Weekly Success Tips
“The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.”
Emerson
During 2010 I developed a new keynote address I shared with several audiences that covers what I believe are the three keys to lasting success, happiness and a worthwhile lifestyle. The three keys are: what you believe, what you know and what you do. These ultimately determine your inner peace, lifestyle, direction in life and everything you become, accomplish and do with your time and talent while you are here. I do not mean to imply that these are easy to master and weave effectively into your life, but they are simple concepts. Ultimately your happiness, success, peace, satisfaction and contentment are either gained or lost because of them.
Let’s briefly look at each of the three and how they can impact your life.
What you believe. Each of us came into this world and were conditioned by our parents, caregivers, teachers, friends or anyone who had an influence on us. These conditioned beliefs were given to us by these well-meaning people regardless of how we chose, with our limited education and life experience, to interpret them or react to them.
These people also gave us lot’s of positive and negative baggage; feelings about the world and ourselves, attitudes about good and bad, right and wrong and success and failure. I know, because I certainly have my share. Each of us reacted uniquely to these ‘baggage issues’ by either embracing them as a part of who we were or resisting them and developing very personal methods or philosophies of how to cope with them or resist them.
As we have grown and matured we have learned to suppress many of these earlier beliefs and attitudes, but their impact can still be felt in our current relationships, life decisions and careers. We may not even know today what these beliefs are or how they are influencing our current behaviors. How can we discover or know the long-term impact of these early beliefs? Just look at the behaviors of others or yourself that make you feel; afraid, invalidated, unworthy, untrusting or secure, happy, content or valued or any other negative or positive responses.
Somewhere hidden deep inside of everyone are wounds that have never healed or joys not expressed and these behaviors, actions or attitudes always bring their unconscious response to your present circumstances or attitudes. These beliefs about yourself or the world are finding their way into every conversation, reaction and activity.
The wounds want and need to be healed and we hope that the people we surround ourselves with will contribute to that healing. When they don’t (remember they have their wounds that need healing as well) we fall back into those early learned techniques of resisting or embracing.
What you Know. The price of learning is very high. The price of ignorance is even higher. Have you ever felt like ‘if you only knew then what you know now’ that you would be happier or more successful or have better relationships – now? There are two ways to learn – the hard way and an easy way. (I’m not suggesting either is better or worse than the other) The hard way is through your own experience. The easy way is through other people’s experience i.e. teachers, trainers, authors or someone who has been there or done it already and learned then shared their learning.
I am constantly amazed at how many people choose the hard way to wisdom and knowledge. Yes, there are lot’s of kinds of knowledge. There is common sense which is often not so common. There is career and relationship knowledge. There is life knowledge. There is self-knowledge. Knowledge is useless if it isn’t used – turned into wisdom. But, you can’t use it if you haven’t first gained it. Why won’t people invest in themselves? Why would they rather waste time, money and energy learning everything on their own – the hard way?
Think of learning as a tool box that you carry through life. Every time you learn a new skill or develop or refine an attitude you get to add that tool to your box. I guarantee that as you travel through life sooner or later you will need to re-use the same tools again and again. Why not add them early so you can save yourself time, grief, energy and cash of learning them much later in life?
You either go after the learning or you wait for it to come to you. Which do you suppose is the least costly in the long run?
What you do. I am running out of time and I am sure you have a lot on your plate this week so let me be brief here with a simple concept – if you don’t start you can’t finish. If you don’t act you you’ll never know what you could have accomplished. Words are easy, it’s actions that matter…