Be Passionate

Fall in love with what your success. Okay, although that sounds funny, you need to have an intimate passion with your interest. You can do this regardless of what your success is. By having passion for what you are doing and driving toward, you will automatically put more effort into it. Passion is a good thing as long as it does not become an obsession.

Give Yourself a Break

While being determined is important, do not be so hard on yourself that you become critical of every move you make. Give yourself some room to make mistakes and be flexible with you. That does not mean you can miss goals but it does mean that if you do, you find out how to avoid that from happening again and then get back to business.

Stay Motivated

When striving for the big goal of success, it is critical to stay motivated. Find inspiring and motivational tapes, seminars, books, movies; whatever you are able to get your hands on. When you start to feel a little down and out and doubt starts to creep in, turn to these motivational tools to help you keep on track. A few excellent motivators include Tony Robbins, Norman Vincent Peale, Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar, and Les Brown.

Birds of a Feather

If you have a goal of being a best-selling author, find friends and mentors who either have achieved that same goal or are also pursuing a successful writing career. It is important to surround yourself with people that can associate with your goal and passion, people who understand the burning desire to succeed and can encourage when you meet with disappointments.

Be a Good Listener

To succeed, you need to learn how to listen first. Pay attention to other people who have enjoyed successes in their life, attend seminars given by people that can motivate and encourage, or be open to hearing that a particular idea is not a good one. Good listening takes time to learn but in the end, it will be your greatest tool.

Toxic Poisoning

 No, we are not talking about actual poison but toxic people that can poison. Unfortunately, it would be great if close friends or co-workers could share in your success but all too often, there will be someone who is either dealing with the “green monster” of jealousy or has a case of the “I knew that” syndrome. If you are serious about reaching your goal and being successful, you will need to rid your life of these people. While you may not be able to get them out of your life completely, you should avoid them as best as possible. If this is a person, you see every day, keep your goals to yourself, and avoid that specific subject.

Seek Input

Whatever your idea of success, conduct a “sanity check” throughout the process of reaching your goal. This should be done with someone you trust and who is themselves successful. Ask them to provide honest feedback about your success and as you move through different milestones, bounce concerns or new ideas off them to help keep you on the right track.

Share your Success

Although this may be more at the end of the process, it is important. When you finally do reach your success, use your experience to teach, guide, and mentor others so that they too might succeed.

Be Excited to Learn

 Referring back to the analogy of Edison, when asked about his failures by a young boy, Edison commented, “Young man, I didn’t fail 9,999 times, I discovered 9,999 ways not to invent the light bulb.” As you work toward your specific success, always enjoy opportunities to learn, even if it takes longer than you think it should.

Have Courage

Depending on what your specific success is, it may take courage to arrive at your desired destination. For example, if you have a dream of being a writer and to you, that is success, but according to your long line of family members who have all gone on to be doctors, the only success in their minds is if you follow down the medical path. This means you will have to have courage to stand up for what you believe and desire to do, even if it means disappointing family.

No Shortcuts

An old cliché states, “Anything worth doing is worth doing well.” This should be your motto. When you want to succeed, you cannot afford to take shortcuts. Taking shortcuts leads to imperfection and inadequacies. Always strive for the best, even if it requires a little more time and effort.

Be Happy

A positive mind and happy, upbeat attitude will help you succeed. It has been proven in many studies that a person living in a happy state generally gets much further in just about everything they do. This relates to attitude. Just as bad attitude can pull you down, good attitude and a happy, healthy mind will help you meet your objectives.

Accept Responsibility

You need to accept responsibility if you make a bad decision or fall behind in your plan. Let us say that you have set some firm milestones that need to be accomplished in order for you to move to the next step. However, you got tired of working hard and took some time to play, which is fine as long as it does not affect your goals. Now months have passed and you are way behind schedule. This delay has closed several doors of opportunities. Who is to blame?

Have a Plan

Even if it is flimsy to begin with, you should construct a plan to include goal, milestones, deliverables such as contracts, business plans, etc., and accomplishments. This will provide you with a visual as to what you are working for, what milestones you have successfully met, and where you need to do better.

Change your Circumstances

You have a choice in life to accept your position or change it. If you choose to plug along in life hoping that something will change for the better, you will not get very far. Always remember that when it comes to changing your circumstances, you can – you have that power. As an example, women who are in abusive situations often feel controlled and powerless to get out of the situation. They have the same choice of changing their circumstances as you do. If your circumstances lower the chances of success, you need to change them.

Focus on Something you Like

To increase your chance of succeeding, you should concentrate your efforts on something you enjoy. When you start out, make a list of everything you find interesting. Then in a second column, write down the skills you have in relation to each of those items. This will help you narrow choices down based on interest and skill, which gets you started in the right direction for success.

Stop the Complaining

You might think there is no correlation between complaining and success when in fact there is a connection. When you are spending time complaining about the obstacles you are facing, you are wasting so much time being negative that you are actually loosing chances to move forward. Instead of thinking of challenges as problems, think of them as opportunities