The Key To Your Success Lies Within You

By Joe D

The word success means a lot of different things to different people. It's something that we dream about, but do we really know what it is? That is the first question you should ask yourself if you want to be successful. What does success mean to you? Most experts agree that visualizing what we want to accomplish is one of the best ways to prepare ourselves for the situations that we may encounter on our road to our dreams. If you don't even know what success looks like to you, then you can't really visualize it, can you?

The first key to achieving your dreams and being successful is defining what success means to you. To some people success means owning their own business. For others it's owning their own home. For some it's having a million dollars, and the list goes on. Once you're able to define what it means to you, success becomes easier to achieve. Now that you have that knowledge of what you want your destination to be, you can focus your efforts on getting there. A lot of times people complain about being unhappy, but don't even know what it would take to make them happy. Unless you spend the proper time analyzing what you really want, your chance of being truly happy is slim.

In our lives we face tough decisions, and a lot of times it means that we have to make difficult choices and compromise our wants for our needs. These challenges and obstacles are what build character in a person and keep them driven to succeed. If you look at the life stories of other successful people, you'll notice that all of them have faced (and eventually overcome) struggles. There's a reason they say nothing worth having ever comes easy. Otherwise everyone would be happy. One of the biggest reasons people get off track is because they give up too quickly. Rarely do our attempts at something new result in instant success. Those with the will and determination to push through are the ones that get rewarded in the end.

The key to achieving your success is to find a way to balance the necessities of your now with the excitement of your future and to keep your eyes on your dreams through the peaks and valleys of the journey. Few people are allowed the freedom to go after their dreams without having to worry about making ends meet in the meantime. So what does it mean for you? It means that more than likely you will have to work twice as hard to reach your vision of success. Balancing your "normal" life with trying to build your "dream" life is a challenge that a lot of people have a hard time handling. It can be rough on you and rough on your family. That's why having a strong support system of family and friends is crucial to your ability to succeed.

Finding success in your life lies within yourself. You are the one that defines success, and you are the one that must show the leadership, will, determination, and passion to see it through. While we lean on our family and friends for support, that support is only in support of our own strength. The great thing about following your dreams is that most of the time it shouldn't feel like work. Use the excitement to get you going, and the steady progress you see to keep you strong during tough times. In the end, you hold the key to your own success. There is a lot of opportunity out there to do just about anything, don't hold your life back from being everything it could be.

Now that you've started thinking about your vision of success, check out our Know The Ledge article on understanding your motivation to keep yourself strong on your journey.

Joe D is the founder and main contributor of KnowTheLedge.org, a site aimed at helping people live their dream life through personal development, financial management, and self improvement.

Functioning in the Vortex

By Michael Daley

As I entered the room, the energy of my vortex consumed all who were near and swept them from their feet into the abyss of success.

A vortex draws into its center all that surrounds it, there are of course bad ones that we must watch out for. Are you smart enough and vigilant enough to avoid being caught up in a whirlpool of mediocrity and failure? I would certainly hope that you are so in tune with your world that you understand the difference.

Many times we see what others are doing and we see it working for them, we immediately get excited and think that we can do it just like they do; however what we are seeing is their energy. Can we duplicate it? Maybe so, but we should focus on creating our own energy, using others as an example is fine, but we must personalize our whirlpool to fit our personality. What works for others, may not, and won't work for us.

We may be doing the exact same business, but we cannot expect that what has made others successful is going to be our ticket to success. In business, one must constantly revise their plans in order to continue operating successfully, search for a niche if you will. Once a niche is found, you must stick with it in order for the energy to grow, of course you may be able to dip into other areas from time to time, but if you don't focus on your niche, nothing will ever come; the energy will take an opposite effect and you will have found yourself arriving at "no where" very fast.

With all your heart and soul, focus on creating a positive vortex of your own, and watch the glory and victory pour into your life from above!

Best regards to all and may your day be blessed.

Mike Daley

Do The Right Things and Shorten Your Journey to Success!

By Cher Hung Seet

All the things we do in life are governed by 2 main criteria; Pain and Pleasure that we receive from doing that particular action. In other words, we all do things to either Gain Pleasure or to Avoid Pain. It all sound quite simplistic doesn't it? If that is the case, how do you account for the number of people into taking drugs, smoking, binge drinking when they know very well that all these actions and activities are going to make them feel the Pain in the near future.

Well, the real truth is that we have to add the Time factor into the Pain and Pleasure equation as well. Like all creatures with feelings, most people would give first priority to the things that would remove the Pain quickly and give instant relief or Pleasure. Let me illustrate this with an example. Why do people take drugs or drink excessive alcohol knowing that these are bad for their health and will cause Pain in the long run? The reason is because taking drugs and excessive alcohol will almost instantly remove any Pain they have and give them almost immediate pleasure.

Most of the things we do in life can be placed into one of four quadrants as follows :

1. Things that do not feel good and are not good for you

2. Things that do not feel good but are good for you

3. Things that feel good and are good for you

4. Things that feel good but are bad for you

The problem why many people are not successful in life, is because we misuse this Pain-Pleasure-Time principle. In other words, many people tend to have a lot of activities in quadrant one, where we do a lot of activities that feel good, but are not necessarily good for us! We give the Time factor too much priority. We want instant gratification!

So, what is one secret to success; a small secret with a potentially very big result? The secret is to identify and replace the things you do in quadrant four with those in quadrant two; things that does not feel so good, but are generally good for you. Some of the activities in Quadrant Four includes smoking, excessive alcohol, sleeping too much, watching too much tv, gossiping, eating too much etc... Activities in Quadrant Two includes exercising, studying and learning, waking up early etc...

What about Quadrant One and Three? We are not focusing on Quadrant One and Three because these two quadrants are usually quite obvious. In other words, very few people will actually do the things that make them feel bad and are generally bad for them and most will actually do a lot of the things that makes them feel good and are good for them.

What's really interesting is that many of activities, especially with regard to the area of feeling good, are interchangeable, depending on who you are? For example, while some healthy sports makes some people feel really good participating in them and are generally good for them, it may not necessarily feel good to everyone. Cycling is generally a healthy sport and some may feel good doing it while some may not. Nobody likes to smoke first time around but over time, they grow to enjoy it.

Identifying the activities in Quadrant Four and replacing them with activities in Quadrant Two is easy. The difficulty is keeping it consistent because most people will find it really difficult to continue to do the things that do not feel good, even though they know it is good for them. There's some good news for most people here. The good news is that while most people may not feel good initially doing the activities in Quadrant Two, they tend to develop a good feeling for the activity for it once they begin to see results. Let's take exercise as an example. Nobody likes to exercise if they can help it. However, once they see what exercise can do for them (as in looking and feeling good), they will begin to enjoy the activity more and more. Sometimes an activity that may be downright boring when performed alone, can become really interesting if performed in a group or with like minded people.

So, while the first secret to success in most things you do is to identify the activities in Quadrant Four and replace them with activities in Quadrant Two, the ability to keep doing the things in Quadrant Two is to slowing move them to Quadrant Three by slowly developing a "taste" for doing them or finding a way to do them so that they become enjoyable!

C.H. Seet is the author of the blog, Ezinspirations (http://www.ezinspirations.com/blog). He has a Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering and a Masters in Business Administration and has a successful career spanning more than 2 decades. C.H. started as a Sales Engineer in Hewlett Packard and then moved on to become Product Marketing Manager in Rockwell Automation. He now heads a Multi-national German Company, located in Singapore and overlooks the whole SE Asian region.

How To Make Every Day a Successful Day

By Charles Brown

Every day is about momentum. If we can get on a successful roll, we get into what NLP practitioners call a "Resourceful State." You may have also heard this state called, "In The Zone," or "The Flow."

Whatever you call it, this kind of state means you feel very capable, almost unstoppable and it creates the kind of day where you have successes in clusters. It's kind of like a baseball hitter having one of those three-home runs-in-one-day, or a sales person closing five sales in one week. Once you get on a roll, the momentum keeps you going for quite a while.

But can you create this kind of zone or "resourceful state" every day? While there are a lot of variables, there is a way to make sure every day is a successful day.

The concept is simple, schedule one "Target Task" every day.

Your Target Task must meet two requirements. One it needs to be something you can get done quickly and easily. This is extremely important because the target task must be something that is just difficult enough to be a challenge but not so difficult that you won't get it accomplished very quickly, early in your day.

The next requirement is that your Target Task must give you a LOT of satisfaction when you do it. For example, sometimes a nagging little detail I've been putting off for ages often makes the perfect Target Task for me. Once I finally get something like this done, there is a huge weight lifted off my shoulders and I feel really, really good.

What you are aiming for is to create this great feeling early in your day so you can get your day on a roll and put yourself into that resourceful state. If the task is something that you can cross off your list easily and quickly and if it gives an enormous sense of satisfaction, it will move you into the zone you are looking for.

Why do target tasks work so well? Because we all have an internal sense of inertia that holds us back from getting started. While the target task may not be easy to do, it is something that can be done quickly and gotten out of the way in a short period of time.

Then our internal inertial continues to work for us because once we have gotten ourselves moving, the fact that the target task gives a high level of satisfaction keeps us moving onto the next item on our schedule, and the next and so forth. It is a momentum that can carry us through the rest of the day simply because we have gotten ourselves in the "zone," "on a roll," or in a "resourceful state," depending on what you want to call it.

Just a few years after attempting suicide, Charles Brown has learned to literally "re-wire" and "re-program" his brain to achieve success in everything he attempts. He now teaches others how to use neuro-linquistic programming (NLP), subliminal technology, self hypnosis, The Law of Attraction and other methods to make major changes in their lives. He is the author of the free downloadable ebook, The Science of Change: How To Re-Program Your Mind and Transform Your Life. This ebook has 49 pages of transformational information and can be downloaded at http://www.geocities.com/chbrown56