Posts tagged 'Success'

Blessed with a personal friend who is an amazing, profound writer - Steven Tyler of Aerosmith - I’ll quote a line from one of his hit songs: “Dream on… dream on… dream until your dream comes true.” As we sit here on the edge of a brand new year, it’s the perfect time for us to dream about tomorrow and the future. After all, there’s a future for those who dream about it, plan for it and work toward it.

At seventy years young, Rock n’ Roll Hall of Famer and music industry icon, Steven Tyler, still dreams on. When we first met and started building our friendship, Steven dreamed of launching a solo career in country music concurrent to his work with Aerosmith. He aligned with “Loving Mary,” a Nashville-based band and worked to pursue his dream and had a successful 25-plus city tour and one of his songs, “Love Is Your Name,” rose to the number one song on the Country Music Billboard. Dream on. Dream on.

Many of us are familiar with the Latin phrase, “Carpe Diem,” which means “seize the day." I propose we also consider “Carpe Manana”… seize tomorrow.

“Seize” is the key word. Dreams can come true if one has the courage to pursue them, reach for them, grab them, seize them and capture them. It’s all about pursuit. Dreams alone won’t cut it. Dreams blended with conviction (belief), courage, confidence and passion are the ingredients necessary for a fully-baked plan to rise and prosper. Success is all about the courage of conviction.

Why, one might ask, are dreams so important?

1. Without dreams and aspirations, one can quickly move from hopeful to hopeless. Without dreams, you have little to live for.
2. Dreams keep you young. They provide motivation to think and act for tomorrow and the future. Dreams bring forth optimism.
3. As you mature, you have the benefit and wisdom to selectively choose those realistic dreams that make sense and have personal relevancy.
4. Your dreams are exclusively owned by you. You have the pride of ownership, and if your dreams are realized, you also have the power of accomplishment.
5. Dreams have no limits. After all, there is only one rule in life, and that one rule is there are no rules! Don’t forget you created your dreams. They operate under your rules.
6. There is nothing sweeter than seeing a dream come true. Regardless of how massive or minute, the realization of a dream is absolute bliss.

Successful people dream about their “endgame”… the results they’d like to achieve. Beginning with the end in mind through “creative visualization” can be incredibly beneficial in building your plan to fulfill your dream. Creative visualization is the cognitive process of purposefully generating visual, mental images - with your eyes open or closed - and working to visualize what something will look like at the end of an endeavor.

It’s the golfer who stares at his ball on the green before ever pulling his putter out of the bag, then mentally visualizes softly stroking the ball as it rolls straight into the cup. In his mind, he might also hear the ball drop into the hole, ka-plink. That’s creative visualization.

Creatively visualizing what a dream, hope or aspiration might look like once you complete the activity helps you dive into the process. For instance, if your New Year’s resolution or bucket list objective is to be able to play children’s songs for your children (or grandchildren) on the piano, closing your eyes and creatively visualizing the children joyfully sitting around the piano wide-eyed and excited as you showcase your “new” (or “renewed”) skills to their delight mentally moves the activity from a dream closer to reality. Once you visualize something and emotionally feel what the endeavor would be like at successful conclusion, it provides motivation that will likely lead you to focus, work and ultimately achievement.

Over the years, when thinking about another new year, I moved my messaging and wishes to family, friends and business associates from “Happy New Year” to a more robust “Happy YOU Year!” In short, my wishes and hopes for those I care about is to encourage them to make the “New” Year truly a “You” Year - filled with hopes, aspirations, wishes, objectives, plans, dreams, dreams, and more dreams all in place to lead you (and yours) to a more fulfilling place and a brighter future.

In the classic Broadway musical, South Pacific, there was a line from a song in the show worthy of repeating: “If you don’t have a dream, how you gonna make a dream come true?”

Dream on. Dream on. Happy YOU Year!

-Ira Blumenthal, author of Your Best is Next

For more on pushing forward towards new goals, check out Your Best is Next>>

As a VERB, “resolve” is defined as “…firm determination to do something and committing to a course of action.” Example? “This new year, I resolve to train for and run in a marathon.”

As a NOUN, “resolve” is defined as “…consistently displaying the characteristic of determination, commitment and focus on forward thinking and forward action.” Example? “When it comes to an unwavering focus on exceeding customer expectations, she has great resolve.”

My first entry in this blog begins with “resolve” appropriately and importantly. After all, regardless of what our plans are and how we believe they will be accomplished, we need to start with defining a specific, realistic and important objective. Using words, lines and thoughts from my Simple Truths’s book, Your Best is Next, establishing a goal and even building a plan comes after the commitment. Let us not forget that “commitment” is an act, not a word.

Legendary, iconic women’s basketball Hall of Fame coach, Pat Summitt (“Coach of the Century” per the NCAA) told a story about how her son, Tyler, was cut while trying out for his school’s eighth grade basketball team. Tyler came home after learning he didn’t make the squad and told his mother, with tears in his eyes, “I didn’t make the basketball team… I was cut.”

Coach Summitt looked at her sad son who stood before her with basketballs under each of his arms and said to him, “Tyler, I promise you that if you start working today and wear out both of those balls practicing hard, you will make the team next year.”

Tyler responded, holding back his tears, “Mom, will you help me?” Pat Summitt then replied to Tyler with incredibly profound words we all should remember especially as it relates to “resolve.” She said, “Tyler, of course I will help you… but I will not start your engine!”

Commitment is the first step in starting our very own engine.

Commitment is an act, not a word. The keys to building a commitment to try new things, to do new things and to accomplish new challenges are:

1. having a crystal-clear purpose
2. making uncompromising sacrifices
3. adopting an unwavering determination

However, and it’s a big “however,” you first must commit to starting your own engine.

Not starting your engine and avoiding making a commitment to your “next” endeavor is clearly an obstacle to growth. Although we all need to be flexible in our approaches to fulfilling various commitments and objectives, it’s still an undeniable fact that having no commitment leads you to having no attainment.

Having a crystal-clear purpose is vital. Purpose, in short, is tightly attached to direction. Ask yourselves the following questions to chart your direction:

• How will I define success?
• Why is this important me?
• Does this light my fire and excite me?
• What is my (specific) destination?
• Which way should I be heading?
• What is my contingency plan if course correction is needed?
• How will I know when I reach journey’s end?

People who resolve to committing to a course of action and people who are respected because of their resolve either find a way or create a way to achieve their objectives. They ignore thoughts or enticement for turning back and giving up.

Reverend Theodore Munger wrote, “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education, alone, will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘press on’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”

Persistence is vital. It has been said that a river runs through rock not by its power but by its persistence. It’s a continual process.

Passion is also vital. It’s often the driving force that leads to commitment and to successful conclusion. If you want something badly enough and accept that hard work, diligence, focus, persistence and a major personal commitment (time, resources, energy, etc.) is necessary to achieve your goals, you will surely be on the first rung of the ladder climbing to fulfillment.

It takes courage to face the challenges, make the choices and even face the uncertainty that comes with your commitment to a purpose. Action is the key. Remember, commitment is an act, not a word.

Resolve. Resolve!

-Ira Blumenthal, author of Your Best is Next

For more on pushing forward towards new goals, check out Your Best is Next>>

There are a lot of things you can do this coming year. This could be the year in your life where everything changed, because you finally got clarity and put in the work. However, there are certain things you must let go of to start having a better future. Once you give up these 5 things, everything in your life could change.

1. Other People’s Definition of Success

In the words of Srinivas Rao, host of The Unmistakable Creative podcast:

“At some point, I realized that I had to give up other people’s definition of success. This is one of the most difficult things to give up because it is so deeply embedded in our cultural narratives that it becomes the standard by which we measure our lives. Even as entrepreneurs we have collectively agreed that fame and fortune are the markers of success.

But, giving up other people’s definition of success is incredibly liberating and ultimately leads to the fullest expression of who you are and what matters to you. It’s not a one-time thing. It’s a daily habit of comparing less and creating more.”

“Success” doesn’t just mean what the larger mob of society says it means: lots of money, fame, and fortune. Many people with fame, fortune, and money have terribly empty, imbalanced lives.

Your success isn’t defined by what other people say.

No one can define your success but you. If you continue to let others tell you what success is, you’ll never reach it. Even if you did, it wouldn’t be a true success, because it’s not what you really valued.

No, living an extraordinary life means defining your own version of what success is. You can begin to spend your time on what really matters to you.

• Do you really want 1,000,000 Twitter followers?
• Do you really need to be in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list?
• Do you really want to be a New York Times best-selling author?

Or is your version of success more nuanced, more narrowed, more focused, more specific?

If you want to live an extraordinary life, your definition of success must be your own. If we are always chasing what other people tell us to, we’ll never experience true success.

Let go of other people’s versions of success. Define your own success, and achieve it.

That is true success.

2. Looking Good

Here’s an old parable:

“Once upon a time, there was a wise Zen master. People traveled from far away to seek his help. In return, he would teach them and show them the way to enlightenment.

On this particular day, a scholar came to visit the master for advice. “I have come to ask you to teach me about Zen,” the scholar said.

Soon, it became obvious that the scholar was full of his own opinions and knowledge. He interrupted the master repeatedly with his own stories and failed to listen to what the master had to say. The master calmly suggested that they should have tea.

So the master poured his guest a cup. The cup was filled, yet he kept pouring until the cup overflowed onto the table, onto the floor, and finally onto the scholar’s robes. The scholar cried “Stop! The cup is full already. Can’t you see?”

“Exactly,” the Zen master replied with a smile. “You are like this cup — so full of ideas that nothing more will fit in. Come back to me with an empty cup.”

Most people believe they already have it all figured out, yet wonder why opportunities, luck, and success continues to elude them.

Choose to become a student first, and success will find you.

If you want to look good — if you want everyone to think you have all the answers — then you’re fooling all of them and yourself.

True success comes from knowledge, humility, and becoming a student of your craft. You can’t have that if you insist on looking like you have all the answers.

3. Busyness

“The most successful people I know are not busy. They’re focused.” -Jeff Goins, best-selling author

How you spend your days is how you spend your life.

A lot of people love being “busy.” They wear it as a badge of honor. When you ask them how they’ve been, what’s the response? “I’m so busy,” they lament. But it’s a subtle brag. They like the feeling.

But when you’re busy, you don’t really do anything — just because your calendar is full of meetings, appointments, and commutes doesn’t mean you’re actually making any progress towards your true goals.

Are you focused, making tangible action steps towards what truly matters?

…Or are you just “busy?”

When you’re busy, you are on autopilot. You can’t see the hours slipping away, time you’ll never get back.

But when you choose to be focused — to spend your time and energy on achieving your true goals — that’s where the magic happens. That’s where focus turns into flow states, hyper-focused mental efforts to make fast progress.

Most people prefer the emotional boost of bragging about how “busy” they are, instead of actually doing the real hard work. Choose focus, not busyness.

4. Entertainment and Distraction

“Successful people don’t see it as ‘free time.’ They see it as the only time they have to do the things they really want to do in life and they don’t take a minute for granted.” -Nicolas Cole

Reinvesting your free time is one of the most important ingredients to your success.

If you’re working a full-time job, with a commute and family and bills, you don’t have a lot of free time. If you’re like most people, the precious little free time you do have is spent on entertainment and distraction, not learning and growing.

This is low-level thinking, and it will lead you to a, frankly, low-level life.

But true success requires sacrifice. A common misconception many of those sleep-when-you’re-dead hustle-entrepreneurs claim is that you need be working all the time.

The truth is, you need to work your butt off — for a time. After you’ve spent the time creating your life, you can sit back and enjoy the work you’ve done.

I like aimless free time, and it’s important no matter who you are or where you’re at.

But if you want to make great strides and achieve a truly extraordinary life, you need to reinvest your free time into learning new skills, putting in the work, and being productive.

It won’t last forever. But you need to put in the time now, so later, you can have the life you want.

5. “Kinda-Good” Opportunities

You can do amazing things with your life — but only if you have the time to do them.

When my wife and I moved to South Korea for a year to teach English, my #1 goal was to become a full-time writer by the end of the 12 months.

During that year, I was offered several high-paying, interesting jobs:

• Youth basketball coach
• Career coach
• Private tutor
• Remote data analyst
• Musician for a church worship group

But in the end, none of these kinda-cool opportunities would help me achieve my #1 goal. On the contrary, they’d take up what little free time I had.

I said no to all of them. By the end of 12 months, I was making a full-time income as a writer. I had a signed book deal, tens of thousands of new followers, and I was getting hundreds of thousands of views each month.

There’s great power in saying no to kinda-good opportunities. There’s also great consequences if you spend all your time on the merely “good” opportunities — it means you won’t have time for the truly great ones when they come.

In Conclusion

Good things come from sacrifice.

If you want what you’ve never had, you must do what you’ve never done. It’s to start sacrificing the right things so you can have a better future.

Don’t let anyone define success but you. Stop being “busy,” and start being focused. Don’t worry about looking good, concentrate on learning all you can from everywhere you can. Spend your time wisely, because many things want your attention and energy. Make sure they’re the right things.

-Anthony Moore, author of What Extraordinary People Know

For more on living your best life, check out What Extraordinary People Know>>

In 10 Simple Secrets of the World’s Greatest Business Communicators, I save the best tip for last. Secret number ten is ‘Reinvent Yourself.’ It simply means that great communicators are made, not born. It could be the most important lesson of all.

If you don’t believe in your ability to improve as a speaker, to inspire and to electrify your audiences, I’m afraid the other communication strategies won’t do you much good. Here’s the good news—anyone can become a great speaker. Yes, it takes some people longer than others to get really good at it, but you can master the skill that is essential to elevating your success. In fact, people who have always been fairly comfortable at public speaking aren’t necessarily the ones who capture our hearts.

Great speakers make it look effortless because they put a lot of effort into making it great.

Let me offer a few examples from people who make an appearance in my book. Not one of these speakers was a ‘natural.’ Some had serious stage fright. But they all have a growth mindset, built their skills, and believed in their ability to reinvent themselves.

Warren Buffett
Warren Buffett’s most cherished degree isn’t his business school diploma; it’s a certificate from a Dale Carnegie public-speaking course. Buffett has acknowledged that he was “terrified” of public speaking early in his career. He knew he had to get comfortable in front of groups if he hoped to succeed as an investment advisor. Recently, Buffett has been asked by young people for life advice. Get really good at public-speaking, he always says. It can raise your career value by 50%, instantly, according to Buffett. When a billionaire offers advice, it pays to listen!

Arnold Schwarzenegger
I worked as a television news journalist before I made the transition to writing full-time. In 2003, CBS News invited me to cover Arnold Schwarzenegger’s political campaign and his first 100 days as California’s governor. I guess they thought a movie star would be filling his days with celebrity parties. When it became clear that Schwarzenegger was spending his time, well, governing, I got less time on the air. But what I learned changed my life and my career.

You see, I had a front-row seat to Schwarzenegger’s speeches, sometimes more than one a day. He delivered talks to a wide range of audiences: voters, students, and business leaders. I watched him take complex subjects and customize the language he used for different audiences so they could relate to him and understand the subject. It was an advanced master class in public-speaking.

Keep this in mind. Schwarzenegger came to the U.S. as a body builder who didn’t speak English very well. The studio hired an actor to provide the voice-over in one of Schwarzenegger’s early movies. However, he attacked the language barrier with the same razor-sharp focus he put into his sports career. In the mid-1990s, Schwarzenegger’s visibility as a political leader began to rise. Schwarzenegger knew that he had to become a better speaker in front of a live audience—not a movie camera. He began to seek out every opportunity to practice. Much as Ronald Reagan had done before him, Schwarzenegger gave speeches to every possible group, not only to share his ideas but to improve his speaking ability.

Schwarzenegger saw himself as someone very different than the movie-going public saw him. He reinvented himself to pursue that vision.

Barbara Corcoran
Shark Tank star Barbara Corcoran made a fortune in real estate. She turned a $1,000 loan into a multi-million-dollar empire. Today, Corcoran puts her money behind entrepreneurs who have a good idea and make a pitch on the hit show. Corcoran was once terrified of public speaking. Determined to grow and reinvent herself as a speaker, Corcoran volunteered to teach a real-estate course at a local junior college. It paid off in two ways. She grew more comfortable as a public speaker, and she met a woman who would go on to become one of Corcoran’s top salespeople.

When you change the way you see yourself as a speaker, the speaker your audience sees will change. Reinvent yourself. Believe you belong—and you will.

-Carmine Gallo, author of 10 Simple Secrets to the World's Greatest Business Communicators

For the other 9 secrets, check out 10 Simple Secrets to the World's Greatest Business Communicators>>

Years ago, I was working as a telemarketer. There were about 100 of us, all making 250+ calls a day to angry people, trying to get the sale.

But after 14 months of telemarketing, my 99 other coworkers were still stuck at their job. On the other hand, I was offered a high salary, a huge promotion, and an enormous network of top-tier company executives.

When I told people how I did it, they didn’t believe me. They thought I was making it up.

“No,” I insisted. “I’m telling you — I just bought coffee and lunch for anyone willing to sit down and chat with me about their job. And it worked.”

If you want to get a raise, promotion, or build your network — especially in your company — the secret is simple: informational interviews. Because once you start to build relationships with the higher-ups (something any employee can do, using this method), you can expect to move up quickly in the company while the rest of your coworkers look on with confusion, jealousy, and awe.

In the meantime — because frankly, just because you start meeting people doesn’t magically create job openings, these things take time — start asking people what skills you should be learning. Then, start practicing those things.

For me, I learned the Career Services department wanted leadership and project management skills. It was really hard to be motivated in my telemarketing job, and there were lots of committees, projects, and leadership roles I could’ve been doing. So, that’s where I started. I became a team lead. I helped with the Title IX committee. I offered to volunteer to help with the sexual harassment training program. Anything to learn the skills my new job would want.

As for raises and promotions, those come with the territory for new jobs. Still, I’ve had several high-stakes salary negotiations (the conversations that determine how much money you get), and the most helpful strategy I learned was simple: know your stuff, and know the people. If you can present who you are, the skills you learned for that exact role, and how that will benefit the company, the rest of the conversation swings heavily in your favor. Compare that with the random employee with the short resume who has no idea what the company wants.

In short: focus on learning and creating. It’s easy to take the minimum-amount-of-work road at your job — frankly, most people do. But spend your free time becoming the person your next job wants you to be. As Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert once wrote, “Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success.”

Take it From a Hardcore Introvert - Meeting People Can Actually Be Fun

I’m a soft-spoken introvert. I don’t excel at talking to new people. (Why do you think I’m writing this??) But I managed to build tight relationships with some of the most senior-level executives at my company, many of whom were 10-20 years older than me, which I used to get a huge raise, promotion, and great network I still use to this day.

Take the first step — send an email to the person in your company you want to meet. Start with the people/department you want to work with. They’re going to be the key to finding the shortcut past all the job postings, hiring managers, and timetables.

I used to work at an online university. I wanted to switch from telemarketing to Career Services. So I began systematically reaching out to every single employee in that department. I took over a dozen of them out to coffee and lunch. By the 8th or 9th person, I began hearing the same thing: “I’ve heard about you. It’s Anthony, right? You took Sharon out to lunch!” They were talking about me. And guess who’s name came up when the new job opened?

The truth is, this is fun. It’s not about all work-related stuff — my coworkers-to-be and I talked about sports, current events, hobbies, anything fun. People are going to pick the nice guy who bought them lunch instead of the other just-as-qualified guy 9 times out of 10. Build relationships, and have fun doing it.

-Anthony Moore, author of What Extraordinary People Know

For more on living your best life, check out What Extraordinary People Know>>