7 steps to success
How many times have you caught yourself thinking?
- Wouldn’t they be interested in seeing me?
- Who do I think I’m going for something so big?
- I’m not in your league.
- I don’t have enough credibility/experience/knowledge.
- What happens if I fail?
- I could never do it… because… he would be so jealous of me.
- That is too difficult and would show me as a fraud.
- I must do… before I make those sales calls (or anything else I’m afraid to do)
Feel free to add some of your fearful thoughts to this list. The more you identify yourself, the more you can get rid of them.
Fear paralyzes. It prevents you from taking action and moving towards success. It allows you to dismiss valuable opportunities and may even prevent you from seeing them altogether. Fear of failure can slow down and even destroy success if you let it.
The first time I felt a big failure in life was when I had to close my first business. After seven years of putting my heart and soul into my designer knitwear business, I had to make the very difficult decision to close it. The fund has crashed out of the market and I had no choice.
I was devastated. My dreams were shattered and I felt like a failure. It didn’t help that some family and friends told me I wasn’t cut out to be in the business. Then a real friend came along and told me to sit down and write a detailed list of all the things that he had learned during the seven years. Four sheets of paper later he had me read it out loud. That was powerful enough, but what he said next changed my life: “So after reading that, how can you think you’re a failure? Life is about learning from adversity and moving on.”
I also learned that the more we see failure as a negative experience, the more likely we are to allow our fears to keep us from achieving success. So here are six steps you can take towards success:
7 steps to success
1. Remember that fear stops or even destroys success, if you allow it. Identify the fear and change your mindset by taking positive steps to move forward.
2. Look past fear by pushing it out of your mind so you can see the opportunities life brings you and take action on them.
3. Refuse to listen to people who are negative and put you down when things go wrong.
4. Surround yourself with people who support you and challenge you in positive ways.
5. Whenever you fail at something, big or small, write down a list of what you’ve learned, read it over, and see how many rungs you’ve created to move forward.
6. Look for learning in everything.
7. Take positive action now!
