Thanks to Berenice Limon for the use of her image.
I am sick of people telling me to take the safe route and to not take chances. There will always be people that will advise you to live comfortably and not take on any risk or hardship. Get away from these people. They will only derail you from achieving your goals. Being comfortable never prompted anybody to change their situation or achieve their goals. Being comfortable should make you feel uncomfortable. People will allow themselves to be pushed around and bullied in order to remain comfortable. People will act in a painful situation to ease the pain or remove the source of that pain. Security and comfort is not afforded by a job, it is provided by your ability to produce.
“When you are tough on yourself, life is easier on you.” – Zig Ziglar
1. Achievement starts with a goal
Start with a goal. Desire and enthusiasm without direction is wasted. A goal will give you a direction to channel all of your enthusiasm and desire. How do you know your goal is a worthwhile goal? Ask the question of “why you want to achieve this goal.” If your answer is strong enough, then you know that you have a worthy goal.
2. Imagine the pleasure of achieving your goal
Close your eyes and see yourself in the future having achieved your goal. Think about all the benefits, pleasure and possibilities that will open up to you if you attain your goal. Doing this will help you visualize in your mind and emotionally commit yourself to achieving your goal. Remember that feeling of pleasure at reaching your goal. Latch onto this image and it will help you manifest your mental creation into the physical.
“Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.” –Gloria Steinem
3. Imagine the pain of failing to reach the goal
Now close your eyes and imagine what the consequences are of not reaching your goal. What type of painful existence would you live or continue to live if you did not continue to move forwards and achieve you goal? Embrace that feeling of pain and let it drive you. Pain can be the greatest of all motivators.
4. Remind yourself of your goal
Reinforce your goal everyday. Keep you goal fresh in your mind. By doing this you will prod your mind to work out the problems in your way of achieving that goal. A goal that is constantly bubbled up in your mind will allow your genius to work on figuring different methods on how to achieve it. Never underestimate your genius.
Some of the methods to remind you of your goal is to write your goal on the ceiling of your bed so that you wake up and see it every morning and every evening when you go to bed. The headline of my IPhone task list is always the goal I am currently working on. I check this list several times a day to keep on task and remind myself of my goal. Whichever way you remind yourself of your goal do it at least once daily.
By keeping yourself focused on your goal you will remove distractions. I do not know who originally said this, “When you eliminate all other possibilities other than success, you are left only with success as a possibility.”
If you look up at the sun, you seldom see the shadows. – Helen Keller
5. Public Accountability
Tell others what your goal is. Arnold Schwarzenegger related a story about how he used public accountability to get the burning desire in his belly to achieve. While still in Austria and with little ability to speak English he would tell people that he was going to America to be a great actor. Because he let people know his goal, he used public accountability to strengthen his desire to achieve a goal that seemed impossible. Even when he arrived in America he was told his accent was too thick and his body too weird to ever make it. Despite it all he willed his way through all of his detractors and made it by never giving up on his dream.
Blog about your goal and give frequent updates. Here is a video of a guy that used public accountability to get to his goal. He posted a picture of himself on his blog everyday as he used public accountability to achieve his goal of weight loss.
Make a deal with somebody you care about. For instance, you could make a deal with your wife that you will quit smoking if she does the same.
Tell your co-workers about your goal. “I am going to quit smoking for the next 2 weeks” and give them frequent updates. Doing this will even encourage people to ask you for an update about your goal when you neglect to update them.
6. Do something each day that will get you closer to accomplishing your goal
Before going to bed each evening, take out a note taking device and create a stack ranked list of what you need to tackle tomorrow to get you closer to your goal. Start on the list from highest priority and focus on it until it is complete.
By doing something everyday to get you closer to your goal you will be surprised at the progress. This will also make your progress steady instead of having peaks and valleys of activity.
7. Fail your way to success
People are so afraid of failing and making mistakes that it often stops them from even trying. This mentality is completely wrong. If you want to succeed faster increase the rate at which you fail. We learn more from failure than we learn from success. Embrace and learn from failure and get back up and keep swinging. When obstacles arise you change your direction not your decision to get there.
After Thomas Edison failed 9000 times trying to create a practical electric light he was asked by a reporter whether he felt like a failure. Edison replied, “”Young man, why would I feel like a failure? And why would I ever give up? I now know definitively over 9,000 ways that an electric light bulb will not work. Success is almost in my grasp.” Edison invented the practical incandescent, electric light after he failed 10,000 times.
“The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It is a very mean and nasty place and it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t how hard you hit; it’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward. How much you can take, and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done. Now, if you know what you’re worth, then go out and get what you’re worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hit, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you are because of him, or her, or anybody. Cowards do that and that ain’t you. You’re better than that!” – Rocky Balboa
Each misstep is an education. There are two reactions that a person can have when hit by an obstacle. One, give up. Two, redouble your efforts. When you get knocked down, how you react to it shows your character. Bottom line is: do not be afraid to start something because you could fail and if you do fail learn from it, get back up and attack. An example is investing in the stock market. Invest slowly with money that you are not afraid to lose. If you do lose money do not let it stop you from investing, instead learn from your mistakes and consider it as an educational tuition fee. You will never learn, let alone succeed if you never try.
8. Create a mantra
Mine is: “I will do what it takes.”
We need more people that don’t know what can’t be done. – Henry Ford
May all your dreams but one come true. – David Gemmel
This has been my most personal blog to date and I was very hesitant to publish it. Nonetheless, I hope this post is helpful to you.
If you enjoyed this post you might be interested in my other articles:
Why and How I Broke My Addiction to Caffeine
Bet on the US, I am
Money: What Steps I Have Taken to Save It
