rainbowsoverruins

The Key to Developing Persistance

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Tenacity. It is a quality that develops when you are fixed upon your purpose. It’s a necessary quality to have when you are trying something challenging or that will take considerable time to achieve. Tenacity implies that you will do whatever it takes to accomplish your vision and reach your goals.   It involves persistence, determination and perseverance, all strong words that support the theories of success.

Regular students of success philosophies are familiar with the writings and stories about persistence. Napoleon Hill gave us the often used quote: Anything the human mind can conceive and believe, when organized around a purpose and a plan, can be achieved. All too often, the organization phrase is left out in common usage, yet it is the key to achievement. Knowing your purpose and developing a plan that you can follow with persistence yields the prize.

Bob Proctor, the success coach commonly known from his appearance in the movie The Secret, began his successful pursuits when he studied the words of Napoleon Hill and owned them through his actions.   He went from $4,000 a year income as a fireman to over $100,000 within a year. He built multiple, highly successful janitorial services using the principles of success before moving into the personal development field. To this day, Proctor devotes one month a year re-reading one specific chapter every day. It is the chapter on persistence.

Hill’s classic Think and Grow Rich is filled with stories of perseverance. An entire chapter is devoted to persistence. Greg Reid and Sharon Lechter picked up on one of those stories as they wrote Three Feet from Gold, the tale of a young man who gave up his pursuit of a vein of gold, only to have the new owner find it three feet from where he had stopped. Greg has gone on to write extensively on this quality of persistence – stickiness.

Hill is clear on one point. The ability to develop determination and the self-discipline to pursue our goals begins with purpose. A couple weeks ago, I suggested that you might find this a great time to plan for your New Year’s resolutions so that you could build them around your goals. Such planning constitutes a great strategy session that improves your chance of achieving goals because you attach them to your purpose and the big “Why” behind the actions you choose to take.

If you are going through this process, you may want to ask a few questions of yourself. What is it about your goal that resonates deep within you? Call it passion. Call it purpose. Why does it fill you with enthusiasm and drive? Why does it stick with you even when you experience obstacles? The answer is extremely important to your ability to maintain the pressure that moves you along the path to your greatest desires.

And if you are unclear about your purpose, one of your resolutions may be to identify your purpose this year. A good place to start might be to observe yourself. What are you drawn to? What do you study or watch? Who are your friends? Who are your heroes and heroines? Where do you like to go? What things do you want? If money is your big goal, ask yourself why? What does money mean to you? What feelings come up when you think about having money? How will you use it? If you had all the money you currently dream about having, what would your life look like? As you go through these questions, a pattern of feelings will emerge around the things you have in your current lifestyle and the ones you would like to have.   How will you feel when you have them?

Purpose brings a sense of direction. Purpose brings passion. Passion brings tenacity and the ability to stick to it. The emotions you feel when you sense movement toward that which you desire brings such joy and well-being. Take the time this season to align with how you envision your dreams and draw the road map that appears to take you to them. With this in hand, may you find all the tenacity you require to not only keep your New Year’s resolutions, but also move steadily toward your goals.

To Your Success,

Susan

The Secret to Achieving Success is Simply SHOWING UP

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This morning as I perused my email inbox, I noticed a theme to the subject lines. There were several about persistence. John Maxwell had sent a daily message to “keep on keeping on…Those who quit never succeed…never make it to the top.”

And yesterday, while showing a colleague around the ranch, the topic turned to the importance of continuing to “apply pressure.” Keith had read Rainbows Over Ruins and it was his way of explaining what Peter and I have done to accomplish our goals. It was a good way to put it. I call it focus.

In the book, I apply this pressure in a number of ways daily. Gentle or intense, the point is to keep the vision in mind and do at least one thing every day that can help move you toward achieving that goal.

Sounds simple, right? It is. As Jim Rohn would say, “simple to do, simple not to do.”

One of the things that I have discovered through my personal journey is that as a result of consistent focus, many opportunities appear. I may be going along nicely and then begin to notice points of strain, a feeling of completion of one goal while still unclear about the next step. It makes me uneasy. In fact, it is as if my focus is being pulled off course – which it is. For example, Rainbows Over Ruins has just been published. The next progressive step is to promote the book, letting people know about it and, in the process, my work on the subject. However, publication has created a void. The energy I had focused on publication needs to be redirected and I am aware of a flood of projects vying for my attention.

For a time, this makes it challenging to maintain your focus while you go through a process of discernment. You need to ask yourself which action or choice feels most likely to bring you the results that best match your long term vision or short term goal. It is not unusual for the best choice to also include an aspect of personal growth that will require you to reach outside your comfort zone. All of which can be very uncomfortable.

Why is it important to develop your personal process of discernment? You can save yourself a great deal of suffering if you recognize the source of agitation or contrast when it comes up and immediately begin to ask positive, open questions. Why? What if? The answers are often in the questions.

I now pay attention to those feelings. I remember Bob Proctor telling us that we aren’t living close enough to the edge of possibilities unless we feel that way. The discomfort comes from not having made the choice. Once you make it, once you decide the best course of action, you move into action mode and dive right in. The stress reduces and you know where to place your immediate focus once again.

If you are feeling this way, I challenge you to carve out some quiet time to look at your discomforts today and ask what you would prefer. Ask yourself why this preference makes you feel better as you go about your business, doing the next presented thing, maintaining the pressure right where you are while you wait for the answer to come.

To Your Success,

Susan

Reporting in: I am where I am and it’s okay

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I am surprised to see how long it has been since I last posted here. Life has taken me off on a creative journey that has consumed every waking moment – and probably quite a few sleeping moments as well. I am happy to report that I am pleased with where I am now. It has taken several years to move from the night of the landslide through the rebuilding process, yet today, I stand at a place of infinite possibility.

You would think it would be enough to have found a ranch to replace the one we lost or to be part of a daily morning show like “Home and Family” that airs on Hallmark Channel. But that was only a piece of the puzzle.

Along the way, I became fascinated with the creative process. What did we do to make the ranch a reality? How could I learn to do that consciously? How could I help others do it too? I had studied to become a life coach, then refined my studies to understand the power of the mind and success principles as one of Bob Proctor’s LifeSuccess Consultants. Bob encouraged each of his students to write a book, but who was I to write? What could I write that would have meaning for anyone else?

In the end, I decided to translate an outline of the creative process into real life experience. The old adage held true – if you really want to know a subject, teach others about it. I set out to live what I was learning and share that journey. It was painful at times as I wrestled with the application of new ideas on old paradigms. Whenever I hit a roadblock in my understanding that interfered with the writing, new experiences would crop up to help me learn what was needed to move forward.

It took time to write, but after working with the editors at Balboa Press, I expect to place the resulting book titled “Rainbows Over Ruins” in physical production shortly. There will also be a free e-workbook available for anyone who would like to be mentored on their own creative journey while reading my story.

“Rainbows Over Ruins” is what one of my colleagues calls a Siddhartha journey. Along the way, I learned that the creative process embodies success principles. Creativity is an intimate dance with quantum consciousness, the interplay of conscious ideas, questions, and feelings with the power of the subconscious mind to take action and get results.

As I prepare to update listings to reflect my new status as author, I feel a bit like Indiana Jones, about to step off at a leap of faith location. I am so grateful for the support of my many mentors and colleagues. We have to do things on our own, but we do not do them alone. In that spirit, I offer the following question to get your juices flowing. Why do you want to create what you want today?

To Your Success,

Susan

The Magic of Self Discipline

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Have you ever noticed how your email Inbox will carry certain themes from time to time? When that happens, I take notice. So what’s the current theme in mine? The magic of Good Habits, the thought that habits bring the self discipline that leads to success.

Stop to think about it. Have you ever considered whether you were suffering from Sloppy Thinking? Just look around your physical world. You’ll see it manifesting all around you. In fact, the Internet sensation Flylady addresses this phenomena when she starts her Flybabies on an organizational journey by having them shine their sinks every day for a month. Then she moves on to another habit that helps restore order in the home.

What she is drawing attention to is that one way to establish order in your thinking is to develop better habits in your actions. She’s not the first to see it. A friend of mine who is a psychotherapist showed me a way to cure depression by doing a few simple tasks every day; 12 Step Programs ask people to take 90 Meetings in 90 Days. Maxwell Maltz laid out the idea that habits could be changed over 21 days in the classic Psychocybernetics. In his new home study program, Millionaire Mindset, Gerry Robert talks about the simple habits that always lead to success and sets out a simple system to master our habits one a time. I’m making my list and prioritizing where to begin now.

Even Bob Proctor talks about developing habits over time. It’s particularly useful for the actions you know you should do, but tend to forget to do. Bob often repeats that our problems in getting better results are not in the knowing of what to do. They’re in the doing what we know we should do. So what do we do? We regularly repeat a new replacement idea and take action for at least 21 days until the Subconscious Mind lets us make that action habitual.

So, where will I begin? I think I’ll go put the dishes away.

It’s not about the money, it’s the mindset

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I had several ‘aha’ moments over the past couple days. In coaching situations, we often speak about ‘popping our paradigms.’ Those are the habit patterns of thinking and acting we acquire as we go through life. Good habits are fine, but we have so many that get in our way and prevent us from achieving our goals. In the past couple days, I saw patterns in myself over choices about money that I made again and again. I must really want to learn this lesson! Like Liza Doolittle in My Fair Lady — by george, I think I got it! Now I want to play! I want to create! If you’d like to join me, we can all play together at A Day for Dollars on Saturday, June 26th. Mary Morrissey, Bob Proctor and Sandra Gallagher will be putting on an all day event in Marina Del Rey. They have a website at www.adayfordollars.com if you want information. Remember, it’s not about the money, it’s the mindset.
To Your Success,
Susan

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