How To Become Successful

What is success? I ask this because no two people will have the same definition of what success is unless if they have conspired to give the same definition…okay jokes aside let us be serious for a minute, let us each define how we would explain success to another person in our own words.

My definition of success: consistently applying basic principles that are aligned with my journey and learning to improve on everything I do. Whatever I do, I always strive to do it better than the last time! The more I improve the better I am consistently applying the basic principles of success

Now that you have thought about it and defined it in your own words, do you feel any different? Do you feel emotionally attached to your definition or your emotions were already attached to your definition? Making success more personal helps you work more on the things that are specific to you while still applying the basic principles of success and not fall in the trap of doing what everybody else says you need to do to become successful. You know what you have been doing; ALL you need now is to learn how to consistently apply the basic principles of success. When success is personal, it helps you realise that you are actually capable of doing more than you ever thought you could do! All you need to do is tailor the definition to fit your circumstances, beliefs, life, family, job, business etc. and through that you will able to quickly think of what it would mean for you to be successful!

What are these principles of success, you ask? Boy do I have an answer for you:

DISCIPLINE

In most cases, there is one thing you need to deal with, in order to succeed in anything in life and it is that little nagging imbecile called discipline. If you can deal with your attitude towards discipline you are already winning a major battle and setting yourself up for success in your journey. So how does one keep their discipline in check? You need to start by acknowledging that you are in control and not your mind, because your mind always wants to play it safe, it’s always warning you, always telling you what you can’t do and ALWAYS forgets to tell you what you can do. YOU ARE IN CONTROL, not your mind. Everything you think of, is as a result of how you have conditioned your mind! You are in control at all times, a well conditioned mind is a vehicle that will only stop once it has completed its journey and reached its destination.

GOOD HABITS

For some people it goes without saying, a solid foundation is built on good habits, so are good personal and business relationships, good habits go hand in hand with discipline. Believe it or not we all have good habits and we practice them daily albeit unconscious of the fact. I will give you a couple of examples: How many of you wake up on time everyday for work, how many of you actually plan for your meetings, date, seminar (you are attending), how many of you actually do as you had promised your clients, employees, associates etc I could go on and on but you get what I am saying…correct? Some of you are probably saying why are you not seeing the results that you want if you already are practicing good habits in your daily lives? Well the trick lies in you actually being consistent in practicing those good habits, you need to be able to keep at it even when you feel like it might not be worth it. Good habits yield favourable results without a doubt, most successes are not overnight unless you play the lottery, so don't be misled into thinking because you practice good habits for a day, a week or even a month you will get instant results...NO! But if you keep at it long enough you will eventually see the results because while you keep going at it, you will be learning new things and ways of success which can only be to your benefit.

GOAL SETTING

The importance of goal setting is REAL! You can’t go through life and say you want to be successful when you have no freakin idea of what you want! The first step is to sit down and think about your goals, Jim Rohn one of the greatest people I have ever heard the opportunity to listen to advises that you literally write down your 100 goals and separate them into short, medium and long term goals. 100 goals is no mean feat, but what I like about this system, by writing down your goals you make them more real and not just a thought that you have in your head! The art of writing down your goals makes them personal and tells your mind that you are preparing to start working thus your mind will help you work on ways to achieve these goals. But the most important thing about having your goals written down is that you now KNOW what you are working towards, you are not just hobbling around hoping for the best. To make your goals even realistic, decide on ranking them and always REMEMBER the art of achieving goals lies in FIRST mastering the achievement of small goals!

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

Continuous improvement is fundamental to your success and when you continually improve your skills and knowledge, you are continually improving your chances of higher profits if you are in business, higher marketability and salary in the job environment, better relationships in your everyday spheres. You can improve your skills and knowledge by reading books, blogs, listening to audiobooks, messages, attending seminars, workshops etc. you just need to find what works for you and go with that, another way to improve yourself is by studying people you admire, they have already done it (I’m sure that is why you admire them), find out what they do and do the same thing, why go reinvent the wheel when it has been done so many times and you have proof that it works? The only time you go and reinvent something is when you can better what is already available but you can only do that by learning what is already available!

With improvement comes high confidence and self-esteem, but be careful not to a jerk about your improvement , someone once said “arrogance is when you believe you are better than everyone and confidence is when you know no one is better than you” always be in a position to tell the difference!

  

UNDERSTANDING

One of the most common mistakes that most of these gurus make is that they hardly teach or tell people about the value of UNDERSTANDING. Before you start anything you essentially have to understand a couple of things, but the most critical is understanding YOURSELF and your REASONS, best believe there will be times when you feel like crap and throwing in the towel and curse the day you said you wanted this…it happens trust me BUT if you understand yourself then you will know that things don’t always go according to plan and you just need to re-strategise and look for better ways to do things. When you understand yourself, you know and understand your self-worth as well, another key component of becoming successful, your self-worth normally determines how you treat yourself which in turn gives other people the baton to treat you the same way! Success is built on understanding YOURSELF and your REASONS

REASONS

Why do you do what you do? Everything that you do is underlined by some reason conscious or not, there is a reason why you did what you did. Some reasons are plain stupid (harsh but that’s what I mean by no BS, I will tell you like it is), have you ever found yourself watching TV when you know that you need to prepare for work, interview, business meeting or whatever but you always tell yourself, "just 10 more minutes then I am off"? At times we are not even aware that we are giving excuses in the form of reasons when we explain why things did not work out the way they were supposed to. Who can relate to this “you know I always wanted to improve my skills and knowledge, I always wanted to learn how to bake, cook, I meant to go to the grocery store, I meant to bluh bluh bluh but time just ran away from me (why didn’t you chase it, if it ran!), I just don’t have enough time (why don’t you make time, stop wasting your time by doing things that take your further away from your dreams, we all have the same number of hours in a day). Then you will get those who are semi-honest but still want to give excuses in the form of reasons and they say things like “I didn’t realise it was so late, I started but got caught up running errands, I only did half and I was planning to finish off at some stage (I would love to have a day called “some stage”). To succeed, you need to HAVE REASONS; these reasons should be second to nothing, if you are having challenges then find ways to conquer these challenges. You only lose when you have DECIDED to LOSE. Learn to prioritise your activities and stick to your plan, see no one gave you your plan, you made it so why is it difficult to stick to it? Priority priority priority! Don’t do things that waste your time because you will soon be wasting time doing things that waste your life!

PLAN EXECUTION

Plan execution is a fancy way of saying always HAVE a PLAN, it does not have to be perfect but always have one, what that does for you is reinforce your discipline, good habits, goal setting, improvement, understanding and reasons. Your plan is your manual on how to do certain things, I do not believe that there is ever a perfect plan for everything but I do believe in a plan of some sort, you don’t want to appear like you are just winging everything that you do. There is variety of tools that you can use to execute your plan, one of the GREATEST tools I have ever come across is the Multi Planner (it has sections for notes, plans and diarising of notes) it literally plans your entire day. I find it very useful, to get more value from this tool, you need to plan your daily activities the day before, which will help your mind work on your plan while you sleep!