CAN I BE SUCCESSFUL?

In the last blog article I showed you how to set five year goals and how to break them down into four, three, two, and one year goals.  But then I asked the question that I know some of you were asking,  “What if my goals (especially financial) are really scary?  Can I be successful?”

Sometimes we just aren’t convinced that we can be successful.

“What if my financial goal is just not practical?”, you ask. If you are asking that question, it may prove that you are a practical, forward-thinking person and that is good. Ok, let’s look at that. What would make your one year dollar goal impractical? Maybe the dollar figure turns out to be so high that you would have to double the size of your business in the next year and although that might be possible, you just don’t think you can do enough activity in the next year to get it accomplished. Maybe you sell a product or service that can be sold and/or demonstrated to either individuals or to groups and to reach your goal, you would have to do a lot of employee group sales to large businesses or would have to demonstrate your product to large groups of people at a time and you don’t want to do that type of sales. Maybe you are in a network marketing business and achieving your goal would require so many recruits to get you to the level of income you need that you just don’t think you can do enough activity in the next year to achieve it. At first glance those obstacles do seem to provide a lot of justification for the question, “Can I be successful?”

But notice what the problem is in all of the above scenarios.  YOU are not willing to do either the type of activity or the amount of activity that it would take to achieve the goal.  In both cases it is a matter of YOUR choice.

And THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT!!

You may not feel that you would be effective at group sales or it may just be so far out of your comfort zone to get up in front of audiences that you need more than a year of practice before you can do it.  Or you may not even think you can ever do it.  (I will talk about that in a later post.) You may work a day job now and just not be available at the optimum times that group sales or group demonstrations need to be done.  You may also have looked at the number of recruits needed for your network marketing business and have decided you just don’t have the time to put in that much activity. Or you may have looked at the activity it would take to double the size of your business and have decided you just don’t want to work that hard.  That is legitimate.  There is nothing wrong with that.  Knowing your own present limitations and weaknesses is a strength.

BELIEVE IN YOURSELF!

The first step off the board is sometimes the hardest to take.

You should be able to be honest about yourself. I used to do evaluations of managers who worked for me and sometimes I would ask the manager to do the same evaluation of himself or herself using the same form I used before I did the actual evaluation interview. One thing I learned was that many people knew their own weaknesses and were usually harder on themselves than I was. The only time I worried was when the manager’s evaluation bore little resemblance to mine. That meant I had either totally misread the person or the manager did not understand his or her weaknesses. Usually it was the latter and the manager involved had limited future success in managing a store. So knowing your weaknesses is a strength. We all have weaknesses but we can’t do anything about them until we know what they are. Just make sure that fear is not causing you to create weaknesses where there are none. Or that you are not exaggerating the weakness out of proportion to reality. It could be that overcoming the weak area is just a matter of stepping out of your comfort zone and trying something new. Fear is huge factor for many people in their inability to take the first step toward success. I don’t minimize fear as a factor. It can be excruciatingly painful. To learn more about getting past that, Martina McGowan’s insight into overcoming the fear of failure is well worth reading.

Ok.  Let’s assume that there is a problem area, one of the above list or another one, that is an obstacle to achieving your goals.  Successful people DO find ways to go around, through, over, or under obstacles to achieve their goals.  They think out of the box.  They find solutions that are not obvious.  They sometimes exhibit great courage in achieving their goals.  Their desire is simply greater than their fear.

This is important.

YOUR PRESENT PERSONAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL HANDICAPS ARE TEMPORARY OBSTACLES TO YOUR SUCCESS AND NEVER HAVE TO BE PERMANENT UNLESS YOU ALLOW THEM TO BE!!

You might want to write that down and memorize it.

Believe in yourself. Never forget that you are a creation of God.

So what can you do about these personal and environmental obstacles?  You can use the brain God gave you, the courage you have lurking inside waiting to get out, and the tools I am giving you.  You can set goals to overcome your weaknesses.  You can use spaced repetition to learn new habits and exhibit new behaviors.  You can be courageous in practicing skills that can overcome your fears.  You can find ways to make your time more productive so that you can eventually quit that job that is tying you down.  You can believe in yourself.  And you can make a decision right now to never ever ever give up!!

IT IS YOUR FUTURE AND YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR IT!

This is very important.  No matter what the personal or environmental obstacle that is standing in the way of your reaching your dreams, what you do about it is a matter of PERSONAL choice.  It IS possible to achieve your goals.  There is little likelihood that there is a defect in your long-term abilities that would keep you from doing it.  YOU choose whether to overcome the obstacle or not.

So what is the solution?  The answer to the question “Can I be successful?” is really pretty simple. It is up to you.  You need to figure out what you CAN or ARE WILLING to accomplish and set your goals accordingly.  I will explain how to do that in the next post.  I just hope the above discussion motivated you to expand your possibilities.

I WOULD LIKE TO HEAR FROM YOU!

Let me know about your past successes or failures and whether what you have gotten from this blog so far has changed your thinking in any way or set you on a new path.  If you enjoyed “Can I be successful?”, I would like to know.  Please  leave a comment.  I would like to hear from you.  And if you leave your name and email address at the top right corner of this page, I will also send you a notification anytime I update the blog.