Somewhere on your road to success, you’ll begin to understand that you are really never alone. There are amazing sources of strength and help everywhere you look—you just have to use them. You’ll have to look to find them and then know how to use them, but it beats the heck out of not having them at all!
A team is incredibly important as you walk along your path. You may reap the benefits of success in your world, but you don’t get there alone. The fallacy of the "self-made man" is just that—because everyone is influenced directly and indirectly by scores of people. Let’s look at a list of those involved:
v Parents: if they were there to raise you, they had the greatest influence on your life. Feelings of love and security are established early—as early as birth. Children who have parents who love, care for, and protect them gain enormously both psychologically and physiologically.
v Teachers: chances are there is a teacher who has made an impression on you that you remember to this day. Positive or negative, there are teachers in our lives who have the power to mold us and shape us. Sometimes we choose paths in response to a negative example a teacher has left us; more often than not, we choose paths that are due to the positive influence they’ve left in our lives.
v Friends: the happiest and most successful people tend to have a wide range of friends from different walks of life. They encourage us, lift us up, and are part of an inextricable support system in our lives.
v Mentors: smart people who truly desire success find mentors that will walk with them as they traverse their road. Mentors can point out pitfalls and potholes in the road that we might otherwise miss, and their experience and willingness to teach us is an invaluable gift.
v Spiritual Leaders: ministers, priests, rabbis, pastors, etc., are in an amazing position to contribute positively and significantly in your life. Their ability to see past the circumstances and share life and light is unparalleled. Having a spiritual leader doesn’t guarantee that you’ll never feel despair, but it does guarantee that you won’t have to go through the dark times alone.
Just as you have a team as you work towards success, you can be a part of someone else’s team as well. Be a friend to someone who is just starting out on the road to success—encourage them, mentor them (if appropriate), and commit to be there for them when they need you. Do the right thing (remember your integrity), and have compassion in all situations. You’ll build your team and your success as you do these things!
Wednesday, 3 December 2008
You Can Do It!
One thing that stands in the way of success is your ability to believe in yourself. We’ve touched on this in the attitude sections, but there’s more to it than just having a positive attitude. You must believe in yourself.
"So how do I do THAT?" you might be asking me right about now. "I’m really not good at very much….So-and-so at my office doesn’t struggle with anything. That’s why s/he succeeds!" I’m sorry—did we begin a whine-fest here? Who’s bringing the cheese to go with the whine?
Everyone struggles with *something*, whether or not you know what that something is. If you struggle with your self-esteem, then you’re probably comparing yourself to other people and using a measuring stick that’s not even remotely accurate as you bash yourself and your own abilities.
The first thing you need to do is sit down with a piece of paper and start to write down the things at which you are genuinely good. I mean things like "I brush my teeth twice a day," and "I’m organized." For every skill or task that you OWN (and it doesn’t matter what it is), there is a way to put those abilities to good use and a way to make it your own personal success story.
Now that you’ve done that, think about things you *love* to do. Make another column on your paper and begin to list things you really enjoy and could do every day for the rest of your life—and not dread going to work. Draw lines between things in your two columns that might go together.
On my paper, I’d write "I’m good at organizing things" in one column and "I like to write." They don’t seem to go together, but what if I began writing about getting organized? What if I started an email list with tips on how to get organized and wrote notes to encourage my subscribers? And then what if I started to talk to companies who would custom-make things for my subscribers to help keep them organized and began seeing profit from all of this?
Would you call that "success"? I would—and there’s a lady in North Carolina who’s done just that. Just ask any of the 250,000 "Flybabies" if the FLYlady is good for them! This woman has created a niche for herself and is success personified.
So are you beginning to see how some creative thinking and listing your skills and passions can come together for success? I hope you’re learning to think outside the box in this exercise, because that’s what it takes.
So the moral of this story is that you CAN do this. You CAN succeed at this and you DO have what it takes to be successful. Go work on your lists and remember to think outside the box!
"So how do I do THAT?" you might be asking me right about now. "I’m really not good at very much….So-and-so at my office doesn’t struggle with anything. That’s why s/he succeeds!" I’m sorry—did we begin a whine-fest here? Who’s bringing the cheese to go with the whine?
Everyone struggles with *something*, whether or not you know what that something is. If you struggle with your self-esteem, then you’re probably comparing yourself to other people and using a measuring stick that’s not even remotely accurate as you bash yourself and your own abilities.
The first thing you need to do is sit down with a piece of paper and start to write down the things at which you are genuinely good. I mean things like "I brush my teeth twice a day," and "I’m organized." For every skill or task that you OWN (and it doesn’t matter what it is), there is a way to put those abilities to good use and a way to make it your own personal success story.
Now that you’ve done that, think about things you *love* to do. Make another column on your paper and begin to list things you really enjoy and could do every day for the rest of your life—and not dread going to work. Draw lines between things in your two columns that might go together.
On my paper, I’d write "I’m good at organizing things" in one column and "I like to write." They don’t seem to go together, but what if I began writing about getting organized? What if I started an email list with tips on how to get organized and wrote notes to encourage my subscribers? And then what if I started to talk to companies who would custom-make things for my subscribers to help keep them organized and began seeing profit from all of this?
Would you call that "success"? I would—and there’s a lady in North Carolina who’s done just that. Just ask any of the 250,000 "Flybabies" if the FLYlady is good for them! This woman has created a niche for herself and is success personified.
So are you beginning to see how some creative thinking and listing your skills and passions can come together for success? I hope you’re learning to think outside the box in this exercise, because that’s what it takes.
So the moral of this story is that you CAN do this. You CAN succeed at this and you DO have what it takes to be successful. Go work on your lists and remember to think outside the box!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)