So many factors go into success. Discipline, preservation, wisdom, attitude, and much more. To break success down into one simple thing is just about impossible without losing a ton of nuance in the process. But first we need to define what success is and what it means to us. Earl Nightingale gave a pretty damn good definition of success in The Strangest Secret. In the book he states that.
Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal or goal
And I’d say that’s a pretty good definition. It’s accomplishing goals and being on the journey to accomplish goals that will lead to the life that you want. It’s about developing the habits that will furnish you with the resources that you need to accomplish the goals and get the results that you want for your life.
So in order to be successful the first thing that we need to do is figure out what success looks like to us as what a worthy “ideal or goal” is will vary from person to person. What may be true success for one person may be horrible for another person as we are all different people and want different things.
So what we need to do is get an idea of what success looks like, concretely and specifically, to us. The best way to do this is to visualize what your ideal life would like for you and then to draw a picture or make a vision board of it. Put pictures that illustrate what your ideal life looks like and what it feels like.
You can use a word document and find pictures online, print pictures out and paste them to a white board, or simply get a piece of paper and draw pictures yourself. They don’t have to be good pictures, you’ll know what they represent and that makes it all the better.
Then take some time to let your ideal life sink in. Leave the vision board up somewhere and focus on it a few times a day. Do this for a few days to a week.
Then it times to get to work.
Big Lofty Goals
You see the life that you want. Now it’s time to set the goals that will attain that life for you. Start with big goals. Goals that’ll take at least a year to accomplish. Write them out using the SMART format, giving yourself (a year from now or sooner) as the date for their completion. Always leave ‘sooner’ as it tells your subconscious mind to not pump the breaks. Same with putting money goals. Don’t say ‘Make 100k by Date XYZ’ say “Make at least 100k by date XYZ’ and so on and so forth.
You don’t have to be neurotic about it or anything. If you know the meaning of what you wrote then that’s how your brain will interpret it. But put out that big lofty goal that you have. Again, using the SMART format. Next what you’ll want to do is break down that yearly goal into what goals need to be accomplish month by month. Then you’ll break those monthly goals down into weekly goals or you can just skip to daily goals if you want.
I’ve outlined this process multiple times so I won’t go much deeper into that. But I want to include something to keep your mind laser focused on your big goal and to make sure you are always heading in the right direction in regards to that goal. And it comes from a small red book called “It Works” I’m not sure if I ever reviewed this book before but it’s a good one.
Imprinting The Subconscious
So what you have to do is not rocket science, it’s easy and simple, but the key is to do it daily…for at least a year if not longer. And that is where people fall off and lose out on the good results from it. So what you’re going to do is write out your big lofty goal, the one that’ll take a year and then place it somewhere you’ll see it every day. You can have one on your bathroom mirror, one by your beside table, and maybe one you fold up in your wallet.
What you’re going to do is read that goal out loud three times a day.
This isn’t in replacement of making sure you’re hitting your daily actions and weekly goals and all of that. This is done in addition too. And out loud is important here. It engages another part of your brain and gets it cemented even deeper. And again this doesn’t replace any of the other hard work that you’ll be doing.
In the “It Works” book it says to write out what you want and read the list three times a day and you’ll “inner guidance” or whatever word they used will bring it too you.
I think you need to do a little more than that so have modified it here. But the constant day to day focus is something that will help tremendously.
Try it out. Get a big goal that you have and write it out, again using the SMART format. Post it up somewhere and read it out loud three times a day. Combine that with breaking it down into monthly/weekly/daily actions that you need to take and tracking those actions.
That right there is almost a sure fire way to accomplish big lofty goals that at first seem impossible.
Let me know how it works for you.
If anything I said here interests you I’d highly recommend you check out The Ultimate Alpha Collection which is a compilation of 16 of my books for the price of 5. It covers everything from being a man to making money to getting the right mindset to getting girls to fighting and more and is a resource no man should be without. Pick up your copy today!
-Charles Sledge
