The Ultimate Keys to Success!

by: Cedric Licuanan

There are only 4 steps to fulfilling happiness and success.

1) Specialized Education and Knowledge

The first step is to acquire specialized education, knowledge, and training in the field that you intend to succeed.

LEARN TO SUCCEED.

In other words, you must LEARN first, in order to SUCCEED next. Your mind and knowledge must ALWAYS grow upwards. Once we stop learning, we die mentally.

Someone tells you to build a house. So what do you do? Where do you start? The mentality of an unsuccessful person might cause them to respond, 'I can't build a house, I've never done it before, and I don't know how.'

However, the mentality of a successful person will cause them to respond, 'How can I build this house? Although I've never done it before, where can I start learning how?'

It all boils down to an extremely powerful 3-word question:

'HOW CAN I?'

Basically, a successful person will find a way to 'Figure it out.' He or she will do what it takes to acquire the specialized education and knowledge used in the house building and construction industry, and figure out, 'How can I?'

The successful person will also leverage his or her time by tapping into the knowledge of other successful people in the industry, hopefully experts in the house construction field. They say, 'No man is an island', or 'Two heads are better than one.'

As the successful person works on acquiring the assistance of other successful people, the otherwise daunting task of building and constructing a house is well on its way, while the unsuccessful person didn't even get the task off the ground.

Quite a difference that three-word question makes, doesn't it?

Not 'I CAN'T!', but instead 'HOW CAN I?'

'Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.' -W. B. Yeats

'The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.' - B.B. King

'Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.' - Malcolm Forbes

2) Specific Goals
The second step is to commit to specific, attainable, time-bound goals. As soon as you commit to your goals, it is important to simply share your goals with a supportive loved one.

Everybody talks about goals, and goal setting. There is an incredible amount of material on the purpose and reasoning for setting goals. There is just a tremendous amount of information available about goals, but the most important ideas that stand are as follows:
'
SMART'
Specific: Your goals must not be too general, and broad. Make your goals laser targeted and targeted.

Measurable: Your goals should be able to be benchmarked and calculated.

Attainable: Your goals should be obtainable and achievable within reason.

Reasonable: Your goals should be appropriate and consistent with the future that you have planned.

Time-Bound: Your goals should have a deadline - not just 'whenever I feel like it'.

You MUST have a burning desire in order to successfully attain your goals. Too many people have shortchanged themselves and their lives by setting goals for themselves, and not following through with those goals. That 'burning desire' does not seem to exist for certain goals that we set in our lives, heck I'm guilty of that same sin! However, with a strong burning desire, anybody could accomplish any goal that they set their mind's to.

No more excuses! 'If it has to be, it is up to me'. You have to take ownership and responsibility for your life. You have to stop the Blame Game.

The two main obstacles to setting goals is your personal Fear and Doubt. You may fear that you may fail, and therefore doubt that you could overcome these obstacles towards success.

F.E.A.R. = False Evidence Appearing Real. Doubt is the EXACT opposite of faith.
Avoid these 2 obstacles AT ALL COSTS!
Write down your Goals on Paper! 'I will.....' Always have your SMACT goals written down, easily viewable every single day. Review them first thing in the morning, during the day, and finally right before you go to bed.

Review your goals daily!
'Repetition is the Mother of Skill'. The repetition that gets accomplished when you focus on your goals every single day is incredibly powerful.

Use Visualization!
Always close your eyes and picture yourself actually achieving your goals. Picture the reward that you will receive as well as do everything that you can to pretend to 'feel' that incredible sense of accomplishment. Try to mentally connect that feeling with a sense of accomplishment of the past.

'What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.' -Zig Ziglar
'When we are motivated by goals that have deep meaning, by dreams that need completion, by pure love that needs expressing -- then we truly live life.' -Greg Anderson
'You control your future, your destiny. What you think about comes about. By recording your dreams and goals on paper, you set in motion the process of becoming the person you most want to be.' -Mark Victor Hansen

3) Focused Persistent Planned Action
The third step is to set up an action plan with FOCUSED PERSISTENT ACTION towards your goals. 'Plan your work, and then work your plan'. Start out with baby steps at first, then work your way up to large strides. Everyone starts somewhere!
The single most characteristic that is DIRECTLY related to success is Persistence. The ability to continue moving forward regardless of the obstacles placed in front of you is the essence of the characteristic of Persistence.

Every person has a limit to how much resistance they could handle before giving up, and the main difference between the successful and the unsuccessful is the amount of resistance that a person is willing to endure.

If Persistence is the number one action taken towards extreme success, the unfortunate action of giving up too quickly is the number one reason for dramatic failure. For example, imagine yourself taking part in a long-distance run in your city. At the very first sign of fatigue, you have 2 simple decisions: 1) You give up and stop now 2) You persist and continue forward.
If you chose the first decision.....well, there's not much to be said about this first decision. If you did not finish the race, then unfortunately you have to chalk this one up as a failure.
However, if you chose the second decision, your chances for success just dramatically increased.
MA=MR MASSIVE ACTION = MASSIVE RESULTS
'The race goes not always to the swift, but to those who keep on running.' -Anonymous
'Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.' -Dale Carnegie
'Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.' -Thomas Alva Edison

4) Excellence
The final step is to do what you do extremely WELL. If you are going invest the time and effort taking action towards your goals, you might as well try to be good at what you do. Heck, why not become an expert at it also? When a person stands out in the crowd as well-known 'expert', AMAZING things happen in their lives!
Being able to excel at something is usually due to either progressive repetition, or pure talent.

When a person starts to succeeding in business, she notices that if all she did was focus on the characteristic of Excellence, she would succeed indefinitely.

Whenever she found herself having some down time: Waiting in line, waiting for the movie to start, commercial breaks on TV, etc. She would simply take out my wallet and read this document. This tiny act would literally take only 20 seconds, but it helped her TREMENDOUSLY. When your brain and mind gets exposed to positive messages repetitively, eventually the message sinks in. You want to have this 'Excellence Mindset' in all that you do. You want to be able to be able to excel and succeed in all the tasks of a successful person.

Become an Expert It is VERY important to 'become the Expert' in your particular industry. You want to be able set up a reputation for yourself as the 'go to' person. In other words, other people in your chosen industry always seem to turn to you with their questions and concerns, etc.

'Excellence is the result of caring more than others think is wise; risking more than others think is safe. Dreaming more than others think is practical and expecting more than others think is possible.' -Anonymous

'Excellence is never an accident: it is the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction, skillful execution and the vision to see obstacles as opportunities.' -Unkown

'Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better.' -Pat Riley
In Summary, 1) Do everything you can to attain the specialized education and knowledge in your field 2) Set specific goals and timelines 3) Put your goals and plans into PERSISTENT ACTION and finally 4) Do what you can to EXCEL in your activities!

Utilize the 4 Ultimate Keys to Success in ALL your endeavors, and get ready for an incredible ride in the months and years ahead!

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Boosting Your Success with Six Easy Happiness Tips

by: Christina Winsey-Rudd

In what areas of your life would you like to achieve greater success? State-of-mind (attitude towards life and work) absolutely affects your performance and your outcomes. People who stay in jobs they hate, or relationships and situations in which they are chronically unhappy are not only missing out on the joy life has to offer, but are literally putting their health at risk at the same time.

When coaching clients I ask them to do a rough pre-assessment: on a scale of one to ten, ten being that you are consistently happy with your day-to-day life 90-95% of the time, where do you rank? If the answer is five or six, here are some tips and techniques to boost it up.

Live by your definition of happiness and success? Many people feel an ongoing sense of dissatisfaction with their lives or businesses because they are using someone else’s “happiness measuring stick”. Comparing your life and achievements to those of others, and using their criteria rather than yours is a sure fire way to lose the happiness game.

Take “happiness breaks” using a “fun and joy list”. Many people don’t realize how much more productive they can be by feeding their souls and hearts throughout the workday. Lunch hour not withstanding, 10-15 minute “happiness breaks” are real attitude and brain-boosters. A checklist prevents you from saying “I wouldn’t even know what to do with myself if I took a break from work.”

Become a Pollyanna! Pollyanna, contrary to popular opinion, wasn’t teaching denial, or pie in the sky positive thinking. Rather she perfected a mind-set of learned optimism and of seeing the glass “half full”. Pollyanna’s “Glad Game” turned around an entire town from being gloomy and pessimistic to being a happy, joyful place.

Not only will your sunny outlook help you be happier more of the time, but also your “vibes” will positively affect those around you. If you’re single, keeping a sunny disposition will make your “vibe” much more attractive. People like to be around upbeat people who make them feel good).

If you’re in sales, or are looking to climb a success ladder, you will be much more attractive to your ideal employer or ideal customer if your attitude is obviously an optimistic and happy one.

Have Better Relationships by Living From Both Head and Heart. Being too rigid, and intellectual can really wreck the relationship “happiness quotient”. The people in your life, just like you, want to hear expressed appreciation and to be given more understanding.

Sadly, it seems much easier in our society, for people to express disappointment, criticism and negative observations than it does the positive ones. Speak words of encouragement and appreciation freely.

Ask for acknowledgement when you need it too. People can’t (HEAR THIS – THEY ABSOLUTELY CAN’T) read your mind. When you give and take freely of appreciation, understanding, praise, joy and fun in relationships they are bound to flourish.

On the business side of things, you will be seen as a premier team player when you contribute to your business relationships in this way.

Stay in the here and now. When coaching clients, one of the most frequent things I hear is “When I achieve this goal I will finally be happy.” Life isn’t happening “then”. Life is happening right NOW!

Make a habit of slowing things down. Savor those good people, experiences and feelings in the very moment you are experiencing them. While you are experiencing them and noticing them, inwardly say a thought of gratitude that you have this person, job, experience, feeling, or talent.

Whatever it is that you are enjoying, it will stay with you longer throughout the day if you don’t let it fly by without acknowledgement. At the end of the day, as you review it, if you’ve really practiced this “here and now happiness”, the overall feeling about your day will be a good one.

When negatives come along the fact that you have spent time practicing this “here and now happiness” will make it a great deal easier to wade through it without overreacting.

Quiet your negative self-talk. Many people are completely unaware of the numerous negative things they may say to themselves throughout the day. The fact is that, like criticism of others, negative self-talk never ever helped anyone perform better.

Become your own detective. Carry a little notebook around with you and whenever you are aware of some negative thoughts running through your mind write them down. Then consciously and deliberately refute the negative thought with some positive observations.

What if you were to stop those thoughts as if you were a policeman with a whistle and immediately bring on the flow of positive self-compliments? Pick any and all good characteristics about both your looks and about you as a person begin to acknowledge yourself for them emphatically.

Here again, when you love and appreciate yourself for what’s good, your “vibes” will be good ones and people will like being around you. In fact, they will begin to think and feel about you, the way you do. When you value yourself the world will too!

These are just a few ways you can enhance the quality of your happiness experience and your life. Get creative and begin thinking of your own solutions! They will pay big dividends.

"Go for the moon. If you don't get it, you'll still be heading for a star."

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The Real Key To Happiness, Peace of Mind, and Massive Success

by: Rick Miller


Do you know the secret that allowed 100% of the world's wealthiest people to become successful?

Amazingly though, even if you read all their books, attend their speeches, or even ask them in person, you'll probably never discover the one true secret of their success.

Why?

Because they probably don't even know themselves ...

They're too caught up in what they do each day. They may be totally unaware of why almost everything they're involved in becomes a success.

Would you like to know their secret?

Listen closely:

All truly successful people live in alignment with their passions ... they're fulfilling their purpose in life. They're living their own dreams.

The famous theologian William Barclay once said, "There are two great days in a person's life--the day we are born and the day we discover why."

Most people, regardless of religion or lack of religion, instinctively feel that there's a higher purpose to life ... and that if they could determine their mission in life, they'd be much more happy and satisfied.

Once you start to follow your passions and mission in life, the Universe (God or Nature, depending on what you believe) seems to start helping you achieve your goals, often by presenting startling opportunities for you ...

In a recent interview with Chris and Janet Attwood, they revealed a remarkable tool that'll help you quickly determine your purpose in life--The Passion Test.

(Note: To access the Attwood's complete audio interview for free, see end of article)

The simple test, a series of probing questions that you ask yourself, will quickly help you identify your top passions, what's really important in your life.

According to Janet, "The number-one reason people don't get what they want is--is they don't know what they want."

Once you discover your passions and align your life with them, success comes quickly and automatically.

What's more startling, she found that every single highly successful person who's taken the test (Mark Victor Hansen, Jack Canfield, T. Harv Eker, Dan Poynter, to name a few) already are accomplishing their top passions.

Undoubtedly knowing your passions speeds up the path to success.

Most importantly, she also revealed ways to help you realign your life to help you follow those passions.

The one key ingredient in reaching any goal or accomplishment is that you must totally love and enjoy whatever you are wanting to appear in your life.

It has to be your dream, not someone else's.

Do you really want a million dollars or would you rather have someone to love and be loved back?

Do you want that mansion or would you rather travel and not be tied down to any geographical location?

Only you can decide ...

After taking the Passion Test, I was profoundly changed in the way I view my life.

For me, I discovered that my number one passion is gaining dynamic health, my number two passion is improving myself, and three is mastering the guitar.

I realize now that I've put those desires on the back burner while I worked totally on survival goals (you know, making money and dealing with life's obstacles).

With that in mind, it's clear to me that I've missed out on a lot of joys that accomplishments in those areas would have brought me.

So I have a lot of work ahead of me to bring my life back into alignment with my most important passions ...

What about you? You owe it to yourself to discover your passions. It'll help you to become a success in all areas of your life.

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A Guide To Success And Happiness For Young People

by: Mario Churchill

Success and happiness are not often thought to co-exist in todayfs society. As people work harder to accomplish more successful careers and more expensive toys, they find themselves unhappy with their lives. This is largely due to imbalance. People are spending entirely too much time working to be successful and not nearly enough time with family and stopping to smell the roses. These poor habits began in the nineties, and are being passed down to the next generation. But as young people, you can start planning now to have both success and happiness in your life as you grow older.

The first step toward achieving both success and happiness is to determine your definition of successful. Is it a certain type of career, a certain pay level, or the ability to have certain expensive items? The answers will be different for everyone, so this is definitely something that you should evaluate on your own, or with someone that knows and understands you and your core values. If you have not done so yet, now is also the time to evaluate your strengths, weaknesses, skills, talents, and interests to begin choosing a career path.

Your next step toward achieving both success and happiness is to determine what makes you happy, or what will make you happy in the future. Is family of great importance to you? Do you want to get married and have children in the future (or the present)? Is not needing to worry about money and bills enough to make you happy, or do you need less substantial methods of happiness such as a good support system and time with friends? Again, answers will be different for everyone.

Once you have an understanding of your core values, you will be better able to create a plan that will give you both success and happiness. When you start choosing a career, you will need to take into consideration what you need for happiness rather than simply focusing on success. If family and time with friends is important to you, you may want to choose a less demanding career that will likely have set work hours. If this is not as important to you as helping others, then a career in law or medicine might be more feasible.

Once you have determined your career path, you will need to set a series of smaller goals that, when completed, will lead you to your ultimate goal of success and happiness. When you set these goals, you should not simply focus on how fast you can get to your final goal of success. If you work extra hard and get to your career goal within a few years, but you lose all of your friends and values in the process, you will not have success and happiness. But, if you take your goals in stride, allowing for plenty of time for yourself and your loved ones, you will find yourself in a much happier disposition as you reach your success goals.

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9 Hidden Keys to Happiness and Success

by: Melissa Van Rossum

We all love to feel motivated. I know I do. It’s absolute nirvana to be on purpose and on task at the same time. But life often intervenes in my plans and that can mean stress, frustration and setbacks and I find that I have to live my life on Inner Motivation – particularly when the proverbial chips are down. Most of us wait for someone else to give us a reason to move ahead or we wait for circumstance or opportunity to line up in just the right way so we can move ahead with the inner commitment we’ve been holding back. We wait for our partner to say ‘I love you’ first, we wait for a sign of acceptance before we commit to revealing some part of ourselves and we wait for the evidence of the result before we commit our belief.

To many of us this seems like a smart or even shrewd way of going about business and life. We think we’re protecting and insulating ourselves by not putting too much ‘out there’ and therefore avoiding disappointment or (God forbid) rejection. In reality, though, this is actually a very dangerous way to live life because it puts your life and your happiness in someone else’s hands - a sure fire equation for misery. From the inside this may seem like a very controlled way to live life, but it’s actually a very out of control way to live life. That’s why it makes us so unhappy and leaves us so unfulfilled. There’s nothing dependable or controlled about it.

One of my favorite movie scenes is from the Indiana Jones movie where he (played by Harrison Ford) and his father (played by Sean Connery) are searching for the Holy Grail. Indiana’s father lies dying at the hands of the Nazis and to save his life Indiana must find the Holy Grail. To get to the Grail, Indiana has to accurately decode his father’s Grail diary which will enable him to make his way through certain life-threatening challenges. After successfully making his way through several of the tests, he comes to a huge chasm that lies between where he is and where he wants to be. He reads the Bible passage from his father’s diary which has to do with “faith being the evidence of things not seen”. He picks up a handful of sand and throws it out to the chasm only to see the sand fall on an invisible bridge.

I personally believe there lies a bridge across every chasm we face, no matter the depth or the breadth of the canyon. The path to whatever we want in life always exists and we can find it if we have the unwavering commitment and willingness to learn and grow in the ways required of us.

“Courage is the price that life extracts for peace of mind.”
Amelia Earhardt

When the relationship or the job or the project doesn’t go the way you wanted it to, you need to have Authentic Inner Motivation to get you to where you want to be. You can’t force yourself to be motivated. You have to develop it from the inside out. Having Authentic Inner Motivation at your disposal whenever you want it requires focus, commitment and discipline.

How do you do develop Authentic Inner Motivation? Let’s take a look at the formula:

1. Set Goals - First, decide what you want. Take your sales, income and personal goals, and be crystal clear about them. Write them down and look at them several times throughout the day. A vague goal of doing the best you can or giving your best every day won’t get you there. You have to clearly see what you want – and often.

I have a Vision Folder. Inside it I have photographs, pages from magazines and mock-ups that reflect my goals. It’s an easy and portable way to keep my goals in front me, and I look at them every morning and evening.

2. Commitment – Nothing happens without complete and total personal commitment. If you’re leaving out even 1% of your total dedication to accomplishing your goal, you won’t get there. Think about this…what would happen if your doctor had a 99% commitment to healing you or your loved one? Would that be enough for you? Would you have respect for them?

If you want to sleep well at night, if you want to be respected by those you’re in relationship with and if you want to have overwhelming self-respect – commit 155% of yourself to your goals and watch your life change for the better.

3. Self-Honesty – This is a tough one for some folks. Not everyone is comfortable taking a hard look within. But if you’re serious about being successful you need to look within to see what you’re doing to create your own experience. You also need to be honest about what skills you need to learn to get you to where you want to be. Also, take an honest internal inventory of your emotional health. If you’re carrying resentment from your last employment experience, your last relationship or any other experience, it’s limiting the success you create today.

Think about the people you’ve known that use resentment as insulation in their life – now notice how betrayal is a common theme in their life. There’s a reason for that. Call it the Law of Attraction, Karma, a self-fulfilling prophecy or the “as ye sow, so shall ye reap” principle, it means you are creating your own experiences. When you hold on to resentment, you are (subconsciously) believing that you don’t have a choice or any power in your current situation, that the other person is against you in some way and so this situation will turn negatively and there’s nothing you can do about it. Resentment always breeds betrayal in your life. Take an emotional inventory and heal and release the reasons for the negative emotions – particularly the resentment and watch the prosperity roll in!

4. Accountability – It doesn’t matter whether you listen to a minister, your favorite self-improvement author, your Mom or Dr. Phil, they will all tell you the same thing…your life is created from the inside out, so you might as well own it. Blame of any kind is a jail cell for your spirit.

5. Commit to Faith & Belief – Hebrews 11:1 says “Now faith is the evidence of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” - the faith and the belief has to come first – the evidence comes after. There was a book written several years ago under the title You’ll See It When You Believe It. Great title. In the tarot deck, the first card is the card of the Fool which shows a picture of a young man ostensibly walking off of the edge of the cliff – it’s said to be the bravest, most powerful card in the entire deck.

6. Have an Attitude of Gratitude – The most powerful words you can ever use, think or write is THANK YOU. Just as resentment can shut down your prosperity and relationships, an attitude of gratitude will open the floodgates of prosperity and love in your life. (Remember to use these powerful words with yourself as well!) Every life experience is a gift and a perspective of appreciation makes the inherent wisdom of our experiences all that more evident to us.

7. Practice Tolerance – Judgment is another self-limiting behavior that limits your success and hampers your motivation and creativity. Judgment is a terrible burden to carry around and creates a paranoiac state of mind. Practice tolerance and lighten your load!

8. Get Inspired – Inspiration comes from different sources for different people, and it’s essential that we know what works for us and that we prime these sources often. I have a writer friend who has her most motivating songs on a separate section on her iPod. When she feels blocked or frustrated or discouraged, one of the things she does is listen to those songs one by one. Long before the end of the songs she’s belting out the words right along with her favorite artist and she’s ready to take another stab at her project at hand. I like to go for a walk or a run outside. With two small children in my life I may only get ½ hour to squeeze in a run or a walk but that time is so inspirational to me. It really stirs my creativity. Meditating is inspirational as is a good movie, a good book or talking with someone else whose success you admire.

9. Take Care of Your Health – If you don’t feel well, it’s hard to stay motivated. So take good care of your health! Eat well, take vitamins, exercise every day, play, rest and enjoy your work! There’s a saying…anyone would give their money to have health, but no one would give their health to have money. Right now I’m really into juicing. It’s an idea that came to me while I was sitting outside (of course) next to the koi pond at Children’s Hospital when my son was ill last summer. As often as my husband could he would join us and come turn cartwheels to distract and make our son laugh so I could get some food into him. When –pop- there was the idea – juicing. It’s worked beautifully. Our son began drinking his veggies and since they’re masked under pineapple or apple or strawberries, he loves every drop. The rest of our family has started juicing as a result and I’m amazed at how good it makes you feel and how much energy it gives you! A friend of ours picked up the Jack Lalanne juicer for us while we were still in the hospital and he has a neat video on his site at www.powerjuicer.com .

Authentic Inner Motivation isn’t just a skill that will help you earn the kind of money that you want or that will make you happier while you’re doing it, it’s a way of living that will help you to live a happier and more successful life.

Use the AIM Formula in your work and let yourself shine! You’ll be happier, more successful and more prosperous for doing it.

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