Archives for October 2014

Each day a tree will grow a little more wood. It keeps doing this day in and day out until it reaches its towering height. People are no different. If you want to become wealthy and successful, you need to grow a little wood every day. You need to focus on daily self-improvement. You need to engage in daily self-education. You need to focus daily on only those important things that will help you to grow and move you forward in achieving your goals and dreams. Consistency is the key to accumulating wealth and realizing success in life. You need to do the right things daily, rather than occasionally. This means reading every day to learn, expanding and nurturing valuable relationships with others on a daily basis (Hello Call, Happy Birthday Call and Life Event Call), and taking care of your health daily. Avoiding bad daily habits and embracing good daily habits will help you grow a little wood each day.

If you are starting a new project or pursuing a new goal or dream you will increase your chances of success dramatically if you find something I call a “Project Mentor”.  A “Project Mentor” is someone who has already succeeded in doing what you are about to pursue. Where do you find a “Project Mentor”? Books are a good start. Many books are written by individuals in specific fields that highlight their journey. I would suggest reading at least three books written by different authors on the topic that relates to your project, goal or dream. Another option is to reach out by email, phone or Social Media to well-known individuals who have been down the same path you are about to walk. The third option is the most expensive option – paying for an expert to coach you through your project or journey.

The pursuit of success is not glamorous, requires an enormous amount of patience and is fraught with pitfalls, obstacles, mistakes and failures. It requires persistence to achieve success. Those very few who succeed, do so because they do not quit. There is an 80:20 Rule that applies to pursuing success. This rule states that the first 80% of your efforts will only move you 20% closer toward achieving your goal or life dream. The remaining 20% of your efforts, however, is what makes the difference in getting you the rest of the way; the remaining 80%. Those who succeed, do so because they persist where others quit. That’s how success happens. You only find out how amazing you are when your back is up against the wall and your dream feels like it’s collapsing under the weight of all of your failures and mistakes. When you are about ready to quit, but don’t, that is when success happens.

Achieving success in any field is a long, slow process of continuous self-improvement. It is the byproduct of incremental, almost imperceptible, daily improvement that, over time, enables you to grow into the person you need to become in order to realize success. This slow and steady process is very much like the accumulation of snowflakes on a mountainside, which build and build, eventually leading to an avalanche…. an avalanche of success.

As crazy as it may sound, you want success to take a long time. The longer you pursue success, the more you will learn from your mistakes and failures. Those who pursue success for a long time, build a very deep foundation upon which their success is built. Thus, the longer success takes, the higher and greater will your success be. Those who seek instant success realize little success because the foundation upon which their success was build is shallow.

When you are in pursuit of a big goal, life dream or following your main purpose in life, you will fail if you do not believe in yourself to such a degree that nothing will stop you. You must be willing to walk through hell to achieve the end you desire. You must be persistent to such a degree that no obstacle, no person, no failure or mistake will stop you. You must reach the point where you are simply unstoppable.

There’s no such thing as an easy path to success. Success take time; years, decades sometimes. Successful people understand this. Instead of diet pills, the easier, less effective path to weight loss, they take the harder, more effective path to weight loss by carefully tracking what they eat and spending many hours a week exercising aerobically. Instead of playing the lottery, the easier, highly improbable path to wealth, they take the harder, more effective path to wealth creation by pursuing goals and dreams that require a great deal of time, effort and sacrifice. Successful people know one simple fact of life that most everybody else does not seem to know: success requires that you consistently do the little things you don’t want to do.

Which path will you choose?

Successful people subscribe to the Can Do ideology. This ideology believes in individual responsibility, self-sufficiency, the notion that we shape our life circumstances and the American Dream. Those who subscribe to this ideology believe they are entitled to the wealth they create.

People who struggle financially in life believe in the Can’t Do ideology. This ideology believes we are all victims. Victims of the circumstances we were born into, victims of Wall Street, government, the rich, the bad economy, bad luck etc. Those who subscribe to this ideology advocate for a redistribution of wealth.

Can Do or Can’t Do? Which ideology do you subscribe to?