To Succeed At Anything, Do These Two Things

I remember sitting in the library reading a book years ago one lazy afternoon while I was looking out the window at the Front Range. (It's what we call the mountains where the Rockies and the Great Plains meet. In that book I remember reading a quote my Jim Rohn that stood out to me. This was the quote: If you don't design your own life plan, chances are, you'll fall into someone else' plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.

Whether it's your personal life, or career, we have two choices. We can either work hard and hope something happens the way we want it to happen. It's like the Spanish phrase: Que Sera Sera, best known from a song of the same name by Doris Day way back in the 1950's. Whatever will be will be. The majority of the people, at least I'm of the opinion, operate this way. One part of the verse in the song goes: The futures not ours to see, Que Sera Sera, what will be will be. The philosophy of the whole song is a life of chance and we have no knowledge of what the future holds.

The second choice is to design the life, the career you want. Is life full of nothing but chance, or can we design where we'd like to go? Well, if it's the former, then there is no need in reading any farther because you are wasting you time. I adhere to a philosophy best summed up in a quote by a gentleman named Steven Redhead who said, “Life is just a game of chance, a dance with fate if you let it be so. Or you could chose to play by your rules to win.”

The second choice is to design the life, the career you want.

If the later appeals to you then I'd like to introduce you to what I call the “Success Formula.” It's the way you must live in order to design and bring to life the world you want.

There are two parts to this formula, and they both work together. I will describe each one generally here. You can read more about them in depth later on. The two parts are these:

1. You need a good marketing strategy to get there.
2. You need to be willing to grow into the person you need to be.

You Need a Good Marketing Strategy

Not just any marketing strategy, but one designed to bring to life the world you want live in. This is the difference in living and working hard in the “rat race” everyday hoping things work out, Que Sera Sera, verses being a Creator of your life and living by design. A plan encourages consistency, clarity of intent and focus.

Not only do you need a well thought out marketing plan, but it needs to be written down. I have met too many people that can explain to me what they are doing, but don't have it written down and often, don't follow through. Just writing it down will increase your probability of accomplishing it by 42% according to a study done by Dr. Gail Matthews, a psychology professor at Dominican University of California. She took a sample group included men and women, ages 23 to 72, from around the world and all walks of life: Entrepreneurs, educators, health care professionals, artists, lawyers and bankers. Dividing them two groups, she had those who wrote down their goals and those who didn’t. Participants who wrote down their goals achieved those desires at a significantly higher level than those who didn’t, by a clip of 42%.

Willingness to Grow into the Person You Need to Become

Not only do you need a good marketing plan, you must be willing to grow into the person you need to be to build it. I'm sure you'll agree, the “future you” three years down the road is much different from the “present you.”

Gandhi said it well: You must be the change you want to bring to the world. Your future reality will only become what you become. People talk about having amazing long relationships, a certain career or income level and even a certain standard in governing. The only way for this to happen is to “be” the partner, worker, citizen you want most to be. What you want in life, our dreams, whether for career or personal, you must become ourselves FIRST before you can bring it to life.

The outer world often reacts to you based upon our actions and reactions to it. But you think it's the other way around. Sometimes you may think: “I cannot be the conscientious, fair, responsible, compassionate, and loving person I truly am until others do what I want or see the world the way I want them to see it.” The only way to create the world you want for yourself is to change yourself first. People react to you right now in a certain way and to get that to change you've got to change yourself so they react in a different manor. Change what-- your own behavior & emotions. It boils down to what we are giving to others. Don't you feel more authentic and true to yourself when you focus on what you want to give instead of what you want to take? What produces the greatest gain in self-value for you?

The only way to create the world you want for yourself is to change yourself first.

They Work Together

You will grow into the person you need to be and the world will reflect it back to you. But, it happens on your journey. As you fulfill the daily tasks, implementing your marketing plan, this is where you will learn where you need to grow as a person. Whatever you need to face and grow into, if you are willing, I can all but guarantee your dreams will come to life.

This is your “success formula.”

1. Dream, dream what you want, in specific detail.
2. Plan it out and consistently implement that plan.
3. Be willing to grow when the challenges come for you to do that.

Everything, and I mean everything will come true just the way you dream it.

John Mylant is a Coach residing in Colorado Springs, CO. He is well sought after for his program called The Inner Game of Real Estate that helps Agents discover how to work as a Creator of their careers and stop blusterous working hard, hoping to survive. To learn more about The Inner Game of Real Estate, contact John at: [email protected].