Life Success Habits

It seems women not having success in finding the right man may be looking in all the wrong places. In a book by Steve Santagati, he cites research showed that the top five cities with the best prospects of finding eligible life partners are:

1. San Jose
2. Salt Lake City, Utah
3. Arlington, Texas
4. Rawleigh, NC
5. San Francisco, CA.

And forget clubs and gyms. Instead try the local Farmers Market.

Women need to be more assertive in finding their mates. They should treat every daily event as a potential opportunity and resist the temptation to run down to the local store to buy a paper dressed in sloppy clothes and no make-up. That doesn’t mean a full beauty make-over and courtier fashion either. But replace those sloppy joes for a nice pair of jeans, a cute teeshirt and a bit of lip gloss. It makes a big difference between being noticed or not. And don’t wait for him to make the first move. Be proactive, make a passing comment in a teasing style, or make momentary eye contact. He will love you for it. “It’s not game playing, its street smarts” says Steve, in an interview with Oprah. If he is interested he will make the next move, if not, you have nothing to lose.

And you will know when you have found the right one, you will have an overwhelming sense of being drawn into something bigger than yourself and want to stay there. Even women that claim they don’t have time for a man, find the time when the man is the right one!

There are times in our lives where we finally wake up and recognise that things have changed, and life just isn’t working for us….well not as well as it could!.

These are often times following major life changes – new jobs, retirement, change in family, empty nest, divorce etc.

Each of these events means that some part of our life no longer exists or did not previously exist. Yet many of use do not change the rest of our lives to accomodate that change and wonder why the feeling of happiness has turned to a feeling of helplessness or hopelessness.

For instance, adding a new role in your life means that room needs to be made for that role, and others pertaining to that role – this may be a new relationship or a new job or new family addition. If we don’t adjust the time and focus spent on the other roles in our lives we end up with conflict, overwork and stress.

On the other side, if when children grow up and leave home, and particularly if you were a stay at home mum, your life roles change significantly. The role of a mother is all encompassing. It doesn’t stop when your children leave home, but the daily input certainly changes. Not replacing this commitment can lead to feelings of worthlessness and despondency. You not only lost the child, you lost the role. And this loss needs to be grieved in the same way as any other loss.

So what to do – Reinvent Yourself.

Each role in your life relates to a pseudo activity. By defining your participation in terms of activities for each role, you can more clearly determine your time constraints, and overlaps. You can also evaluate how balanced your time and focus is between each activity group.

This is a time to be selfish – that’s not a bad thing. Look at what each role and activity means to you, and establish what you are willing to contribute to that role and what you are not. Write these down. Now allocate the hours of the weeks, and organise your schedule accordingly. Share your time commitments with those relevant to the rule and state your boundaries of commitment. This is where being selfish is a GOOD thing, not the big black hairy monster many make it out to be.

When we over commit ourselves, we simply cannot achieve our goals. We let ourselves down and we let others down. So set your expectations clearly – then do everything you can to live up to them. Remember – your job does NOT come first all the time, your wife/husband/partner does NOT come first all the time, your children do NOT come first all the time, and YOU do NOT come first all the time.

Congratulations – you have just reinvented yourself….and all it took was a little time invested.

In my last blog I talked about how important it is for you to decide for YOURSELF what constitutes success for YOU.

Once you have come to terms with your own values and goals – the next most important step to achieving that success in BELIEVING IN YOURSELF.

It doesn’t matter what others think of your plans. And believe me, everyone will have an opinion. Whilst I always listen to what they have to say, I then just thank them for their input and say nothing further. If they have a new piece of knowledge that helps you further define how best to achieve or not achieve your goals – then you have gained some more valuable insight. If they haven’t then nothing they said matters in terms of your chosen life path.

It is not for any one person to choose the path of another – and parents – that means you do NOT have the right to chose the path for your children. At best you should enrich their knowledge of options available and the pros and cons of each – then leave it up to them.

Believing in yourself is essential to keeping your focus and putting out the right vibes that make things happen. It gets you through the tough work and reminds you why you are making the effort. What others think of you or what you are doing is none of your business.

Go For It

I was rereading some previous blogs on success and it prompted me to reconsider what ‘success’ really means. To some, success is achieving your goals. To others, it’s being happy when you do.

So often we define success in terms of what society or someone else regards as success – a great job, good marriage, healthy secure family, financial security…….

But in my mind, these things are only success to you, if they are what you genuinely desire with all your heart. There are two aspects of achieving success:

1. Defining your success goals
2. Defining your path to reach those goals.

For instance, if  one of your goals is to have $5million. You can take an honest path, a dishonest path, a manual laboring path or a strategic intellectual path. There are also costs associated with each path. Do you achieve this in 10 years at the cost of other goals such as relationship and health; or are you willing to take a little longer and build on other goals at the same time.

We each must make our own decisions. After a number of ‘life crashes’ – whilst in the eyes of most people I am extremely successful; I don’t share their view. Sure I may be hard on myself, but I couldn’t reconcile what I had to show for the effort I had put in. I made some very bad mistakes in trusting other people, and have paid a very heavy price, both in financial terms and my willingness to allow others control over my financial assets again.

So I have changed my path – instead of expecting to retire in 2 years – I have just taken two years off to pursue some personal passions. This has cost my business quite a lot in terms of loss of market momentum; hence it will now take me at least 5 years to achieve what I would have in those two years. But I decided to take some of my ‘retirement’ years in advance. I am not sure that I want to retire anyway – what is that really all about. As I am many years from the standard retirement age, it is hard for me to understand what I may feel at that age. So my goal is not to retire at any particular age – but it is to have the option to retire at any time after a particular age. These subleties in definition make all the difference to how we approach our goals. So what is your personal success definition?

Nicola

The road to success has many diversions. Some of them good and some of them not so good. Either way – a key success attribute is to always give yourself permission. Permission to succeed and permission to fail. To many, this may seem obvious. But on many occassions we are too hard on ourselves when things don’t work out as planned.

In the past few days I ‘potentially’ lost a large sum of money in a term investment that was safe as could be when I entered it, but two years later and a coup in Fiji has brought this once stable finance company to its knees – just six weeks before my 2 year term was due to mature.

Naturally, I was bummed, big time. But, rather than beat myself I gave myself time to deal with the outflow of the next years plans to which that capital was assigned. Whenever something like this happens I never look back. I remind myself of two things:

1. All I need is a place to stand
2. I forgive myself for stumbling during my learning adventure.

It reminded me of a great quote by 17th Century poet – George Herbert ” He who cannot forgive, breaks in the bridge over which he himself must pass”

When things go wrong you have to forgive yourself – because there will be plenty of others that will remind you what a fool thing you have done [all experts after the fact of course].

I am a person who lives by the value – it’s not the years in your life that count; its the life in your years. I pack a whole lot more into my life than most, and so naturally I am going to stumble more often.

I now have a system – i remove myself from all communications with others and work on how to adjust my life going forward. It is “my system” and it works for me [ along with a fine bottle of chamgagne]. Within 24 hours I am back on track in a slightly different path – but still heading to the same destination.

I urge you to have your own emergency system, so when something major happens you have a well defined response on how to manage it and get back on track.

And if you need help with that – post a comment here, I will be happy to help.

Nicola

I was just reading an email from success coach Bob Proctor where he bodly admitted that after years of teaching others how to be successful, he realised that he didn’t really know what made one person successful, where others failed. It seemed that his normal success quest through autobiographies and interviews failed to reveal ‘the secret’. Finally the realization emerged – THEY FORMED THE HABIT OF DOING THINGS THAT FAILURES DON’T LIKE TO DO

It’s actually that simple – successful people do things that failures don’t like to do – by habit. Or is it that simple. I have yet to find it so.

Firstly – it’s easy to say that successful people have the habit of doing “Things” but exactly what “things” are we talking about?

One “thing” I have recognised is the very act of finding and following your passion – your life purpose. The trail to this destination is often not found on the ‘normal life path – the job, the business, the family life, the social life’.

However, once you step off this ‘normal life’ path – people start looking at you as if you were from Mars – I can sense their unspoken words – “just what are you thinking?”  “you are crazy giving up a high paid consulting career to earn a few dollars a day”….. and you know what, it is really hard to shield yourself from those attitudes. But I belive in myself, and I believe that finding your life purpose is the single most important reason for living. I believe I have found my life purpose. Fulfilling it is not going to be completed in the time I allocated myself, but I am passionate about continuing my journey. I may have to get back on the highway of normal life for a while to earn sufficient to continue my journey, but I will not lose sight of my destination. It is merely a means to an end. I am not afraid to do what others are not willing to do. Even if I do not reach my destiny, I have not failed. I have succeeded in giving myself permission to reach out to the highest goal in life. Success for me is now a habit. Following the road less travelled is a habit for me. And like Bob said ‘ successful people form the habit of doing things that failures don’t like to do’.

And I would love to help you do the same.

Nicola

LifeSuccessHabits

Your behaviour, your actions are largely habit based. So too are your thoughts. It is your choice whether those habits and thoughts are expanding your world, and your possibilities, or keeping you prisoner.

Take a cold hard look at your normal day. Examine every action. Is what you eat for breakfast moving you towards a better life, or keeping you prisoner in your current life?

Are the people you share your day with helping you evolve your potential, or are they keeping you from embracing your talents for fear of ridicule or being different?

Are your thoughts tapping into the universal energy, or keeping the doors to all you seek firmly closed?

Habits are so easy to slip into. Fortunately, although it takes time and effort, bad habits can also be changed to self evolving habits. Your vision of your perfect life is extremely important in helping you overcome destructive habits and build habits that will step by step, day by day bring you closer to your ideal.

So for every action and every thought, ask yourself – is this action moving me forward toward my vision? If the answer is NO; then that is an action that is redundant, or even destructive to your well-being and needs to be banished or changed. Let it go!

Wealth is not money. Richness is not money. Wealth and richness relate to how much you are embracing your natural talents and evolving as a total being. So start now – think and feel rich, and start adopting habits that wealthy people have. Stay steadfast to the vision in times of doubt, and your new habits will slowly move you closer and closer to your dream.

Only you hold the key to your prison. Use it now.

Have you ever stopped to think about the concept of success; just what really is it.  Success is such a highly subjective term that it is difficult to define in definite terms. The closest one can hope to come, is coining it as a concept.

To many success is getting what you want – whether that be a great job, money, health, happiness or love. But most of those who have been successful, would probably rephrase it to state success in terms of wanting what you get.

LifeSuccessHabits.com and this blog is dedicated to the pursuit of success. Read and learn; contribute to the theories or share your success.