Realize contentment

Success is embodied in feelings of contentment.  Peace arises when you aren't comparing who has more or less than you. Being yourself and accepting all that you are brings you a sense of success. What makes you believe a sense of success evolves from external things or action? 

True success is felt as you are deeply grounded in being yourself, when you're not searching for consolation or hoping to do what you have not yet done.  Drop comparisons.  To see yourself as neither higher nor lower, in terms of where you are, this is success.  You can become intuitive and sense life offers more possibilities than your senses have the capacity to realize.

Success is more than a state of mind.  Its a state of being.  Rather than think about what you must do to understand and achieve, why not experience success without thinking?  Be happy without a cause.  Attract and create the feelings you envision.  Success is sensing the possible and being it.

Imagine success regardless of your external situation. Anything with a cause is never permanent, but time dependent and predictably disappear. Feelings and circumstances that have no cause will last forever.  Become successful through your own inner transformation.  Look inside yourself for the truly impersonal experience.

Embracing adversity

Every person encounters adversity or, you might say that it even seeks you out. Do you ever feel as though you invite in the gremlins, the trouble or even disastrous circumstances? How might your understanding of yourself be enlarged and enhanced as the result of dealing with these things?

Imagine each challenging experience is another means to clarify or expand on your identity.  Do you feel as though you have had enough "tests?" Thinking you know something and experiencing it differ. Each learning phase further clarifies your understanding of success as well. People may criticize you, fire you from a job, abandon you in a relationship and their ideas of hardship may differ from your own.  You may retain or reject, combine and review reasons for adversity.  You learn your limits, more about strengths and weaknesses,  You even sense new kind of evolution.  At first, this may seem hard to grasp, yet, perceived difficulties are not always what they seem.

For some people, struggling to pay bills or find adequate food represents a level of adversity.  For others, being discouraged about goal-setting, not achieving goals fast enough, not getting chosen for a promotion, not feeling driven or losing a loved one, lead to undesireable suffering.  A closer look reveals varied circumstances enable you to learn to recognize and distinguish among choices.  You may experience and evaluate emotions.  You are given opportunities to compare options, to develop open or closed-mindedness, to explore sources of meaning in life.

I spoke with an older woman who described an example of adversity as very tough period in her personal life.  She confided that the process of separating from and divorcing her partner taught her that each relationship is like a horizon.  This woman sees herself differently now than she did then.  She chose to read books. She realized her past relationship choices were ways to send herself messages about what was meaningful and destructive in her life. 

At a given time, we each interpret experiences based on what we know about ourselves. Over time, the woman figured out what steps she had to take to change her circumstances for the better. She came to see success at every phase of her life based on how she chose to learn and grow. Now she has new inner strength which enables her to make healthier relationship choices.

Kaile Warren's life is quite a success story. Adversity came and shattered his life in the form of a debilitating car accident cost that him his thriving construction business, then his home, his financial security and his marriage.   As a homeless, discouraged man driven to sleep alone in an abandoned warehouse, he remembered his last 500$ in his pocket.  One night, he had a revelation about a new business idea. He went out the very next day and bought an old second hand white van. He painted "rent-a-husband" on the side. He paid money to get flyers made and put those on the windshields of women's cars he knew in his divorced support church group. 

One thing led to another. Before long, he had more work than he could handle.  He was even invited to do a local television interview which led to unexpected widespread marketing when the tv station shared the story with a national station.  Embracing adversity and choosing to move forward enabled him to start as a one-man operation designed to tackle all household projects, from air-conditioning installation to yard raking. This business grew to have franchises in multiple U.S. states and also in foreign countries.  Adversity can be a stepping stone to success.

13 Steps to greater success

No matter what your line of work or aspirations,your ability to portray self-confidence and strength of character are key to moving ahead, achieving a deeper sense of purpose and progress. Each of us benefits from new ways of seeing ourselves, our behavior and principles.

In 1947, Frank Bettger wrote a classic book entitled How I Raised Myself From Failure to Success in Selling. He explains how during his first two years in sales, he barely scraped by. He had to take additional jobs to support himself. Then, he learned some tips from sucessful people like Andrew Carnegie and skyrocketed to become the top insurance salesman in America.  The stories Bettger shares in his book remind you that 13 steps he borrows and expands from Benjamin Franklin can improve not only how you feel about yourself, but perhaps more importantly, how you come across and also achieve results. Even if you're not a sales professional, Bettger explains how you may apply his timeless principles achieve success in any undertaking.

1. Be Enthusiastic!

Act enthusiastic and you'll become enthusiastic. This is a mindset created by your attitude.Any endeavour or situation may seem to grow undesirable or difficult not because you change your circumstances, but because you permit your circumstances to change you. Take back control!

2. Be Organized

Take time to think and plan your schedule. Where will you go? Who will you meet? What will you say? How long will you have? To be prepared and act effectively (even improvise)'on your feet', or present a new idea to someone you know, you would benefit from organizing your thoughts in advance before you meet. When you respect your time, you'll make better use of other people's time and both of you benefit. You never have a second chance to leave a first impression either.

3. Think like the other person

What do you offer or what could you do to benefit that other person? How can you phrase things in innovative ways to put the person first? Reinforce the desire to learn from him and understand.

4. Ask Questions!

Asking questions is to your advantage. You enable another person feel good about dreams or situations.You may provide an opportunity for someone to reflect on issues that hadn't been considered before. The person may realize you could assist in some personal or professional way. Ask questions to qualify a business prospect, to discover a person's true desires and needs as a friend or confidante. To earn respect, build relations and trust,inquire about the person's priorities, stand back and let him or her talk. Take an interest in discovering their personal interests and motivations.  Show the person how you can empower him or her to reach goals.

5. Seek out the key issue

Identify key issues that impact someone's decision-making. As you inquire, learn to seek to learn about the person's primary concerns. Demonstrate how you relate, empathize and or could help. In which ways would this person become more flexible? How might you be able to assist?

6. Listen

Learn to open your ears and read behavior to interpret and intuit feelings of others. Experience offers you opportunities to become a more effective listener.  Societies may teach us how to hear, but rarely teach listening. Rather than permit ideas to go in one ear and out the other, tap into all your senses and retain details. Learn to read gestures and voice tones to understand more comprehensive ideas or a person's underlying feelings about an issue.

7. Deserve Confidence

If you say you're good at what you do, draw from the coinciding reputation. If you feel you're competent, refer to testamonials. It's useful to inquire what people have heard about you before you introduce compliments or advantages to what you offer. It's wise to always agree with objections, expand on the proper context and ask the person to whom you're speaking what he or she would've done in your circumstances. Take responsibility. Be accountable and take steps to build on your existing reputation by empowering other people to comment more than you. As you take opportunities to learn, you will earn and reinforce confidence.

8. Know Your area

Regardless of what you think you know, you can always learn. Remain humble. What do you read or investigate? How do you become involved in life and learning? How do you learn about yourself from other people? How do they learn from you? Ask other people how they might advise you.

9. Appreciation & Praise

We impact how things happen,shape quality and reputation. Compliment your competitors and agree with people who compliment the competitors. You can always take time to turn a situation around with a question. Ask people what they see as desireable advantages. Empower them to tell you what they want or hope. Respond in ways that show your best side and benefit others.

10. Smile & Laugh

A smile is powerful.  What you say is strenghtened by a sincere smile. This gesture, without comment, captures attention and invites positive feelings. Smiling as you speak doubles your success. When have you laughed? Children laugh on average 100x more than adults per day. Remind yourself that being serious is not as good for your health and learning to be light-hearted.

11. Remember Names & Faces

Many "formulas" exist to help you recall details about people. Mental rhyming, mneumonics can be helpful. Why not explore other strategies, including writing details down? Alan Pease wrote a great book called "Easy Peasy" which covers strategies that help jog and reinforce your memory.

12. Relationships

Devote time and attention to your relationships, and nurture new ones. One of your best sources for new business, information and resources is your current network.You can always benefit in new ways from people you know. They can also benefit from you. What are you doing about it?

13.Action

If you desire to accomplish anything, talking about it isn't enough. You must take steps to plan, talk about it, and actually implement a process to make it happen. As you evolve to become more results-oriented, you realize the importance of getting up and performing tasks to earn results. Nothing comes from nothing.

Melt away stagnant choices

Each choice you make has a consequence.  These results can represent the stepping stones of success or, the choices themselves can also symbolize incremental examples of success.  Each choice can attract or prevent the kinds of success you desire for yourself.  If you continue to make the same kinds of choices and you're not obtaining desireable results, this is a sign you would benefit from heightened awareness.  It's your choice to learn to recognize these signs.

Success, therefore, may be experienced as you take responsibility for choices and decisions.    As you agree to be accountable for all your thoughts, feelings and actions, you also take advantage of learning as much as you can about who you really are, who you think you are, and whomever you choose to become.  You build courage to face fears, develop assertiveness and move ahead.

Yet, if you give the responsibility to others to make choices for you, then you also refuse to define your view of success, you refuse to take charge of your life and the pace of your own evolution. Melt away stagnant choices that hinder your personal development. Progressive movement in thoughts, words and action determines the direct ion of your growth.  Success begins inside as an attitude.  It can drive optimism, hope and creative visions to emerge.

Mirror of the past

The Tibetan Book of the Dead speaks of a sense of success as an ego-bound state of thoughts, speech and actions.  We undergo such a process of inner judgment while living and also dying.  Death is apparently a phase where we will have an opportunity to peer into an 'all-seeing mirror' which will reveal the consequences of all our actions. Each of us will weigh our past actions in a life-review. It is possible we will frame success differently in this existence and in others.  How we come to recognize our underlying nature, our impulses, and tendencies will supposedly enable us to come face-to-face with our individual identity. Whether or not you realize what you set out to achieve in your life will be one way you redefine success in the past, present and future.