Let’s Face it, it is Easy to Wander Off on Your Journey for Success

You finally start that business that will get you out of the proverbial “rat race” and take control of your life. Then your progress stops. You realize that you’re not making the progress that you think you should be making. It is harder to keep the momentum going to move towards your goals.

Everyone makes it look so easy on social media. Why can’t I be successful like everyone else?

Success eluded me too. I’m still working on becoming more successful every day, just like you are.

Here are a few tips I picked up on the way to help me get closer to achieving my goals and making my dreams come true. They seem simple.

But they are hard to do. In changing your habits that are preventing you from becoming more successful, you change who you are. And changing habits is challenging.

1. Stop Complaining

When you complain, you are setting yourself up as a victim to undesirable circumstances in your life. You are telling the world that you are defenseless to the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” as Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet. Complaining only brings emotions of despair and powerlessness. How are you going to move closer to your goals if you don’t feel like you can?

The best cure is to stop complaining. No one cares about your complaints and no one is listening. The only people who like to hear you complain are your enemies. It is a pointless exercise that will guarantee that you don’t achieve your goals and stay exactly where you are. Try not complaining for a day. Then try not complaining for 30 days. Before you know it, you will discover new ways to achieve your goals instead of reinforcing the false conclusion that you don’t have the power to change your life.

2. Write Down Your Goals at Least Twice a Day

Write your goals down when you first get out of bed. Write your goals down before going to sleep. If you feel like you are not moving towards your goals or run into obstacles, write your goals down again. If you find yourself writing your goals down ten times a day, do it. Every time you write your goals down, you are commanding your mind to find a way to make this happen. Success may not come the way that you want. Your mind will start developing actions that you may not even notice that are moving you closer to your goals. You may notice that gradually you are moving closer to your goals instead of staying where you don’t want to be.

Need a place to write your goals down daily? I use this planner  to write my goals twice a day. I use legal pads when I run out of room in my planner.  I’ve used it religiously for about six months and I have made big changes to my life. Some events seemed like a pattern of accidents. They weren’t accidents. Writing my goals down twice a day is moving me closer to achieving my goals every day. Whether you use the planner I use or a spiral notebook, get in the habit of writing down your goals daily.  In a few months, you will notice new opportunities all around you.

3. Stop Hanging Around Negative People

People around you affect you. Some people inspire you and others leave you feeling worse than you did before they arrived. Jim Rohn summed this statement the best by calling it the Principle of Association. He stated that you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

Here are three key questions Mr. Rohn suggested you should ask yourself when evaluating the people who influence you:

1. Who am I around?
2. What are they doing to me?
3. Is that OK?

It is crucial that you ask yourself these questions because your personal contacts have a powerful effect on how your life turns out. Therefore you need to take every step to make sure the people around you are helping you achieve your goals instead of holding you back.

4. Begin Where You Are

One of the biggest obstacles I face is creating obstacles by focusing what I don’t have.

1. I don’t have any startup capital.
2. I don’t have the right connections.
3. I don’t have the right car.
4. I don’t have the right education.
5. I don’t have the right skills.
6. I don’t have (fill in the blank).

Now, I call them excuses.

The truth is, no one gets a perfect start. Some obstacles are real, such as “I’m a web designer, but I don’t have access to the Internet.” However, there are places that have free Internet you can use (Starbucks). There are many places that share office space for a nominal monthly fee. Maybe you have a friend who has the high-speed you need where they live. Maybe a school, community college, or university in your area has public access to their library.

No matter what it is you are working (not just trying) to achieve, your conditions will never be perfect. You will find new ways of getting the results you want if you get creative. Focus on the tools you have available, not on what you think you need. You will find better tools along the way.

Work with what you can do to work towards your goals.

5. Take Responsibility for Where You Are

This is critical to your future success. You will not succeed in business if you keep looking for outside reasons that you aren’t successful in life. Every time you find a reason for your not being successful outside of yourself, you make excuses. When you make excuses, you make yourself a victim. The victim identity does nothing but make yourself a victim again. It creates a cycle of victimhood that is contrary to starting or running a business successfully.

Take responsibility for everything that happens to you. I faced the same habit in my life. I was listening to the audio version of The 10x Rule by Grant Cardone.  I think listening to the audio is better than reading the book. You an idea of what Grant was thinking when he wrote the book. Here is how he sums up “victimhood thinking” in Chapter Six:

Chapter Six: Assume Control for Everything. I was going to call this chapter “Don’t Be a Little Bitch,” but I decided to back off a bit so as not to offend anyone and there I slipped and said it anyway.”

There is no truer statement about “victim thinking.” No one can achieve success by thinking like a victim.

In Conclusion…for now

More tips on success are coming soon. So, subscribe to my blog and get the next blog post delivered straight your inbox.