How To Achieve Breakthrough Success In Every Area Of Your Life
Have you ever wondered, why have I not achieved my goals? Why am I not as rich as i can be? When am I going to achieve my ideal weight? The following are principles that can help you succeed in every area of your life and If you apply these principles, you will achieve your goals and realize your dreams.
1. Take Responsibility for Your Life. One of the most pervasive myths in the American culture today is that we are entitled to a great life—that somehow, somewhere, someone (certainly not us) is responsible for filling our lives with continual happiness, exciting career options, nurturing family time, and blissful personal relationships simply because we exist. But the real truth is that there is only one person responsible for the quality of the life you live. That person is you.
If you want to be successful, you have to take 100% responsibility for everything that you experience in your life. This includes the level of your achievements, the results you produce, the quality of your relationships, the state of your health and physical fitness, your income, your debts, your feelings—everything!
This is not easy. In fact, most of us have been conditioned to blame something outside of ourselves for the parts of our life we don’t like. We blame our parents, our bosses, our friends, the media, our coworkers, our clients, our spouse, the weather, the economy, our astrological chart, our lack of money—anyone or anything we can pin the blame on. We never want to look at where the real problem is—ourselves. It is time to stop looking outside yourself for the answers to why you haven’t created the life and results you want, for it is you who creates the quality of the life you lead and the results you produce. You—no one else!
2. Understand your life purpose. I believe each of us is born with a life purpose. Identifying, acknowledging, and honoring this purpose is perhaps the most important action successful people take. They take the time to understand what they’re here to do—and then they pursue that with passion and enthusiasm.
3. Decide What You Want. Once you have decided why you are here, you have to decide what you want to do, be, and have. What do you want to accomplish? What do you want to experience? And what possessions do you want to acquire? In the journey from where you are to where you want to be, you have to decide where you want to be. In other words, what does success look like to you? One of the main reasons why most people don’t get what they want is they haven’t decided what they want. They haven’t defined their desires in clear and compelling detail.
4. Believe It’s Possible. Napoleon Hill once said, “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” In fact, the mind is such a powerful instrument, it can deliver to you literally everything you want. But you have to believe that what you want is possible.
5. Believe in Yourself. If you are going to be successful in creating the life of your dreams, you have to believe that you are capable of making it happen. You have to believe you have the right stuff, that you are able to pull it off. You have to believe in yourself. Whether you call it self-esteem, self-confidence, or self-assurance, it is a deep-seated belief that you have what it takes—the abilities, inner re- sources, talents, and skills to create your desired results.
6. Become an Inverse Paranoid. Instead of believing the world is plotting to do you harm, chose to believe the world is plotting to do you good. Instead of seeing every difficult or challenging event as a negative, see it for what it could be—something that was meant to enrich you, empower you, or advance your causes.
Imagine how much easier it would be to succeed in life if you were constantly expecting the world to support you and bring you opportunity. Successful people do just that. In fact, there is growing research that the vibrations of positive expectation that successful people give off actually attract to them the very experiences they believe they are going to get.
Suddenly, obstacles and negatives are seen not as just another example of “Gee, the world hates me,” but as opportunities to grow and change and succeed. If your car suddenly breaks down on the side of the road, instead of imagining a serial rapist pulling over to take advantage of you, think of the possibility that the guy who stops to help you will be the man you fall in love with and marry. If your company downsizes you out of a job, suddenly the chances are good that you’ll find your dream job with more opportunity at much better pay. If you develop cancer, the possibility exists that in the process of reorganizing your life to effect a cure, you’ll create a more healthy balance in your life and rediscover what’s important to you.
7. Embrace the Power of Goal-Setting. Once you know your life purpose, determine your vision, and clarify what your true needs and desires are, you have to convert them into specific, measurable goals and objectives and then act on them with the certainty that you will achieve them. Experts on the science of success know the brain is a goal-seeking organism. Whatever goal you give to your subconscious mind, it will work night and day to achieve.
8. Break Tasks Down. Sometimes our biggest life goals seem so overwhelming. We rarely see them as a series of small, achievable tasks, but in reality, breaking down a large goal into smaller tasks—and accomplishing them one at a time—is exactly how any big goal gets achieved. So after you have decided what you really want and set measurable goals with specific deadlines, the next step is to determine all of the individual action steps you will need to take to accomplish your goal.
9. Find Success Clues. One of the great things about living in today’s world of abundance and opportunity is that almost everything you want to do has already been done by someone else. It doesn’t matter whether it’s losing weight, running a marathon, starting a business, becoming financially independent, triumphing over breast cancer, or hosting the perfect dinner party—someone has already done it and left clues in the form of books, manuals, audio and video programs, university classes, online courses, seminars, and workshops. Make sure you look for those clues.
10. Release the Brakes. Have you ever been driving your car and suddenly realized you had left the emergency brake on? Did you push down harder on the gas to overcome the drag of the brake? No, of course not. You simply released the brake . . . and with no extra effort you started to go faster.
Most people drive through life with their psychological emergency brake on. They hold on to negative images about themselves or suffer the effects of powerful experiences they haven’t yet released. They stay in a comfort zone entirely of their own making. They maintain inaccurate beliefs about reality or harbor guilt and self-doubt. And when they try to achieve their goals, these negative images and preprogrammed comfort zones always cancel out their good intentions—no matter how hard they try.
Successful people, on the other hand, have discovered that instead of using increased willpower as the engine to power their success, it’s simply easier to “release the brakes” by letting go of and replacing their limiting beliefs and changing their self-images.
11. Visualize success. Visualization—or the act of creating compelling and vivid pictures in your mind—may be the most under-utilized success tool you possess because it greatly accelerates the achievement of any success in three powerful ways.
1. Visualization activates the creative powers of your subconscious mind.
2. Visualization focuses your brain by programming its reticular activating system (RAS) to notice available resources that were always there but were previously unnoticed.
3. Visualization magnetizes and attracts to you the people, resources, and opportunities you need to achieve your goal.
When you perform any task in real life, researchers have found, your brain uses the same identical processes it would use if you were only vividly visualizing that activity. In other words, your brain sees no difference whatsoever between visualizing something and actually doing it. This principle also applies to learning anything new. Harvard University researchers found that students who visualized in advance performed tasks with nearly 100% accuracy, whereas students who didn’t visualize achieved only 55% accuracy.
12. Act as If. One of the great strategies for success is to act as if you are already where you want to be. This means thinking like, talking like, dressing like, acting like, and feeling like the person who has already achieved your goal. Acting as if sends powerful commands to your subconscious mind to find creative ways to achieve your goals. It programs the reticular activating system (RAS) in your brain to start noticing anything that will help you succeed, and it sends strong messages to the universe that this end goal is something you really want.
13. Take Action. The world doesn’t pay you for what you know; it pays you for what you do. There’s an enduring axiom of success that says, “The universe rewards action.” Yet as simple and as true as this principle is, it’s surprising how many people get bogged down in analyzing, planning, and organizing when what they really need to do is take action.
When you take action, you trigger all kinds of things that will inevitably carry you to success. You let those around you know that you are serious in your intention. People wake up and start paying attention. People with similar goals become aligned with you. You begin to learn things from your experience that cannot be learned from listening to others or from reading books. You begin to get feedback about how to do it better, more efficiently, and more quickly. Things that once seemed confusing begin to become clear. Things that once appeared difficult begin to be easier. You begin to attract others who will support and encourage you. All manner of good things begin to flow in your direction once you begin to take action.
The thing that seems to separate winners from losers more than anything else is that winners take action. They simply get up and do what has to be done. Once they have developed a plan, they start. They get into motion. Even if they don’t start perfectly, they learn from their mistakes, make the necessary corrections, and keep taking action, all the time building momentum, until they finally produce the result they set out to produce . . . or something even better than they conceived of when they started.
To be successful, you have to do what successful people do, and successful people are highly action-oriented. I have already covered how to create a vision, set goals, break them down into small steps, anticipate obstacles and plan how to deal with them, visualize and affirm your success, and believe in yourself and your dreams. Now it’s time to take action. Enroll in the course, get the necessary training, call the travel agent, start writing that book, start saving for the down payment on your home, join the health club, sign up for those piano lessons, or write that proposal.
14. Just Lean into It. Oftentimes, success happens when you just lean into it—when you make yourself open to opportunities and are willing to do what it takes to pursue it further—without a contract, without a promise of success, without any expectation whatsoever. You just start. You lean into it. You see what it feels like. And you find out if you want to keep going—instead of sitting on the sidelines deliberating, reflecting, and contemplating.
15. Experience Your Fear and Take Action Anyway. As you move forward on your journey from where you are to where you want to be, you are going to have to confront your fears. Fear is natural. Whenever you start a new project, take on a new venture, or put yourself out there, there is usually fear. Unfortunately, most people let fear stop them from taking the necessary steps to achieve their dreams. Successful people, on the other hand, feel the fear along with the rest of us but don’t let it keep them from doing anything they want to do—or have to do. They understand that fear is something to be acknowledged, experienced, and taken along for the ride.
16. Be Willing to Pay the Price. Behind every great achievement is a story of education, training, practice, discipline, and sacrifice. You have to be willing to pay the price. Maybe that price is pursuing one single activity while putting everything else in your life on hold. Maybe it’s investing all of your own personal wealth or savings. Maybe it’s the willingness to walk away from the safety of your current situation. But though many things are typically required to reach a successful outcome, the willingness to do what’s required adds that extra dimension to the mix that helps you persevere in the face of overwhelming challenges, setbacks, pain, and even personal injury.
17. Ask! Ask! Ask!. History is filled with examples of incredible riches and astounding benefits people have received simply by asking for them. Yet surprisingly, asking—one of the most powerful success principles of all—is still a challenge that holds most people back. If you are not afraid to ask anybody for anything, then you are on your way. But if you are like most people, you may be holding yourself back by not asking for the information, assistance, support, money, and time that you need to fulfill your vision and make your dreams come true. Please start asking today.
18. Reject Rejection. If you are going to be successful, you are going to need to learn how to deal with rejection. Rejection is a natural part of life. You get rejected when you aren’t picked for the team, don’t get the part in the play, don’t get elected, don’t get into the college or graduate school of your choice, don’t get the job or promotion you wanted, don’t get the raise you wanted, don’t get the appointment you requested, don’t get the date you asked for, don’t get the permission you requested, or get fired. You get rejected when your manuscript is rejected, your proposal is turned down, your new product idea is passed over, your fund-raising request is ignored, your design concept is not accepted, your application for membership is denied, or your offer of marriage is not accepted. You have to learn to rise above all of this and reject rejection.
19. Use Feedback to Your Advantage. Once you begin to take action, you’ll start getting feedback about whether you’re doing the right thing. You’ll get data, advice, help, suggestions, direction, and even criticism that will help you constantly adjust and move forward while continually enhancing your knowledge, abilities, attitudes, and relationships. But asking for feedback is really only the first part of the equation. Once you receive feedback, you have to be willing to respond to it.
20. Commit to Continuous Improvement. In Japan, the word for constant and never-ending improvement is kaizen. Not only is this an operating philosophy for modern Japanese businesses, it is also the age-old philosophy of warriors, too—and it’s become the personal mantra of millions of successful people.
Achievers—whether in business, sports, or the arts—are committed to continual improvement. If you want to be more successful, you need to learn to ask yourself, “How can I make this better? How can I do it more efficiently? How can I do this more profitably? How can we do this with greater love?”
21. Find Ways to Measure Success. Remember when you were growing up and your mom or dad measured you every few months and kept track of your height on the wall near the pantry door? It was something visible that let you know where you stood in relation to the past and to your future goal (which was usually to be as tall as your mom or dad. It let you know you were making progress. It encouraged you to eat right and drink your milk to keep growing.
Well, successful people keep the same kind of measurements. They keep score of exciting progress, positive behavior, financial gain . . . anything they want more of. Score keeping stimulates us to create more of the positive outcomes we’re keeping track of. It actually reinforces the behavior that created these outcomes in the first place.
Think about it. Your natural inclination is always to improve your score. If you were to keep score on the five things that would advance your personal and professional objectives the most, imagine how motivated you would be each time the numbers improved in your favor.
22. Practice Persistence. Persistence is probably the single most common quality of high achievers. They simply refuse to give up. The longer you hang in there, the greater the chance that something will happen in your favor. No matter how hard it seems, the longer you persist the more likely your success.
23. Exceed Expectations. Are you someone who consistently goes the extra mile and routinely over-delivers on your promises? It’s rare these days, but it’s the hallmark of high achievers who know that exceeding expectations helps you stand above the crowd. Almost by force of habit, successful people simply do more. As a result, they experience not only greater financial rewards for their extra efforts but also a personal transformation, becoming more self-confident, more self- reliant, and more influential with those around them.
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