Five Steps To Prepare You For Success

Achieve the Mindset for Long term goals

“If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought.”

First: Maintain A Positive Mindset!

As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. — Proverbs 23:7

The essence of any successful man’s mental attitude is positive thinking. If you expect success, you get success; but if you expect failure, you eventually get failure. Negativism is one of life’s great cop-outs, because it allows you to accept life’s little failures without embarrassment. If you expect to fail — and you have communicated this belief to those around you — you will not look that bad when you do fail. But if you expect and communicate success, then fail, you end up looking like a fool.

It is risky to expect positive things to happen to you, but positive self-expectancy is the only sure way of being successful.

‘What can be conceived and believed can be achieved’ —

but it takes more than saying ‘I can’ to pass exams or achieve any other goal. One of the presuppositions of neurolinguistic programming is that if one person can do something, anyone can learn to do it. Therefore confidence, self-discipline, self-esteem, mental toughness, persuasion, concentration and decisiveness are all qualities and skills you can learn and develop, just as you have learned to tie your shoelaces, drive a car or ride a bicycle. You need to develop an effective strategy by using role models. Find someone who is achieving the success you want. Find out what that individual is doing. Do the same things and you will achieve the same results. The price you pay is to take consistent action and to do it repeatedly until you acquire the winning habits that will allow you to achieve those results.

Second: Maintain Your Self-motivation

Great souls have wills, feeble ones have only wishes. — Chinese proverb

Men who do not persist with their desire to succeed do so out of choice! They have chosen not to exercise self-discipline and persistence to work diligently towards their goal. You can choose to be a success or failure:

‘Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right’.

Realise that nothing is final until you accept it as such. We all make mistakes, we all fall down and we have all at some time given up under adversity. However, to stay down once you’ve fallen is a matter of choice!

Third: Commitment

If success has an entry fee, the cost is total commitment. — Denis Waitley

There is no lasting success without absolute commitment. Achievers are willing to do whatever it takes to succeed. This commitment to ‘paying the price’ is the essential quality in the mindset of an achiever. Heed Goethe’s advice:

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred … Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it now. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.

Remember the words of the Jedi Master Yoda in Star Wars: ‘Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try’.

Fourth: Goal-setting

If you fail to plan, plan to fail.

Once you have made up your mind to achieve your goal, you must chart a course towards this ultimate goal. This means intelligent goal-setting. Goal-setting is not easy. To be effective, it requires constant review and change. Goal-setting involves writing out the steps it will take to accomplish your mission. It may take 5 months, it may take 10 years, but the mission must be broken down into smaller units so that you know what you are to achieve in each area every day, week, month.

Goal-setting will allow you to plan your time most effectively. Service commitments, domestic demands and social obligations are the main factors affecting reaching your goal. Organise your working time to your greatest advantage by sensibly reviewing your commitments. Ensure that realistic time periods are allotted. Decide an order of priority in their execution and then do it! A small amount of time used at the start of the day reviewing what tasks need to be done pays off every single time. Remember always to differentiate between important tasks and urgent tasks.

Last: Affirmation

Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice — it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved. — W. Bryan

An affirmation is a positive statement describing what you want to be, have or do. The constant repetition of positive thought day in and day out displaces stored negative thoughts in your subconscious mind. In the words of Benjamin Franklin, ‘Little strokes fell great oaks’.

Hope this helps…