What are the success secrets used by the top motivational experts? It turns out that they are in fundamental agreement. Below are eight, solid principles that they all, without exception, teach.
Self help author, Michael Jeffreys, interviewed fifteen motivational gurus back in 1997, including Brian Tracy, Les Brown, Wayne Dyer, Mike Ferry, Patricia Fripp, Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen. He took notes and distilled the following eight secrets which he then published in his book, Secrets of the Motivational Superstars.
Each of the gurus were convinced that the following eight tips constitute what you need to do in order to be really successful:
1. Take 100% Responsibility for Your Life
2. Live Your Life On Purpose
3. Be Willing to Pay the Price
4. Stay Focused
5. Become an Expert in Your Field
6. Write out a Plan for Achieving Your Goals
7. Never Give Up
8. Don’t Delay
Let’s take a quick look at each of them.
1. Take 100% Responsibility for Your Life
If you are striving for success right now, that essentially means you have not yet achieved the level of success you desire. So who’s fault is that? If your answer is that it is your own fault, then you are truly on the right path. Successful people never blame others when things go wrong, instead, they take full responsibility for their success and their failures too. If you think it is someone else’s fault that you have not achieved success, it’s not the end of the world, you just need to work on your attitude a bit.
Do you believe that life holds a purpose for you? Again, if you can answer, ‘yes’ you are on the right path. Successful people believe that they are here to make a difference and that’s how they go about living their lives, as if what they are doing matters. If you answer ‘no’ to this question, perhaps you might like to open your mind to the possibility that life might hold a specific purpose for you.
3. Be Willing to Pay the Price
Someone once commented that they would do anything to be able to make a golf shot like a professional. The professional replied that they were mistaken, because if they were genuinely prepared to do anything, then they would be able to make that shot. So are you willing to do whatever it takes? Of course, this is another question where your answer must be ‘yes’, but going a step further, have you identified what that is and are you actually doing it right now?
4. Stay Focused
You must resist all temptations to be drawn off course. Once you know what your target is, you must give it your all. If you are serious about achieving success, you need to dedicate yourself to getting there and that means doing things the other people around you are just not prepared to do. Sure they all want success too, but if you are engaged in doing what they are not, then again it is healthy a sign that you are indeed on the right road.
5. Become an Expert in Your Field
Read, learn, educate and develop yourself so that you manage to achieve complete mastery within your chosen field. Whatever you have decided to do with your life, one obstacle that may be preventing you from joining the top performers is your lack of professional competence or your incomplete knowledge about the discipline, and achieving the necessary level of competence is directly related to your own desire and willingness to transform yourself.
6. Write out a Plan for Achieving Your Goals
Your goals won’t materialise without effort on your part, no matter what anyone tells you about the law of attraction, cosmic ordering or the power of thought. You need a plan and the sooner you get it written down the better.
7. Never Give Up
There will be many times along the way that you will doubt yourself, your plan, your goals and your commitment especially when success does not come as easily as you first thought, despite putting in what you thought was all the effort that would be needed. That is the moment that separates the winners from the rest of the field because the others simply give up. But, if you want success, you will simply redouble your efforts, you will find ways of working more efficiently and you will ultimately break through provided that you don’t give up.
8. Don’t Delay
Now is the time, not tomorrow, not when you think the economic climate is better, not when you have more time, not when the kids are grown up, not when you retire, not when you give yourself permission; none of those times, but now. So, get cracking!