How To Be A Super Success (part two)

In my last post I referred to several people who are living super successful lives. Although these were all taken from the world of business, the qualities they displayed in pursuing their goals can be seen in all successful individuals whether from the world of business, sport, politics or indeed in non-famous people who have managed to achieve super successful lifestyles for themselves and their families.

I also mentioned how many of us can become our own worst enemy by allowing self-doubts and a negative self-image hinder our progress towards being a super success. I left the post asking how we could learn from these people and apply positive action and belief in ourselves. Now I hope to answer those questions in this, slightly longer than normal, post.

As an example, lets take as our goal, holidaying in Europe in a year or two’s time. Often you can tell those who doubt themselves simply by the language they use. Someone filled with self doubt may disregard this goal immediately, “It just ain’t going to happen. It’s impossible. There’s no point even discussing it.” Such reasoning only reinforces their current self-image and further hinders them from living a super successful life. It’s as if their brain has been programed to think negatively and when negative things do happen (because they’ve done nothing to stop them), it strengthens their belief that negative things happen.

Now let’s look at the goal more rationally. Okay, so we plan to visit Europe within 12 to 24 months. What is it about that goal that makes us instantly turn all negative and makes us doubt its realization? The biggest reason would probably be the cost of such a trip. You may believe that your current earnings wouldn’t allow you to save enough, even after two years, and you know what? You may very well be right.

Yep, I’m not going to argue. It may very well be that your current earnings do not allow you to save enough money in two years. But does that mean the dream is dead? Can’t you reassess your time-line, making it three years or four years instead of one or two? Remember, the people we admire for living successful lives, didn’t just wake up one morning and suddenly find themselves successful. For many it took decades of perseverance to achieve their goal. So how about it? What about in three years or maybe four?

Unfortunately for some people and for some goals, even extending the time-line isn’t enough and if that’s the case, then we need to take more drastic action. In the example above I would recommend extending the time-line by another year or two and use the difference to find a better job. If the earnings from your current employment is the only thing stopping you - hell change your job!

Let’s look again at Sir Richard Branson. He started in business as a teenager publishing a student magazine. From there he went into mail order records. He then set up a record shop in London which became a chain of stores throughout the UK. Following that he started his own music label, had a worldwide hit with Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells,” moved into the airline business with Virgin Atlantic and started a rail company. And that’s just the tip of the Virgin iceberg. According to his website there are many other small niche businesses he owns (Virgin bridal wear – I kid you not).

With each transition from one business to the next did he stop and say to himself “Oh but that would mean a change of job?” Did he really say to himself, “Hang on, I sell records now, if I was to start making them that would be a different job, I would then be a producer not retailer. Hmmm, I’ll just forget about it.”?

If you have a dream, if you want to be a super success, it takes positive and persistent action on your part to make it a reality. No sports personality that I’m aware of became successful on day one. Right now as I’m typing this, my wife is watching the men’s Wimbledon final. Is it believable to think that either of the two finalists in the world’s top tennis event only began playing tennis two weeks ago, just before beginning the championship? Of course not. It has taken them years of practice to become a success. The same applies to us regardless of our dream. Therefore if your lack of income from your current job is holding you back, extend your time-line and use the extra time to change jobs or take on more work. Take action today to make tomorrow a reality.

When thinking about goal setting and planning a successful life I often use what I call VOPR (pronounced “voper”). It stands for:

• Visualize,
• Organize,
• Prioritize
• Realize.

Let’s look at each step in more detail.

Visualize, as you can guess, is the stage were we decide the success we wish for, both for ourselves and our family and by when we can realistically expect to achieve it. That means, if your dream is to set up a successful online retailers, please don’t say by next week (someone has actually said that to me).

Organize requires us to break that vision down into its subsequent parts. Everything that needs to change in order to achieve success needs to be written down. This may include such things as changing jobs to increase income, setting up a savings account, learning a language/culture, learning HTML, studying market niches, resourcing suppliers, getting ourselves a website.

Prioritize means we line up those things we listed in the previous step in a sequential order and begin working on those with the longest time-line. For example, if it is going to take us three years to save enough for our dream holiday, start today, get a savings account and automate the deposits. Once that’s been set up move onto the next longest time-line – learning a language. A Gantt chart is a brilliant tool to use during Prioritize.

Thinking rationally about a goal and listing and prioritizing the steps also helps us to identify problems early on and to think up some out-of-the-box solutions. In fact we don’t really have problems any more, only goals in need of some organization. Depending on our goals, some lists may stretch for pages with each point having its own sub-listings but that’s okay, as long as there’s a list and we prioritize that list we have a plan, which is infinitely better than the negative thoughts and the inactivity we had before. Also by organizing and prioritizing our vision in this way helps us see if our original time-line to success was realistic. If not, change it now to fit the plan.

Finally Realize means celebrating each step we achieve. Realize is not so much about the final goal but about celebrating each step we successfully implement. This celebration motivates us to improve and to keep on realizing the next step. Thinking of the big vision may be disheartening when it’s years off, but when we see our holiday fund getting higher and higher each month, drawing us closer and closer towards that goal, we get a huge boost to our motivation and, more importantly, our confidence.

This last step is crucial. By actively celebrating each step we are rewriting our brains program. We have achieved something, we are improving our situation, we are celebrating being winners. Who needs to doubt any longer. Each step along the way is a success. We are living a successful life right now. It’s at this stage we may also start to notice our language changing as our brains adopt the new program. We start using positive speech instead of the negative talk that held us back.

Regardless of the goal, I have always found VOPR to work and by celebrating each step helps keep motivation at a high and keeps my compass pointing in the direction it should be pointing – towards becoming a super success.

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