Stop talking yourself out of Success!

With my entrepreneurial mindset, I’ve learned that many times having too much information can be a bad thing. But the concept that really fascinates me in business is that it’s human nature (due to low self esteem or confidence, etc.) to weed out and pull up all fragments of why we shouldn’t do what it is we want to do. Rather than concentrate on how many different potential paths there are to success.
People literally will convince themselves they shouldn’t have what they want in life. Its odd how quickly people jump to why things “won’t work” or “will never work”. And most of these people have no really facts to base their conclusions on… other than the occasional “he said, she said.”

In my consulting experience, I can usually tell the difference between a company that has a solid strategically successful future from one that is not in our first meeting. Usually we cover current challenges. If the company has three goals or less and we sit for an hour discussing all the reasons why it won’t work, this is not a good sign. But if the company has three or more goals and we spend the hour in an optimistic discussion of all the different possibilities of success and which to focus on, I know they’re going in the right direction.

Let’s apply this to you personally. Examples; looking for a new job or launching a new product, or being successful in general. Do you spend more time thinking about how things won’t work? Or do you spend more time opening all the exciting opportunities of how things will work out?
In career branding, a previous client said at our session, “Wow, $40k more than I’m making now? There’s no way.” Why? Who says there’s no way? Who do you know that failed? Who do you know that changed industries and failed? 2 or 5 people out of 300 million people in the country? Is that enough to base your so called “perception” on? Is this why you feel YOU will fail?
Have you ever thought about how many people have succeeded? Do you have any idea how many people get paid to do nothing in this world. You’d be surprised.

People are overwhelmed by info… and now we see they use that info to convince themselves they’re wrong. And most of the time, even the positive information is not used right. It’s not constructive. It’s used as a suicidal weapon!
This negative thought process will systematically convince yourself to fail out of an opportunity. Never put yourself in a position to doubt your goals. Never doubt your path. Never doubt your future!

Start saying, “I can”, “I will” and asking yourself “How will I do this?”
The other guy is not better than you. They are not faster than you, smarter than you, or stronger than you. They just had the right perceived talent at the right time. Maybe they even fit one given opportunity better than you did. But we’re all unique and there’s a better opportunity out there for you. All you have to do is look and be ready to accept it!

“90% of all failure comes from quitting” - Paul J. Meyer

A follow up to a few of my previous posts: once you’ve “shown up” and are beginning a successful opportunity, statistically speaking, most of all failure is rooted in people simply quitting.
People quit for a number of reasons. Tired, burnt out, exhausted all of apparent options, lost, success is nowhere in sight, not really sure what the fight is for, no set goals, etc.
All people really need is basic motivation. A message, most of the time ridiculously simple… but delivered in a special way at just the right moment results in moving mountains and Olympic potential!
Remember Newton’s 1st law: “A [Person] in motion, tends to stay in motion… “
What would you say to someone about to quit, to encourage them not to give up, to help keep them in positive motion?

I know what I would say.
“Anything is possible.”
I love the photo of the cat hanging by one claw on a tree limb titled “Never Give up”.
There are NO wrong decisions (except for obvious physically dangerous ones – but even then if performed by an athlete…). There are only decisions that bring us that much closer to our goals. That’s why failure is so important. Without the process, you’ll never know if the goal you started out with is really the goal that you’re meant to achieve. If there was no failure, we wouldn’t truly know the miracle of life and the sweetest taste of victory.

“Lottery Mindset”: only 1 way to fail, but millions of ways to succeed!

Life’s little known secret; it serves us well to remember that there is only one way to truly “fail”.
The only way to fail is to give up and not learn from “failure”. And to top this exciting news off, there are millions of ways to succeed!
I find it so fascinating that most of the people on this plant think the opposite. People think that there are millions of ways to fail and only a few ways to win. In my audio program, I call this the “lottery mindset”.

Most people fail from giving up. How quick and easy do we all say “I quit”, “never mind”, or “whatever”? And how rare and difficult do we say or hear “I’m going to make this work”, “what will it take to succeed?”, and “I will win”?
Sad truths. It’s too easy to throw in the towel and back away from a challenge. Trying and then giving up is the only real way to “fail”.

Looking deeper into the only way to fail is to think of the word “failure” in a negative way and not to see how much opportunity and educational value is in the action of failing. When learning from failure we must be prepared to potentially fail multiple times before a lesson is learned. Indeed, we may even fail the same way several times. I disagree with the second part of this phrase: “learn from your failure and don’t repeat the same mistake twice”. It’s far more valuable to understand the “mistake” than to overly focus on not repeating it. Repetition, if approached from a scholastic level, also leads to learning. Repetition is bad, if it leads to negative conditioning (repeating a mistake or harmful choice without learning and acting in a positive direction). But pushing hard for a goal or result only to fail several times in the same general way - gives us a study and examples to figure out what’s going on. Pushing several more times may lead to new ways of failure and greater learning potential. If you’re taking the time to study the “failure” and strategizing new efforts to solve the problem, you will eventually break through and succeed.

Then, when we succeed, it helps to remember this is only 1 method of success. Later when we have time, studying our other failures may lead to different methods of success granting us more profound results. These additional results may apply to the same challenge or even new and more complicated challenges. When we examine challenges and failures deeper we realize that there are infinite methods of succeeding. So many different ways to succeed, we as human beings will never be able to explore each and every one.

Next time you’re “failing”, learn from it. Explore it. Flip the equation around. Instead of just buying another “losing” lottery ticket, look deeper into the game. Find a better way to invest your resources, learn from the game, apply your findings to other challenges, and ask yourself why you’re playing the game in the first place. You may realize you could get the same desired result from a different course of action.

Open your mind. Most of the people around you are in the “lottery mindset”. They have odds stacked against them due to their own choices and yet still throw a dollar a day away. Today is your day to play a different game using the same game board. A game board where there is only one way to fail and millions of ways to win. How do you want to win?

“Everyday Normal”: your 2009 Success Strategies

A favorite nutrition and fitness teacher at SJSU coined the phrase “everyday normal”. When you say it, think of brushing your teeth. You don’t question this. It’s routine. You wake up, and at some point early in your day, you brush. You brush again before bed. And some even work brushing into their lunch hour at some point. Most of us do not skip this “everyday normal” routine. And many of us have other things we do, everyday, that's normal.

This is a great example of how one should work routine exercise into their lives. A little bit, EVERY DAY. This strategy if far more effective for a broader range of people.

For me, it really hit home when I was studying Japanese characters (Kanji). I tried every morning to learn just a few Kanji. And failed. Three days in I found other things that were more important for me to spend my morning time. This was not the “everyday normal” for me. The key is to find the method that feels “normal” to you. Ultimately I ended up watching a lot of Japanese TV and listening to a lot of Japanese music. That was normal. And it propelled me into a conversational fluency in the language.

“Narau yori narerou”.

This is a famous proverb in Japanese. It means “more important than ‘learning’ is to become conditioned to or use to”. Now, apply this strategy to your success! What can you do a little of EVERYDAY that will move you closer to your 2009 goals. What can you implement in your life to move you forward. Something clear, simple and concise that can be accomplished in under five minutes every day that will help you with your goals.

- Exercise

- Writing (blog, newsletter, poetry/fiction for creative relaxation, etc.)

- Positive reinforcement as the day starts and as it ends

- Telling someone you appreciate them (I love you to my wife/family, thank you to coworker, etc.)

- Goal setting (daily & weekly checking that you’re moving toward your purpose in life… or taking time to learn what your current purpose is)

Remember, it’s more than a habit – its everyday normal!