Are You Your Biggest Road Block?

When I meet successful people and then later talk to people who want to be successful, there is one major difference that jumps out every time.  Simply put, the people that want to be successful are their own road block.

The argument is always the same. Those who want to be successful, have a list of reasons of why they aren't the success they want to be.  It is really an amazing phenomenon.  When Og Mandino wrote "The Greatest Salesman In The World", he covered it.  When "The Secret" came out, it hit this issue head on.  Napolean Hill talked about it in his series "Think and Grow Rich" and "The Laws of Success".

So if so many people that study success so clearly see the problem, why do people still fight it?  Why do they argue when they ask for advice?

The sad truth is that somewhere in their life, someone convinced them that something was true.  If you aren't seeing the success that you want in your life, maybe you fit in this group and don't understand it or don't yet see it.  You might even see this in other people without realizing that you have the same issues in your mind.

Be Good To Yourself.

Somewhere in your past someone might have convinced you that you wouldn't ever make it.  Maybe someone told you something like "You'll never amount to much" or "With grades like that you'll just be a janitor".  These words at a young age become seeds that grow in our minds.  When success is getting close, we make excuses to make sure we live up the the expectations set by others.

Here is the key, stop trying to live up to their expectations, and live up to yours.  In Og Mandino's follow up to "The Greatest Salesman In The World", he wrote 10 vows  that he believed people should live by in order to be successful.

Recently I said that success was a simple two step process.  First was to define your own success, and second was to get there.  The process is easy, the execution is what separates the successful from the rest.

The first vow in the second part of "The Greatest Salesman In The World" was to never belittle yourself.  In simple terms, never say anything bad about you to yourself.  Never do it.  When you do, you just add water and food to the seeds that someone else planted.  Never look in the mirror and say "I am fat", or "I am stupid" or "I am lazy".

A guy asked me one day about why I was so "driven".  Yes I work alot by most people's standards, but I have fun in all of my work, so to me it isn't really work.  I answered with a question.  I asked him why he wasn't.  His reply said it all for both of us.  He said "I am just lazy I guess."  After a moment of silence, he said "That's it isn't it?"

He waited for me to reply.  Eventually, I said "If you believe that is the problem, then yes, that is the problem."

He realized that the only thing that separated us was our beliefs in ourselves.  If you believe that you are lazy because someone told you that you were, you will become lazy.  If you don't believe them and work to prove them wrong, you will.

It is funny how many times I talk with people who can name a person they want to be like, and in the same sentence say they want to hang out with a group of people.  When I ask them if their ideal person or role model hangs out in that group the answer is always "no".

TV shows us people living "the life" and not working.  What they don't show is the hundreds or thousands of hours of work that they put into becoming the best at what they did.  Malcolm Gladwell did an excellent piece of research when he wrote "Outliers".  He not only covered the importance of being the best at what you do, he found the alignment of the stars that allowed certain people to catapult way out of the norm.

Being the best is half of the equation, being in the right place at the right time and seeing the potential in the future is the rest.  Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates couldn't have become what they did five years earlier or five years later.  Their drive to excellence would have made them a big success, but only the right timing allowed them to create Apple and Microsoft when they did.  In fact, if Bill Gates was just a week later in his meeting with IBM, we might not have ever seen the PC as we know it today.

As you move to make 2013 your best year ever, look at yourself in a positive light.  Take the negative words out of your vocabulary and bury them in the yard.  Don't be fat, be a plump 200 pounds working to 175.  Don't complain about your skin, be the person spending a few minutes each day getting better skin every day.

Start listening to how you think about yourself when you get dressed, look in the mirror, comb your hair and go out into the world.  Stop the negative thoughts, focus on the positive thoughts and you will see a change just around the corner.

Go out and make 2013 your best year ever with a little positive thinking about the most important person in your world, YOU.

When you start making progress, never look back because your feet start to go where you look.  Look forward, keep both feet moving forward, and you life can only go forward.

Life is a Beach, keep it fun!

Oh yeah, have fun doing it too.