one day and then at the end of the day say "Well, I'm no stronger than this morning or haven't lost any weight so these techniques obviously don't work."?  How silly.  Most all of us realize it takes time and consistent effort to see results from exercise and diet.  Changing our mind and habits is the same.

PMA requires regular application as well as actions towards what we desire.  So in the above example, it seems completely reasonable that if a person truly wants 2 BMWs that if they focus on this everyday, share this desire with others, make concrete plans how to achieve this goal, and take daily actions to achieve the goal, that they will have 2 BMWs.

When put this way, sometimes people say something like "Well, that's no secret, it's obvious."  Yes, it is obvious, though how many of us truly do this?  Do you have clear concrete goals that you think of everyday?  Do you have a plan to achieve your goals?  Are you taking daily actions to achieve the goal?  If not, then why not give it a try?

PS  This applies to me as well.

As a success gym, part of going to the gym is doing a workout, usually consisting of exercises.  So today's post is about an exercise we can all do to improve our success.

Exercise - What are you grateful for?

Think of your life and ask yourself, what is it about your current situation that you are grateful for.  Maybe it is a person you know that you are grateful for.  You can be grateful for physical possessions or surroundings.  You can be grateful for knowledge you possess or learn.  You can even be grateful for the weather.  There are no rules about what you should be grateful for.  It can be something small or large, just something that you honestly feel a genuine emotion of gratefulness.

I'm grateful for having discovered the idea of thinking of success like trying trying to change my body.  It really makes sense to me right now that this road to success will be a gradual process that I will need to keep doing for the rest of my life.  It allows me to relate what other people say about success and self-help to something I understand.

What are you grateful for right now?

I am a proponent of Wikipedia.  I understand that there may be mistakes and debate over some content in Wikipedia, as with all sources of information, but in general I respect the information presented there.

The following quote from the Self Help page goes right to the point:

" "Salerno says that 80 percent of self-help and motivational customers are repeat customers and they keep coming back 'whether the program worked for them or not'."[34] Others similarly point out that with self-help books "supply increases the demand... The more people read them, the more they think they need them... more like an addiction than an alliance."[35]"

Let's assume the above is correct.  I have had positive results from learning self help and success principals, so how can that agree with the above statements?  First of all, it should be noticed that there is no mention about the success of the programs.  What if I said 80% of body builders keep going to the gym?  Does that mean going to the gym doesn't work because they have to keep going back?  How about the fact that the more a person goes to the gym, the more they purchase health books, clothes, supplements and equipments, does that make them addicted to health?

When we think of it in this context, it makes perfect sense that a person that has received positive results from self-help would want to continue to reinforce the learning.

Have you had positive results from learning success principals or is it a waste of time?

There are different types of success.  Here I will focus on two types internal and external success.

I profited from participating in the Landmark Education seminar “Producing Breakthrough Results”.  For this course, my goal was to convince a group of friend to go bungee jumping.  As a direct result of this seminar, I succeeded and that success has changed my life forever.

I talked to many other graduates of that class and all of them were extremely positive and happy about the class.  When I asked them if they had accomplished the goal they chose, very few of them achieved the goal, or even got close.  It is as though they enjoyed getting pumped up and dreaming about achieving a goal and forgot about the actual achievement.

This is what I call internal versus external success.  Internally, this person was successful, because they feel successful, they are happy.  Externally, the circumstances of their life did not change and none of the things they professed to want to achieve showed up.

I accept both are important.  It is important to be happy with our current circumstances and be  enlightened, in addition I think it is just as important to achieve concrete results.  Similar to a quote from Steve Jobs “Real artists ship”.

Let’s make our goal to be both internally and externally successful.

The purpose of a success workout is to workout your mind just like you might do for your body.

What might be the purpose of a body workout?
    - To improve strength
    - To learn new techniques
    - To socialize with other people that like working out

Now, what might you do during a traditional body workout?
    - Repeat exercises that you have done many times already
    - Stretch your comfort level in order to improve your strength
    - Learn new exercises

So all of the above are things we do during our success workouts.  We work together to improve our ability to succeed, learn success techniques that are new to us and socialize with others that are interested in success.  We will do exercises that promote success, some of our conversations may stretch your comfort level, and sometimes you will learn a new success method.

We look forward to you joining us and teaching us what has worked for you to be successful.

Your Success Gym is a place for you to get a workout for your mind.
 
Your desire for success is common among all humans and the definition of success is different to each of us.

Common success goals are:
    - Financial
    - Interpersonal
    - Physical
    - Mental

Common reasons you may not be as successful as you want:
    - Unclear goals
    - Laziness
    - Ignorance
 
All of your challenges have been faced by others for thousands of years.  The good news is that there have also been many teachers that have shared their methods for overcoming your challenges and achieving extraordinary success.  Most all of these teachers agree that it is our thinking that determines our success.

Changing our mind is not much different than changing our body.  If you wanted to change your body, for example by losing weight.  Would you maybe:
    - Seek out information about losing weight?
    - Talk with others that are also interested in losing weight?
    - Take regular action that contributes to losing weight?

If it works so well for your body, how about doing the same for your mind?

Just like losing weight, expect this to take time.  Expect to:
    - Do the same, basic actions over and over for months and years.
    - Make small positive decisions on a daily basis.
    - Have setbacks and overcome them and continue

Just like a gym for your body, our mind gym is open to people of all abilities.  If you are a beginner and can barely do the simple exercise or if you are a superstar and have already mastered all exercise, we welcome you.