George Nieuwenboom
Think about the people you’ve determined who are successful. What are their attributes? What do you think makes them successful? One of the things I have discovered is that most people have specific daily actions that are consistent for moving the needle toward successful. Most people call those actions habits. All successful people have them. I discovered this to be true in my own life. When I have accomplished goals, it was because I was acting, and being consistent. When I have fallen short or not accomplished my goals, it because I didn’t. Now, I can make all sorts of excuses, bottom line I let other things become more of a priority than I did my goal and therefore stopped taking action on reaching the goal in order to take action on other non-important matters.
Let me ask you, have you ever set a goal and achieved it?
Of Course, you have! We have all accomplished something we can be proud of and when we finished that goal, it felt great and a bit of success was realized.
Success is created this way: Setting a series of goals in specific areas of your life and achieving them can helps you experience success. Success is achieved when we set a goal, set up the action plan to attain it and follow through on the tasks needed to be performed in order to reach the result we’d hoped for. That’s the short of it. You also must keep an open mind, learn from others, learn from your own mistakes and find ways to communicate your goals. Be willing to track your successes and learn from the failures. Success is the same thing, repeatedly, day in and day out. And it works.
If you want to create a pattern of success in your life, you must be a doer! A genuine action taking, “get it done guru”! If you want to be a success, by your own definition of success, you first need to determine what your idea of success looks like. You can start now by learning the secret that successful people know. Successful people are only special because they get things done! If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be successful. This doesn’t mean they have to do everything by themselves or for themselves. But it does mean that they must follow up and follow through. These are key components of a success plan. Successful people are not always, smarter than others; in fact, it is entirely possible you are smarter on paper than they are. You just don’t follow through and they do. They get better at what they do, and they are willing to learn as they go. If you want to create Success in your life, here are a few tips to help you on your way.
Become a Goal Setting Expert
Or, should I say a goal achieving expert? Lots of folks are good at setting goals, yours truly included. But the more important reality lies not in the setting but in the getting. The secret sauce is creating action plans that allows us to achieve the goals we set. If we have a minor setback, we get back up and we try again. We do not give up!
Start at the top and learn how to craft the best goals for yourself. Know that the goal is something that can be accomplished and know that the goal is measurable before you finish writing it. Most of all, make sure it’s a goal that you really want to achieve and remember why you want to achieve it.
Schedule Everything on the Calendar
People who achieve are doers. If you want to get something done, schedule it no matter how silly it might seem to you. If you put it in a schedule or a planner on a specific day, at a time, and not just on a generic “to do” list, it will be more likely to get it done. Now, I am not trying to take away your to do list if you are a to-do list lover, but make sure you also have it scheduled and set reminders for yourself so you can plan your work and work your plan.
Let’s say you want to write a novel. It’s been a dream of yours for a long time. If you have set a goal to write a 120,000-word novel by a certain date, then you should know how many pages you’ll need to write each week. Then, you can break down your goal into bite sized chunks. If you need to write 20 pages a week and you know you can write for 1 hour each day, 5 days a week not 7, then you know you will need to write a minimum of 2 pages per week. You’ll need to solidify your plan; Mark your calendar for the days, and times you will work on it, Consider the hours you have available, and how long it takes you to write a page. Some days, you may write more, but by having a plan, and executing it means you are doing what successful writers do.
Successful writers write; they don’t wait for inspiration to strike and they don’t make it perfect the first time. They schedule it and do it. John Maxwell, a world-renowned leader says everyday he reads, every day he writes and every day he files. He gets up and he reads, he writes and files. He does this every day and he repeats it every day. It is one of his success habits. As a result, John is the successful author of 55 book, 7 of which have hit the best seller list. The same can be said for you, anything you want to achieve must have a habit of doing attached. You don’t wait until you want to do it; you do it on schedule.
Automate to Free Up Your Time
If you are a busy owner or a busy person in general, consider automation. With on-line banking and better software tools, there are a lot of things that can be automated. Dare I say, that sometimes the automation is quicker and done more easily than we can do anyway. How many times have we sat down to do our taxes or work on a project and watch ourselves get caught up in doing laundry, or organizing the sock drawer? Boring and mundane tasks need to be done but when we aren’t great at it, it can escalate easily into “busy work.” Busy work won’t get you closer to a goal. One example is Bookkeeping. It is a boring chore for many. Luckily it is something that can be accomplished today, with the right software, without too much hassle. Another convenience is paying on-line. Almost everyone is doing that these days. Why not? You can schedule payments to happen automatically; you can also use software that enters everything for you in the ledger. You don’t have to ever worry about forgetting a bill or being late and freeing up just a little bit of time allows you to more time to focus on your action plans and scheduled activities; things that must be done to achieve the goal you are trying to accomplish.
Another easy automation idea is scheduling. There ae many online scheduling soft-ware products and aps on the market today. For example, my daughter owns a hair salon, Matty Rhea Hair Artistry. Although she is only 23, she recognizes the benefits of automation. She has automated her scheduling process, so clients can peek into her schedule, see open time slots for the days and times she has available. Not being on the phone trying to schedule appointments allows her to focus on her clients, without answering the phone and do what she loves and what she does best. Another tool she uses is stripe, and square to collect her payments. She can pullup a printout and see how much she is making.
Get Outside Expert Help
I painstakingly watched a business owner the other day. He fought and struggled with invoices, paperwork and a scanning, faxing and email. As a business owner, he didn’t want to give up control of any part of the business. He was tired and exhausted from trying to run the entire business himself struggled and fought with the paperwork for hours while trying to get out a few invoices. In the meantime, he was interrupted by several calls, had to stop to deal with an employee who hadn’t shown up yet, talk to an irate customer who felt the need to vent about another contractor who had chopped a hole in the wall where one was not supposed to go. Hiring an administrative assistant would have been a steal for him. She would have had it done in no time, plus a few other chores. As I spoke to him, I mentioned that to be successful does not mean you have to do everything yourself. You are the owner, owners are leaders. I told him it is time for him to lead his company rather than micromanaging and controlling it. Keeping that type of control and not understanding how he is holding himself and his company back is a mistake that successful people learn quickly not to do.
Remember, You’re not on your own. The best business wonder, scientists, professors, doctors, lawyers, and CEOs have assistants who help them look great. Hire outside help and let contractors help you do the tasks needed to reach your goals. Our source what you can if it saves you time or money and free yourself up to the more important things that only you can do.
Learn from other Peoples Mistakes
In most cases, someone has already done it before you. Someone has already worked out the kinks and devised a plan of action that will work for you too with hardly any tweaks. This could save you heaps of time, trouble and heartache. When you learn from other people’s mistakes and realize that you can gain valuable information from what others are already doing, you will be short cutting the process.
Never Stop Learning and Growing
There seems to be a growing trend facing our nation. We are discovering that whether we have formal education or not, there is still a need and an upward trend to continue learning and growing beyond the college degree. More and more millennials who haven’t attended or finished college, when asked say, they still want to learn and grow in specific areas. While traveling around the world as a speaker and training in corporations, I used to listen to CD’s in my car. (Okay, I admit a listed to a few cassette tapes as well) Sometimes the drive was long and boring, but I made it more exciting because I listened to powerful mentors. I learned from the best and I learned so much more from them simply by listening and repeating. I must have listened to Jack Canfields program on self-esteem, 40 or 50 times. I still listen to it as a matter of fact. Its great stuff and each time I listen, I pick up something new or see it a little differently.
The idea to build a university out of my rental car while travelling was not my own idea, though it has served me quite well. As a young speaker, just starting out, I was eager to learn from everyone. At a speaking event I once attended, I heard a more experienced speaker say, “turn your car into a university on wheels and learn something new every day.” I did just that! It made sense to me. This same speaker also said, “It takes about ten thousand hours of reading about a topic to become an expert on any subject.” I had and still have a great desire and passion for learning, developing and helping others. Imagine the experts we could become simply by reading. If we read, listened to and taught some of the tings we had learned what kind of an expert we could become. Keep this in mind as you look toward your future and set your goals. If you want to be an expert, you’ll need to start today building up those ten thousand hours. Even if you know nothing about a topic today, you can still begin your learning journey. Who knows, you may be the next big expert in just ten thousand hours.
Know Your Core Values
As you set goals to create a pattern of success, it’s imperative that you know what you stand for. Know what your core values are in terms of family, personal, financial and your physical life. At some point in your life, your goals may conflict with your personal core values. For example, owning a business has a way of creeping into your personal and family time. If you don’t recognize this early and out stops in place immediately, it can end up taking over. If you are not certain what those values are then you may very well violate them, no matter how unintentional the violation. Core values can serve as your beaon, when things get dark. They can keep you focused on where you are heading too. You want to feel passionate and excited about reaching your goals when you do get there and if you end up violating your most treasured core values, you will not feel fabulous. That is not to say that we don’t all make mistakes. But when you know what your values are, it is much easier to make the right decisions and/or get back on track much more quickly. Everyone has different areas they need to work on more than others – you need to know what your areas are to set realistic goals that you want to meet.
Track Success, Assess Daily, Repeat
Everything must be measured. If you aren’t tracking, assessing and measuring what works against what doesn’t, how will you know when you have created success? You may have heard the phrase “know your Numbers, from a recent healthcare commercial. But knowing your numbers is also important for tracking success in other areas as well, not just with your health. Nothing is ever done without the paperwork, or at least a good app or piece of software than can help you keep track. Creating a pattern of success, is possible when you are willing to change the old habits. Only by knowing your values, setting goals, then tracking and assessing the results of the goals, and then repeating what works will you create a pattern of success.
Creating a pattern of success requires knowledge of goal setting, and goal achieving, and an in-depth knowledge of yourself. Starting today you can gain that knowledge and create a real pattern of success in your life. Use resources listed below to accomplish your best year ever!