Thursday, June 3, 2010

Why You Have to Fail to Be Successful

The reason that success seems so hard to obtain for most people is because there are so many obstacles on the way to becoming successful. If you look at any successful person, you can bet your butt that they didn't get there by being lucky. They got there through hard work and determination, as well as by having many setbacks and failures along the way. The difference is that the successful person manages to overcome all those failures and challenges and rise above them in the end.

Success starts with taking an action, and most people don't take action due to fear of failure. It's not about taking a risk and either becoming successful or not, in fact failure and success are the same thing. You can't have one without the other. Look at all the different types of failure, eg, muscle failure, mental failure, project failure. A good example to use is body building. You will hear body builders speak about pushing your body to failure. The body is designed to re-grow muscle bigger than when you started, so if you don't push your body to failure, your body won't grow.

In the same way, if you are not having the success level that you want, you are not failing enough. You need to take more action and more risk. In this way you learn the lessons that you need to learn to climb the ladder to success. Everyone who has climbed to the top of the ladder, has gone through loads of failure on the way. It takes longevity, hard work and learning from failure to succeed. You need to become comfortable with the concept that you will fail, and have no attachment to the outcome. Make it a game or battle, and in this way you will conquer your fear.

Remember that no failure means no learning, and no learning means no success.

If you are comfortable and you are not willing to take risks, then your goals are not big enough. You will not feel inspired. Redo your goals in such a way that they make you feel a little edgy and nervous, and in this way you will push yourself further.

As an entrepreneur, you want things to happen yesterday, but as they say Rome wasn't built in a day. It takes constantly educating yourself and growing. If you keep on working towards your goals one little piece at a time, you will get there, but if you don't have setbacks on the way you won't learn from your mistakes and grow as a person. As they say the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.

A lot of people tend to give up at the first sign of hardship, instead of looking at each new obstacle as a challenge and using the obstacle to keep learning and growing. Celebrate each movement forward, and work through your challenges and you will be successful in the end.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michel_Maling

How to Turn Failure Into Success

Success begins with your state of mind. If you have failed before then you have the ability to succeed. It is just a matter of using those failures in a positive way.

Your failures should be used as a foundation for your eventual success. The worst thing you can do is look at your setbacks as permanent situations that you find yourself in.

That is the most common reason that people usually become failures. They look at their temporary situation as hopeless and they quit.

The moment that you decide to give up on your dreams because of the difficulty involved in acquiring them then you have truly failed. If you never allow this to become your fate then you will eventually win.

Learn from every mistake and try not to make the same mistake twice. Use your failures. Bounce back by asking better questions. Ask them of yourself and seek out experts who have broken through the barriers that are stopping you.

Use every failure as a form of feedback. The information that you receive is not negative or positive. It is just data. It is feedback that you can use in order to improve your results. Simply retool your approach based upon your feedback.

With every failure that you experience you can actually grow if you use it in this way. Improve upon your previous results by examining the feedback that you receive from those attempts.

Do not let the struggle frustrate you to the point of giving up. Take a short break if you have to. Recharge your batteries and start again. Also, read biographies of people who have succeeded in spite of tremendous odds. This will put your disappointments in the proper prospective. You will come to realize that your situation is not unique. You will also see that in the whole scheme of things the obstacles that you face are not so big after all.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Anthony_D_Carter

3 Steps to You Becoming A Good Leader by Being a Good Listener

God gave us two ears and one mouth. Maybe we should listen twice as much as we talk. Most people do too much of the talking and thus they miss opportunities.

The person who controls a conversation is the one asking the questions. And, when we let others do most of the talking, that makes them feel important and they, in turn, like us and want to help us.

Thus, here is how you can become a great listener and benefit from that habit:

1. Ask people questions that they will enjoy answering: Where are you from originally? If from here, have they lived here all their lives? If not from here, what brought them here? Do they have a family? What do they do? What did they want to be when they were growing up?

2. When they tell you something that is especially interesting, state the following: Tell me more about that.

3. When you part, make notes of what that person told you about themselves and refer to some of those points in the future. They will be honored and consider you to be a very special person. They will naturally look for ways to be of service to you.

So, here is a positive affirmation that, when stated out loud the first thing each morning and the last thing each night, will help you to become a great listener:

I am genuinely interested in other people. I ask a lot of questions and let them do most of the talking.

Do this for at least 30 days and I believe that you will be amazed with the positive results.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Boaz_Rauchwerger

Achieve Success in Life by First Starting to Build Trust in Relationships at Home

As human beings, relationships are at the core of our social interaction and networking. Our relationships are often integral to our success, whether in the workplace, social environments or in our personal lives. To maintain success in our relationships, we have to be able to build strong foundations of trust.

As one person begins to trust another, they start to feel more comfortable about "opening up", declaring their feelings or opinions and even exposing some of their vulnerabilities. Recognizing and being respectful of these initial stages are some of the first steps to building trust.

To further build trust, those involved must have reasonable expectations of what they require from one another, and communicate these well. If all parties are not able to agree on what they expect out of a relationship, or what they consider acceptable conduct within it, then the trust could be jeopardized, and in turn the relationship.

Being open and providing good communication is key to building trust. Nothing does more harm to trust than negative surprise. Each party must be aware of their actions and the impact they may have on those they are involved with. Communicating well to avoid any situations of "not knowing" or negative reaction is a great investment towards building up trust.

Trust often increases or decreases depending on personal experience. Learning to trust from an early age can be extremely important in building trustworthy relationships later in life. Similarly it can be difficult for a person who has experienced destruction of trust in the past to place trust in future relationships.

Trust is a two way requirement. A relationship does not fair well if only one party feels comfortable to trust. Not feeling trustworthy can be as harmful to a relationship as not being able to trust. If there are trust issues within a relationship, they must be discussed and if at all possible, resolved.

Once achieved, there is huge satisfaction and personal benefit to be enjoyed from experiencing trust in relationships. The security and stability that it produces provide strong platforms for personal development and growth, and therefore trust should be considered fundamental to the development of any relationship.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=BH_Yao

Make One Small Shift And Change Your Life

Making changes scares many of us, doesn't it? What exactly are we frightened of? What are YOU frightened of? Not getting positive results? Not receiving support through the process? Finding out you don't have the courage? Learning that other people don't approve? Not knowing where to start? Just hearing the word CHANGE may give you stomach butterflies, a throbbing headache, body quivers, or a lot of self doubt. So maybe it's time to try a different approach to getting more of what you need and want. Maybe it's time to make ONE SMALL SHIFT to the left or to the right. One tiny movement away from where you are this very minute...instead of trying to do something really big.

One tiny step can have a ripple effect that eventually makes a huge difference. For example, if you rarely or never smile, try smiling to someone who is steadily present in your life before you go to bed tonight. Observe the other person's reaction. That single smile possesses the power to alter your entire relationship with this individual. If you smoke, indulge in one less cigarette today. It could be the beginning of a smoking cessation program for you.

If you typically eat too many unhealthy foods, substitute one healthy item for that bag of potato chips or pack of cupcakes. If you constantly complain about work, choose one positive thing to say about your day when you next talk with a friend, family member, or peer. If you've got a pile of papers on your desk that needs purged, pick up one of those papers and deal with it. The key word is ONE. One tiny action can lead to greater happiness, improved health, increased productivity. There's a lot of magic in one small shift.

What kind of magic? It's actually an emotional and psychological magic. Think about how you feel when you smile, smoke less, eat healthy food, say something good, or file one paper. You feel great about yourself, don't you? You feel great about YOU because you did something you didn't think you could do, something you put off doing for a long time, something you simply didn't take the time to do. You also feel great because you know you are now in closer alignment with your personal values and priorities.

This sense of alignment brings you happiness in a way that nothing else can. There is no substitute for taking steps toward becoming the kind of person we desire to be. When you eat an apple instead of a piece of cake, you prove to yourself that you value good nutrition and care about your health. Further, if weight loss is a priority, then you consume eighty calories of vitamins and fiber rather than four hundred calories of sugar, fat, and simple carbohydrates.

When you file an important paper, you prove to yourself that you value organization. If office neatness is a priority, than you are moving toward cleaning up the mess. When you smile at someone, you prove to yourself that you value amicable relationships with others. If patching up your relationship with a coworker is a priority, then you're on the way to accomplishing it.

Taking these little steps on a regular basis brings about the major change we seek. If there are thirty papers on the pile and you file one paper per day, the entire pile obviously disappears within a month. As a result, filing the stack of papers is painless. Smoking one less cigarette each day for a month is easier than suddenly cutting out thirty cigarettes in a day or a week. It's all about getting started in a way that seems possible for you. Getting started is the hardest part of making any kind of change.

So how do you come around to actually making one small shift and ultimately the major change? Try the following:

1. Determine the major change you eventually want to make.

2. Decide upon a realistic time line for making that change.

3. Make a list of the circumstances, people, and other barriers that could sabotage or slow down your change making efforts. Develop strategies for dealing with them.

4. Identify all of the steps you need to take in order to make the big change. You must perceive each step as do-able.

5. Assign a completion date to each of those steps.

6. Focus on the first step and ask yourself what needs to happen so that you take that step.

7. Find a trustworthy accountability partner who agrees to check in with you periodically during the entire change making process.

8. Take that first critical step.

9. Assess your feelings upon completion of that step. Celebrate your mini success.

10. Complete all necessary steps within their respective time frames to make the big change you want.

If you find yourself dragging your feet on one or more of the steps you've outlined, have an honest conversation with yourself. Do you really want to make that particular change? Do you want to make it but at a later time or for a different reason?

Are you attempting to make this change because somebody else recommended it and you wish to satisfy that person? In order to make change successfully, you must be motivated deep inside yourself. You really can't make long lasting change unless YOU want to. When YOU truly want to do it, however, the outcome is powerful.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sylvia_Hepler