The Success Principles

Posted by EightNine on 8th Sept 2010

The number of truly successful people in the world is surprisingly small. Most of us are somewhat successful, we aren’t failures but we have hardly achieved everything that we want to. There are a number of differences between the successful and the unsuccessful and by understanding them we can learn how to achieve our goals. The most important successful principle of all that needs to be understood is that the things that have made successful people successful are skills that can be learned. It is no different than learning to ride a bike anybody can learn the skills if they are willing to put in the time and effort.

The truth is that most people won’t put in the effort to learn how to be successful. Most of us are looking for the easy way out and in large part this is why we never achieve our goals. It is very rare that somebody becomes successful without having to put in the work. Most of the same people who can’t be bothered to put in the work are the same people who write other peoples success off as being down to luck. The reality is that we make our own luck, successful people aren’t lucky; they have put themselves in a position where good things can happen to them.

There are a few success principles that you can follow that will help you to accomplish the things that you desire. Following these principles will by no means guarantee success, there is more to it than that but they will give you a good start and dramatically increase your chances. If you take nothing else out of this article the most important thing is to understand that we are responsible for our own success and failure. As long as you keep that in mind you will be far more likely to accomplish your goals.

Vision

In order to be successful you have to know what it is your trying to achieve, otherwise how are you going to know if you’ve achieved it. This means that you should have a clear picture in your mind of the end result you are shooting for. Even if you don’t know how to achieve your goals it is important that you have the end result in mind. It is often said that you should picture yourself having accomplished your goals in order to help you achieve them. This is good advice, not only will it help to keep you motivated it will help to make sure that you stay on track to achieve your goals.

Most people have a tendency to jump from one thing to another and it is this lack of focus that usually keeps us from achieving what we want to. Being successful requires narrowing your focus and concentrating on what it is we really want to accomplish. Creating a vision is not as easy as it sounds; you are going to have to be a little bit more specific than saying things like “I want to be millionaire”. It isn’t necessary to spell out specifically how you plan to accomplish the things in your vision, that comes later when we set goals, but you do need to at least have a general idea of how you are going to get there.

A useful success principle is to write down your vision; this will help to keep you focused. One of the biggest problems most of us have when it comes to creating our vision of what we want to accomplish is that we constantly change it. Usually what happens is we see something on television and decide that’s what we want to do so that becomes our vision. Then a week later we see something else on television and we change our vision. This lack of focus inevitably leads to failure. Writing down your vision of what you want to accomplish will help prevent you from jumping from one thing to another. This will allow you to focus on achieving one thing and greatly increase your chances of success.

Self Belief

There is no way that you are going to achieve anything if you don’t believe that you will be successful. A lot of people will tell you that you can’t do something; you need to stay away from this kind of negativity. This is not easy to do but it is what separates the successful from the unsuccessful. Belief is having the confidence to know that you can do something; most people tend to have difficulties in this area, especially when we are trying something new. Self belief tends to come and go, we are confident in our ability to do certain things but not in our ability to do others. The problem of course is that usually in order to accomplish our goals we need to do things we have never done before.

The most important thing to know about self belief is that it is something that you can learn. Almost certainly you have successfully accomplished something in the past, and no matter how small that accomplishment was it can still be used to help develop your confidence. If you can accomplish one goal you can accomplish another, even if you have to take small steps. Every time you are successful at something you will feel more confident in your ability to achieve something else in the future. This will then allow you to accomplish bigger and bigger things and soon you will be well on your way to achieving your vision.

Unfortunately most of us have negative thoughts that make it difficult to believe in ourselves. Usually these thoughts are put there by somebody else; there are lots of people who will tell you what you can’t do. Overcoming this kind of negativity can be a real problem but it is something that you are going to have to do. The best way to do this is to tell yourself that other people’s negative beliefs are there issue and not yours. This isn’t easy as most of us care a great deal about what other people think. This is one of those things you are simply going to have to resolve to do and then do it.

Taking Responsibility

One of the most important success principles is to realize that you are responsible for your own successes and failures. A lot of people seem to expect that other people will help them to achieve their goals, even more try to blame others for their failures. The truth your successes and failures are based on what you do, you are responsible for what happens. It is a critical success principle that you stop blaming others for the things that happen to you. Admittedly there will be times when something actually is somebody else’s fault but even if that is the case blaming the other person isn’t going to get you any closer to your goals. As soon as you stop blaming other people for your failures the sooner you will be on the road to success.

Taking responsibility for your own actions also means being accountable for your own mistakes. Most of us have a tendency to make excuses when something goes wrong. This is not taking responsibility, you need to acknowledge that it was your fault and deal with the consequences. Successful people own up to their mistakes and don’t try to make excuses. Not only will making excuses limit your chances of success it will make you look silly, most excuses are pretty flimsy and people can usually see right through them.

Trying to justify your actions is another sure fire sign that you aren’t taking responsibility for your actions. A lot of us have a tendency to justify the things we do by pointing that other people do the same thing. That may be true but it still doesn’t make it alright. Taking responsibility means doing the right thing even if nobody else is doing it. There is a reason that there are far more unsuccessful people in the world than successful people. Most people tend to follow the crowd and do what everybody else does; the successful know that they have to do the right thing regardless of what everybody else is doing. If you have to justify your actions you aren’t doing the right thing and you aren’t taking responsibility for your actions.

Positive Thinking

There is a lot to be said for the power of positive thinking and it can go a long way to helping you be more successful. Of course keeping your thinking positive can be a problem, especially when things aren’t going well. A good way to do this is to get in the habit of everyday saying out loud what it is you are trying to achieve. This will be most effective if you say it in the present tense, rather than saying what you want to achieve try saying it as though you have already achieved it. Instead of saying “I want to be a millionaire” try saying “I am a millionaire”. Most people won’t do this because they feel silly, but it does work.

There has been a lot research by psychologists into why these positive affirmations work and the belief is that our brain responds to hearing something over and over again. Most of us have had the experience where we have told a lie so many times that we actually started to believe it was true ourselves. The same process can be used to help us to remain positive. By constantly telling ourselves that we are successful we will soon start to believe that we are successful. Once we start to believe that we are successful we will eventually becomes successful. A lot of people won’t do this because they think it is a bunch of new age, hippie, junk but it actually does work.

Another benefit to positive affirmations is that it can help to keep you focused. As mentioned earlier most of us tend to jump from one thing to another and never really put the focus that we need in order to be successful into anything. Constantly reminding ourselves of what we are trying to achieve will help to keep us focused and prevent us from jumping from one thing to another. This in itself can be a huge help in making us successful.

Set Goals

Setting goals is where we start to get into the real action of being successful. It is all well and good to have a vision, be positive and take responsibility but if you really want to be successful you are going to have to have a plan. Very rarely do people accidentally stumble onto success; it is usually the result of a plan. The key to creating a plan is to have goals. Setting goals is not the same as having a vision, your vision is a broad objective of what you want to eventually accomplish, goals are more concrete. The goals you set give you a plan that you can follow in order to ultimately accomplish your vision.

The goals you set are probably the most important of the success principles, there is very little chance you will be successful if you don’t have a good plan. The most important thing when you are setting goals is that they have to be realistic and attainable. This may seem to contradict the section about self belief and having the confidence to believe you can accomplish anything but there is a point at which from self belief to delusional. You can achieve anything that you want to but you have to break it up into smaller steps. Setting attainable will also help you to maintain your self belief since you will be able to the result along the way.

In order to see these results your goals need to be specific and measurable. While your vision can be somewhat vague your goals can’t be. You need to be able to clearly determine whether or not you have achieved your goals. A statement like “I want to make more money” isn’t a goal. If your goal is to make more money you need to put a specific number on it. Rather than “I want to make more money” you need to say something like “I want to make $10 00 next month” a measurable goal that includes a time frame will be much more useful than some vague statement about what you are hoping to achieve. It may also be a good idea to set short term goals, medium term goals and long term goals. This will help to keep the plan clear in your mind while giving you a way to measure your progress.

Persistence

The fact is that not everything you do is going to work out every time. If being successful was easy everybody would do it. There are going to be times when you try things that don’t work. There will also be times that you don’t achieve the goals you set. Maybe they were too ambitious; maybe there was some unexpected hurdle in the way. Persistence is critical to being successful; if something doesn’t work you have to try something else. One of the biggest reasons that most people will fail is that they simply give up when they encounter a setback. If you give up as soon as you run into a little adversity you are never going to achieve anything. Some of the most successful people in the world have a long list of failures behind them. The reason they eventually succeeded is that they kept going when other people would have given up.

Of course being persistent doesn’t mean keep doing the same thing over and over again. There may be times when it is appropriate to try something that has failed again but in general if you try something that doesn’t work you are probably going to need to find a different way of doing things. This doesn’t mean that you should throw out your vision or your goals just that you need to come up with a different way of accomplishing them. There is that old saying that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. There reason it is an old saying is because it is true.

Persistence isn’t always easy; it can be hard to stay motivated when you are starting over because the last thing you tried didn’t work. This is where taking responsibility for your actions comes in. It is easy to take responsibility when things are going well, the successful are able to do it when things aren’t going well. The key to persistence is to simply resolve that you are going to do something and then do it.

Take Risks

Almost all successful people have taken risks at some point. Whether it was making a risky investment or quitting their job to start their own company there is almost always some element of risk in becoming successful. Most of us are afraid to take risks, usually because we have been taught to be since we were children. This is the reason that most of us fail at the things we are trying to accomplish. As any investor knows you will get the biggest return on the investment that has the highest level of risk and this is largely true in almost everything else as well. It can be a challenge to summon up the courage to take risks but that is part of what it takes to achieve our goals.

Most of us have a tendency to overestimate the consequences of risks which is why we seldom take them. The world won’t end if you quit your job and go into business for yourself and the company fails. In most cases the worst that will happen is that you will have to get a new job, a pain to be sure but hardly the end of the world. The other thing that tends to prevent us taking risks is the idea that everything needs to be perfect before we do something. There is never going to be a perfect time to into business for yourself, there will always be some excuse to allow you to avoid doing it. At a certain point you need to just jump in and go for it.

There is a difference between taking a risk and being reckless and you need to be able to tell them apart. The key is to look at the consequences; while most of us tend to overestimate the downside you can’t ignore it completely. It is important that you are able to make a realistic appraisal of the consequences of doing something so that you can make a good decision as to whether or not doing something is a good idea. You are also going to look at the rewards of what you are doing, is the potential payoff worth the risk. This can be a challenge in some cases, there are actually professionals who make careers out of assessing risk but you should at least have a general idea of the risk relative to the rewards.

Surround Yourself with Successful People

Very few people accomplish anything on their own; it is far easier if you have other people who can help you. If you are going into business for yourself you will want to hire the best people possible. A lot of people have a tendency to surround themselves with people who are less than the best. Usually we do this because we are intimidated by successful people or because we worry that somebody better will push us out of the way and take over. This is a mistake you will want to have the best possible people around you in everything you do.

One of the reasons that you are going to want to have successful people around you is that success tends to breed success. Being surrounded by highly driven people will tend to drive you as well. Most of us subconsciously emulate the traits of the people around us. If we are surrounded by dedicated, determined people will tend to act the same way. If we surround ourselves with lazy people who never achieve a thing we will usually act the same way.

Another benefit to having successful people around is that you can learn from them. It is amazing what you can learn just from watching successful people. As you see how they carry themselves, how they deal with problems and how they interact with other people you will quickly learn how to act the same way yourself. If you are truly lucky you may be able to get somebody who has achieved what you want to achieve to mentor you. Even if you can’t simply being around them is an education in itself.

Learn Everything you Can

We have all heard the saying that knowledge is power, and it is. In almost all cases in order to achieve anything you are going to have to learn a great deal. This is another case of if it was easy everybody would do it. If you want to be more successful than the next guy you have to know more than he does. There are a lot of ways that you can acquire this knowledge but one way or the other you are going to have to it. In fact any knowledge that you can acquire will help you, whether it is related to the goals you are currently pursuing or not. Successful people are constantly striving to learn new things and never pass up on opportunity to do so, regardless of the topic.

There are no guarantees of success, you can follow these success principles to the letter and still not be successful. That being said if you don’t follow them there is little chance that you will be successful. Not following these principles will basically leave any chance that you have of being successful up to luck. While a few people do become successful through luck it really isn’t something you should be relying on. A far better plan would be to take responsibility for your own actions, learn what other successful people have done and do the same thing yourself.

The success principles are a skill, they can be learned. There is no reason that you can’t learn these skills and become successful yourself. The most important lesson that you need to learn is that you are responsible for your own success and failure. Understanding this will help put you on track to accomplish your goals.

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