Secrets to Success: 13 Fundamentals
“To be yourself - when the world is doing everything in its power to make
you just like everyone else, is to fight the greatest battle of your life”
-- Bill Gove
I have spent many years studying and analyzing what successful people do in every walk of life and have come to the following conclusion: there is no single formula for achieving success in any endeavor. But there are core traits that great leaders share in common and I have outlined these below. I suggest that you, as the reader, extensively study this list and focus on a particular trait that might attract your attention during the course of your daily interactions. Review the material daily and eventually it will sink in. If you keep a journal and I suggest that you do, record the successful application of each secret and how it changes your life, feelings and other aspects of your being.
1. How you Think and Feel is EXTREMELY Important. An optimistic and positive mindset always creates success. Negative thinking, cynicism, gloom and doom pushes important people away from you and causes them to not want to be around you. If you have a positive, optimistic outlook on life, you will create a very successful and positive environment. Negative people create negative environments. Are you a source of joy, optimism, encouragement and support or are you a downer, negative evaluator and disrespectful judge of other people? Create a positive thinking/feeling environment and you will create superstar emotional atmospheres. You are the only one who is responsible for your thoughts and your feelings. Do you have a program and a system for working on your thoughts and feelings?
2. Specify and Proclaim your Goals and Dreams. Anything that is not written down is at the peril of being lost. Take it from your head and put it on paper, then commit yourself to developing steps for achieving your goals. If you do not plan for success, you will fail. This applies to all aspects of your life. Do the best with what you have at the moment and trust that increasing knowledge will expand your options. There are infinite possibilities and you are only limited by your self-imposed limited thinking. Expect change and be ready to reinvent yourself as conditions dictate. Modify what has been successful and mold it for future applications. Become an expert at recognizing trends and make sure you are a trendsetter rather than an obsolete dinosaur. Become an evolving species rather than a Neanderthal roadblock.
3. Take Action. Once you make up your mind as to what has to be done, do it. Rewards go to those who take action. Taking action is its own reward and will feed your motivation to want to do more. Make sure you are a person who is moving on, out and up. Temporary setbacks are only springboards to greater actions and achievement. Only thinking about something keeps it in your head. Get up off of your duff and initiate the first action step and you will be rewarded and surprised at what you will discover. Become an action oriented person and your moods will soar. Take care of all business and don't neglect anything. Whatever does not get done will come back and haunt you. It may even attack you. A good offense is a great defense and a great defense creates offense. Become well-rounded and versed in all aspects of your life's strategies.
4. Constant Learning is Fuel for your Brain and your Life. The person who stops learning, stops living. The brain dies from boredom if it is not fed with the juices of new learning. A good lesson is to relearn old lessons and create new and innovative applications to present conditions. Learn from everybody. Listen with your inner ears. Wisdom can only be acquired by constant learning. Talk to people. Read books. Explore new frontiers and perfect underdeveloped capabilities. If you are not learning it, someone else will and you will be passed by. Don't be afraid of standing on the precipice of the outer edge of creative reality. Innovators are in short supply. Stand on the shoulders of giants and recognize all of your role models outside of your family. The seeds of greatness that are already inside of you can be tapped into, cultivated and sprung forth by the greatness of other great people. Know your mentors, your teachers and those who will have a positive influence on your life. Learn also from those who cause you pain. They are also the springboards to greater knowledge.
5. Work Hard and Maintain your Persistence. Success goes to those who work harder and better than others. That extra effort can make all of the difference between superstar success and mediocrity. When you stumble and fall, and you will, pick yourself up and keep going. You are a person on the move, going forward, outward and upward. Analyze and adjust to each new challenge by reinventing yourself. Never settle for the status quo. Get rid of those who hold you back and keep you down. You are a person on a mission. Maintain a laserlike focus on your target and hone in with precise determination and energized effort. Never stand still, unless you want to be a target for those with lesser integrity. The prize goes to the one who overcomes the most adversity and aims for the stars.
6. Pay Attention to Detail. But, don't get bogged down in irrelevant information. Use your analytic ability and your intuitive powers to gather all of the necessary facts and information. Seek input and welcome feedback from the proper sources who will support you. Your mistakes are your greatest assets and can motivate you to greater heights. You can always do better. Hone and develop your talents and your skills. Work on yourself at the deepest levels in order to discover your specific truths and then build your decisions on your self-discovery method. There is no substitute for self-knowledge and a solid identity. When seeking knowledge, go to the experts and internalize what they have to teach. Teach and use what you learn in order to improve the lives of others. Know your enemies and discover their hidden agendas. What are they trying to prove and how are they trying to impress you? Never let someone else's poison stay in your system too long.
7. Focus, Manage and Control your Time and Money. Maintain your laser beam focus. Know and set your priorities and don't allow anything to distract you from the necessary work that you have to do in your life. Stay centered and grounded in the very core of your being and do not sacrifice, give up or lose yourself to anything outside of yourself. Never make a false idol out of money. Manage your cash or it will bury you in debt. Credit cards are really debt cards. Don't be fooled or seduced by the hype and misleading labels. Never spend more than you earn and what you save can make you rich. If you don't need it, don't buy it. Make every purchase work for you to enhance your productivity. Stay ahead of the game and don't slip behind. Your time is your most precious commodity. Make sure you give undivided attention and considerable time to those people and activities that are required for your internal prosperity and happiness. Get rid of those things in your life that are just hanging around and collecting dust. Make sure your day is filled with exciting creativity and rich human interactions. Render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar and give to God what is God's.
8. Learn To Be An Effective Communicator. Successful people never take their communications for granted. They learn and relearn how to be extremely effective communicators. Not only do they express themselves from the very centered core of their being, but they also possess an enormous capacity for empathic understanding and active empathic listening skills. They do not provoke arguments, act defensively or create defensiveness in other people. They do not let important messages slip by them. They slow the action down and deeply dissect every bit of important information that comes towards them. They are highly motivated to deeply understand other people's motivations, conflicts, feelings and most important needs. They listen deeply, reflectively, supportively and nonjudgmentally. They also know how to set effective limits to their own and other people's questionable behavior.
Successful communicators are warm, friendly, flexible, humorous and always helpful. They possess strong conversational skills that allow for equal back and forth flow. They never try to be controlling, hostile or demanding. They express their needs and preferences openly and have a deep regard for effective communication with their deeper selves. They know how to monitor their own conversations and are quick to ask for feedback when and where it is appropriate.
With the people that you know, which ones do you look forward to and enjoy talking with? What people look forward to and enjoy talking with you? Which people make you feel special? What people feel special after having talked with you? These questions can be applied to all of your relationships. Be honest with yourself! Make a list of the people you look forward and enjoy talking to. Which people do you not enjoy conversing with? List those individuals that you go out of your way to avoid talking to. Which persons find you completely believable? Which individuals do you not find believable? After you have conducted this inventory, ask yourself, "Why" you arrived at the conclusions that you did. Hopefully, your most intimate relationships will consist of those people that you absolutely feel comfortable and enjoy talking to. At this point, you may have already concluded which people cause you discomfort, pain and negative emotions and which people create the exact opposite feelings inside of you.
9. Clear Intelligence/Superior Thinking: Develop Effective Thinking. Effective thought is a hallmark of the successful person. They know how to observe their own thinking and are quick to determine what thought processes are ineffective and even damaging. They tend to be extremely optimistic, reality oriented, non-accusatory, solution and goal focused. They never get bogged down in problems and understand the necessity for applying effective negotiation skills and achieving mutually satisfying win-win outcomes. They are not interested in power struggles or right/wrong thinking.
Their thinking is flexible and focused on effective strategies, not on win lose solutions. They rarely ever get bogged down in belief systems and negativity. Their thinking is always upward and geared towards higher mood states. They do not whine, complain and think egotistically. Their thought processes are genuinely focused on the welfare and success of other people. They refuse to keep pushing ineffective strategies and are willing to explore the effective thinking processes of other creative people. They understand that there are many sides to any story or situation. They also understand that perceptions are subjective and never reflective of total reality. They do not insult themselves or other people. They know who they are at a core level and appreciate the goodness in people and the world. They also understand that everyone has to face evil and not get cynical about it. These Superior/smart thinking people ask great questions and genuinely seek answers to real issues rather than personal superiority. These people are not fault or guilt finding. They think proactively, responsively and know how to monitor and control their reactive thinking. They are excellent involved observers and know how to steer conversations in a productive direction.
10. Develop The Traits To Becoming Likeable and Lovable. If you have ever noticed when you were drawn to the personality of another human being, you were probably responding to their like ability/love ability. What makes these people so charismatic and magnetic? It's their personality. They possess like ability/love ability traits and characteristics. Are you attractive in this way? Do you possess those traits that make you an attraction magnet for other people? The paradox here is that you may be a physically attractive but an emotionally repugnant person. This deadly combination creates ambivalence in others. They want to get close to you because of your lovable physical attributes, but feel repulsed when they discover your hidden hateful traits.
A pure soul is a rare find, while most people contain a mixture of lovable and destructive qualities. If you want to be successful in the world, take a deep and extensive inventory into what makes you likable and hateful. Your hateful parts will keep others away. Your lovable aspects will draw people towards you. Find out what makes you lovable and what makes you emotionally and interpersonally unattractive. If it is possible, let yourself embark on a huge and profitable journey of self-exploration and revampment. You are not condemned to remain the same person that you were earlier in your life. You can transform your self from the inside out over and over again in order to make yourself more attractive and lovable to yourself and those people who really matter. Self growth and self transformation can be one off your most important self loving characteristics.
It is important that you transform your self-hatred to self love in an non-egotistical fashion. I'm mean making yourself emotionally and physically lovable to yourself and relevant others, so that spending time with you is a wonderful and positive experience. It may be helpful to recognize that there are three levels of like ability. There is your frontline social personality, followed by your deeper real feeling self. On the third bottom-line level is your soul, a repository for your real self that needs no changing, healing or transformation. This is a place that contains your true essence by which you are anchored in the real world and the cosmos. Gaining access and working on these various levels will give you the opportunity for actualizing your love ability.
11. Inner Directed Soul: Become the Architect of Who You Are and What You Do. This is the place inside of you where you are the director and architect of yourself and your experience. At some point, you will discover that many of the answers to life are not "outside of yourself." This realization may inform you that you are cut off and out of touch with your feelings and your real self. When you make the commitment to recover all of yourself, your feelings and your experiences, you will become identified with this deeper, more real self. You will enjoy and look forward to going "inside" in order to gain clarity, insight, wisdom, answers and profound growth. This will usher in a new developmental stage exemplified by Inner self direction, self trust, self-love, empathy and love for other people and life itself. This remarkable reconnection and reintegration into your real self will change who you are and serve as a directing guidepost for dealing with life.
This Inner directed journey, with its internal compass, will put you in touch and in control of your very being, your moods, thoughts and eternal wisdom. You will find answers here that you cannot get anywhere else. It is here that you will recover all of the lost and repressed parts of your self and those parts which will make you more effective and powerful when dealing with yourself and the world. You will know your self at the deepest and highest levels. It is here in the deepest recesses of your real self that you will discover infinite, unlimited possibilities. It is also here that you will overcome, transcend and surmount your own limitations and narrow views of reality. It is here where you will transcend your ego's boundaries of time and space and participate in the sounds and music of the universe. It is here where you will be living in tune to the song and dance of unlimited creation. It is here where you will transcend the transient nature of this world and live wholeheartedly in the eternity of the next. It is here where you will experience the most profound healing and the ultimate connection with the very Source of Your Being. It is here where you will enjoy and encounter the most profound intimacy with your Sacred Creator, the Holy One. If that isn't success, then I do not know what success is!
12. Creative Cosmic Productivity: Find Your Purpose In Life. Through your connection to the full flow of life and existence, you will have access to infinite creativity. This is not the place for quick fixes, Band-Aids and patch up jobs. This is not the place for asking, "How long will it take?" This is the place for commitment and dedication to the entire flow of the creative process and its cosmic influences. This is not the place for superficial solutions that temporarily promise to eradicate pain and suffering. This is the place where you enter into the unlimited energy of creation itself. This is a place where you become a lifelong participant and partner in the creative process. This is where you drop the clock and accept the full responsibility for finding the long-range cures and answers to life's problems and dilemmas. This is the place where your ordinary creativity blossoms into extraordinary and unique fulfillment of your many hidden gifts and potentials. This is the place where you gain access to those deeper regions of yourself where your mind and your soul reveal the amazing greatness that is part of who you are. This is the place where you realize who you are and what your purpose in life is all about.
13. Create Balance In Your Life. If you are like most people you will probably have concentrated most of your energy into one specific area that seems vital and important to you. However, at some point the neglected areas of your life will come back and haunt you. There is a saying, "What good is it if a man gains the whole world and loses his soul." Many very successful people gain extraordinary recognition, fame and fortune only to be plagued by some long forgotten and neglected aspect of their lives. If you have unfinished business with certain areas of your existence, now is the time to bring those areas up to par.
Maybe you need to take better care of your health, finances, family life, your internal emotional existence; plus your spirituality. Perhaps your marriage needs improving or you need upgrading of many of your emotional, interpersonal, communications, professional and business skills. Now is the time to become brutally honest with your self and get busy taking care of those areas that need your attention. This personal inventory does not require the brain of a rocket scientist. You already probably know what needs attending to. This is not the time to make excuses, procrastinate or put it off to someone or something else. It is your responsibility to take care of those aspects of your life that are holding you back from complete success.
You have the advantage of being a human being with enormous creative potential and unparalleled capacity for solving problems, adaptation and improvement. You have a brain that you can use to either fool yourself or motivate you to higher levels of self realization. Make sure you are in the right place at the right time to steer and catapult yourself to greater and more improved ways of living. Do not become seduced by standard and traditional ways of thinking about your situation. Accept the idea that nothing is written in stone and that you can rewrite and re-create your life in a unique direction that defies old and outworn thinking modes. You are constantly in process and capable of writing your life script in a way that creates more balance. Remember, that it is not the situation that defines who and what you are. It is how you define your situation and restructure it that creates a more balanced and exciting existence.