A goal is some desirable objective—typically something yet to be achieved—that a person or company needs in order to move forward. Successful people are highly goal-oriented and always pay more attention to the target than the problem. They are seemingly able to bend bullets because of their commitment and focus on the goal.
If you don't stay focused on your goals, you will spend your life achieving the objectives of other people—particularly those who are goal-oriented. Goals are incredibly important to me. I begin and finish each day by writing them down and reviewing them. Any time I encounter failure or a challenge, I take out a legal pad and write my goals down again. This helps keep my attention on where I desire to go and the goals I want to achieve—instead of letting me dwell on the difficulty of the moment. The ability to remain focused on the goal and keep your orientation on that goal's achievement is vital to success. Although I try to stay focused on the present, I want to keep most of my attention on the bigger picture of my goals rather than on just the task I'm accomplishing at that moment. The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure Life furnishes us the opportunity to improve. But whether we do it or not depends upon how near we live up to what is expected of us. The first of each month, a person should sit down and examine the progress he has made. If he has not come up to "expectations" he should discover the reason, and by extra exertion measure up to what is demanded next time. Every time that we fall behind what we planned to do, we lose just so much for that time is gone forever. We may find a reason for doing it, but most excuses are poor substitutes for action. Most things are possible.
The price is not in money, but in effort. The first essential quality for success is the desire to do—to be something. The next thing is to learn how to do it; the next to carry it into execution. achieves success. The secret of success is to try always to improve yourself no matter where you are or what your position. Learn all you can. Don't see how little you can do, but how much you can do. That is the only secret of why some succeed and others fail. The successful man gets used to seeing things accomplished and always feels sure of success. The man that is a failure gets used to seeing failure, expects it and attracts it to him. When a man loses his grip today, he must win his redemption by his own will. He will get little encouragement or advice of an inspiring nature. He must usually regain the right road alone. He must stop dissipating his energies and turn his attention to building a useful career. Today we must conquer our weakening tendencies alone. Don't expect anyone to help you. Just take one big brace, make firm resolutions, and resolve to conquer your weaknesses and vices. Really none can do this for you. They can encourage you; that is all. There is only one way to accomplish anything and that is to go ahead and do it. The Power of Concentration The highly successful take unbelievable amounts of action. Regardless of what that action looks like, these people rarely do nothing—even when they are on vacation (just ask their spouses or families!). Whether it is by way of getting others to take action for them, getting attention for their products or ideas, or just grinding it out day and night, the successful have been consistently taking high levels of action—before anyone ever heard their names. The unsuccessful talk about a plan for action but never quite get around to doing what they claim they're going to do—at least enough to ever get what they want. Successful people assume that their future achievements rely on investing in actions that may not pay off today but that when taken consistently and persistently over time will sooner or later bear fruit.
Your ability to take action will be a major factor in determining your potential success—and is a discipline that you should spend time on daily. It's not a gift or trait I was “lucky” enough to receive or inherit; it's a habit that must be developed. Laziness and lack of action are ethical issues for me. I don't think it's right or acceptable for me to be lazy. It is not a “character flaw” that's caused by some invented disease, any more than a highly active person is somehow “blessed.” No one is born to sprint or run a marathon any more than some people are born to take more action than others. Action is necessary in order to create success and can be the single defining quality that will enable you to make the list of successful people. No matter who you are or what you've done in life so far, you can develop this habit in order to enhance your success. The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure Derek Sivers, coach and author: “Abraham Maslow had a great quote that he said something like, ‘Life presents us constantly with a choice between safety and risk’ and he said, ‘Make the growth choice a thousand times a day.’ Reading something like that when I was 17 and just knowing him and his pyramid of self-actualization I kind of went all right. “Again, that’s like a rule of thumb or recipe for what to do and how to make your decisions in life. Make the growth choice a thousand times a day, okay, got it. I guess I kind of just run all of my daily decisions through that kind of filter.
Frank McKinney, who does ultramarathons, talks about exercising risk like a muscle. It’s something that can be strengthened. Your comfort zone can grow. You start to build up a tolerance and then it starts to become comfortable. I see this over and over again. That’s why it’s easier for serial entrepreneurs, even if there is big risk involved in the new companies. They have done it before. They have more confidence and more skill managing risks. That doesn’t mean there isn’t fear, but they mitigate that as well. The key difference between them and others though is just like I said earlier: They don’t let that stop them! They continue to grow and get better. You need to make sure you can rely on yourself and your own powers. The way to do that is to keep relying on yourself over and over again so you start to trust yourself. Once that trust builds, your confidence builds. It takes practice. The more practice you get in, the more times you step up to the plate, the more times you’ll have to look back on to show yourself that you did it. That also means that practicing that sales call or practicing that presentation makes a difference, too. Another piece that tends to play a part in confidence is how much you value the opinions of others. If you take others’ opinions of you to heart, then either you will be too worried about what they think to even try, or you will be so focused on what others think that you can’t be confident in what you think. If this seems to resonate with you, then this is a piece that needs to be worked on! An opinion is not fact. Everyone has his or her own perception of reality. Just like asking eye witnesses to recount an accident, there will be differences based on their feelings toward the event. You will never be able to please everyone! Don’t let the opinion of others get in the way of you creating the business you want. As you grow as a business owner you’ll rely more and more on yourself and care less about the opinions of others. Whatever scares you, go do it, because then it won’t scare you anymore. With almost anything, once you do it, it’s not as scary as you thought it was. —Derek Sivers The Eventual Millionaire: How Anyone Can Be an Entrepreneur and Successfully Grow Their Startup One has to focus on what is real. On the truth. When in darkness, don't fight it. Turn on the light.4/20/2014
One has to focus on what is real. On the truth. When in darkness, don't fight it. You can't win. Just find the nearest switch, turn on the light.
James Altucher, in one of his best blog posts, talks about how he stops negative thoughts in their tracks with a simple mind trick. "Not useful," he tells himself. It's a switch, a breaker of sorts, shifts the pattern of the fear. So, these tools, like light switches, exist. When fear arises, remember that it is a hallucinated snake or that it's not useful or that it's not real. All three work. There's many more, ones we can come up with ourselves, if we wish. As long as it works, it's valid. So I ask myself the question, "if I loved myself, truly and deeply, what would I do?" I love this question. There is no threat, no right or wrong answer, only an invitation to my truth in this present moment. The answer is simple: I'd commit to the practice. And I would also share the next thing I've learned, which is, don't let yourself coast when things are going great. It's easy to wish for health when you're sick. When you're doing well, you need just as much vigilance. This I know: the mind, left to itself, repeats the same stories, the same loops. Mostly ones that don't serve us. So what's practical, what's transformative, is to consciously choose a thought. Then practice it again and again. With emotion, with feeling, with acceptance. Lay down the synaptic pathways until the mind starts playing it automatically. Do this with enough intensity over time and the mind will have no choice. That's how it operates. Where do you think your original loops came from? The goal, if there is one, is to practice until the thought you chose becomes the primary loop. Until it becomes the filter through which you view life. Then practice some more. The key, at least for me, has been to let go. Let go of the ego, let go of attachments, let go of who I think I should be, who others think I should be. And as I do that, the real me emerges, far far better than the Kamal I projected to the world. There is a strength in this vulnerability that cannot be described, only experienced. Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It Fear isn't bad or something to avoid; conversely, it's something you want to seek and embrace. Fear is actually a sign that you are doing what's needed to move in the right direction.
It's been said that FEAR stands for False Events Appearing Real, which aptly implies that most of what you're afraid of doesn't ever come to pass. Fear, for the most part, is provoked by emotions, not rational thinking. You must reframe your understanding of fear and use it as a reason to move forward rather than as an excuse to stop or retreat. If you're afraid to call on a client, then it's a sign that you should call that client. Fear of speaking with the boss is an indication that you should march into his office and ask for a moment of his time. Fear of requesting the client's business means that you must ask for the business—and then keep asking. The 10X Rule compels you to separate yourself from everyone else in the market. And you do that by—as I emphasized earlier—doing what others refuse to do. Only in this way will you distinguish yourself and dominate your sector. Everyone experiences fear on some level, and because the marketplace is composed of people interacting with both products and one another, the market will face fear in the same way that you and your peers do. But rather than seeing fear as a sign to run—as most other people in the market will do—it must become your indicator to go. I handle this dilemma myself by omitting time from the equation—since time is what drives fear. The more time you devote to the object of your apprehension, the stronger it becomes. So starve the fear of its favorite food by removing time from its menu. Fear doesn't just tell you what to do; it also tells you when to do it. Ask yourself what time it is at any point in the day, and the answer is always the same: now. The time is always now—and when you experience fear, it's a sign that the best time to take action is at that very moment. Most people will not follow through with their goals when enough time has passed from the inception of their idea to actually doing something about it; however, if you remove time from your process, you'll be ready to go. There's simply no other choice than to act. There's no need to prepare. It's too late for that once you've gotten this far. All the excuses in the world won't change one simple fact: that fear is a sign to do whatever it is you fear—and do it quickly. Eat your fears; don't feed them by backing off or giving them time to grow. Learn to look for and use fear so that you know exactly what you need to do to overcome it and advance your life. Every successful person I know of has used fear as an indicator to determine which actions will provide the greatest return. The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure I’ve outlined a step-by-step process to help you move past your fear, along with specific tools you can use to help harness it. The first step is to recognize the fear. Goal number one of your new plan about getting uncomfortable every day, recognize the fear. Number two is harness that fear. Number three is step out with active actions and number four is assess and expand your comfort zone. Let’s step into those.
Step 1: Recognize the Fear We tend to avoid things that we don’t like and procrastinate whatever it is. If, every time you think of public speaking or deciding on a business decision, you start to feel anxiety or that queasy stomach or worry “What if?”, then you are starting to deal with fear. Nobody thinks the feeling of fear is fun. We need to know though that it’s there and we need to give it a name because then it can start to get smaller. Fear is an idea in your head. Step 2: Harness the Fear We have nothing to fear but fear itself. —Theodore Roosevelt There is a benefit to fear. Millionaires talk about harnessing it. Just like harnessing the wind or water for electricity, we channel fear into something greater. Fear is an indicator as to whether there might be a threat or risk. So use fear as your guidepost. You probably don’t look at that picture because that’s probably not a good guidepost right now. It looks like it’s going to fall apart. But that’s where fear is the asset. Just like Chris said, “It might be your gut telling you to stop moving forward because there’s potential disaster ahead. You do that check in, and then you do your due diligence. You use it for what it is and then ignore, if it’s not true.” The other way that you can harness the fear is to use fear to get over stuff, to move things faster. Use it like you would caffeine. Pretend fear is like your morning coffee getting you buzzed and ready to go for action. The more situations you are in that are fear-inducing (not paralyzing fear where you can’t move, but regulated fear) the more you are stepping out of your comfort zone and the more you are going to be able to create the life you want. It’s a good thing, not a bad thing. The Eventual Millionaire: How Anyone Can Be an Entrepreneur and Successfully Grow Their Startup “Whatever excites you, go do it. Whatever drains you, stop doing it.” —Derek Sivers
There’s a funny story in John Richardson’s biography, A Life of Picasso. Pablo Picasso was notorious for sucking all the energy out of the people he met. His granddaughter Marina claimed that he squeezed people like one of his tubes of oil paints. You’d have a great time hanging out all day with Picasso, and then you’d go home nervous and exhausted, and Picasso would go back to his studio and paint all night, using the energy he’d sucked out of you. Most people put up with this because they got to hang out with Picasso all day, but not Constantin Brancusi, the Romanian-born sculptor. Brancusi hailed from the Carpathian Mountains, and he knew a vampire when he saw one. He was not going to have his energy or the fruits of his energy juiced by Picasso, so he refused to have anything to do with him. Brancusi practiced what I call The Vampire Test. It’s a simple way to know who you should let in and out of your life. If, after hanging out with someone you feel worn out and depleted, that person is a vampire. If, after hanging out with someone you still feel full of energy, that person is not a vampire. Of course, The Vampire Test works on many things in our lives, not just people—you can apply it to jobs, hobbies, places, etc. Vampires cannot be cured. Should you find yourself in the presence of a vampire, be like Brancusi, and banish it from your life forever. “Part of the act of creating is in discovering your own kind. They are everywhere. But don’t look for them in the wrong places.” —Henry Miller Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered It’s hard to interrupt these autopilot cycles because, well, that’s the whole point of autopilot. We don’t think about what we’re doing. We drift along in life, floating on the wake of past choices, and it’s easy to forget that we have the ability to change direction.
One solution to this is to bundle our decisions with “tripwires,” signals that would snap us awake at exactly the right moment, compelling us to reconsider a decision or to make a new one. Chances are you know someone who has been stuck on autopilot too long. Sometimes autopilot causes people to neglect opportunities; maybe you have a friend who has talked about writing a novel for years but never seems to make any progress. Other times, autopilot leads people to persist at efforts that seem doomed, like a couple whose relationship makes them both miserable, or a relative with a naive dream of making a living as a landscape painter, or an executive who refuses to recognize that her pet project has failed. At some point, the virtue of being persistent turns into the vice of denying reality. When that transformation happens, how can you snap someone out of it? One option is to set a deadline, the most familiar form of a tripwire. Some deadlines are natural, such as the deadline for filing stories at a daily newspaper—the printing press has to roll at a certain time, whether the story is ready or not. But it’s easy to forget that most of the deadlines we encounter in life are simply made up. They are artificially created tripwires to force an action or a decision. Deadlines focus our mental spotlight on a choice. They grab us by the collar and say, If you’re gonna do this, you have to do it now. Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work |
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