Success Secrets

Everyone reading this article is six inches away from experiencing huge successes and breakthroughs in their life. Six inches? Sure! That's the distance between your ears.

What I'm saying is we are designed with all the resources needed to make our fondest dreams come true. We only need to learn how to program our brain properly. Ninety percent of the input we get in the world is negative. And ninety percent of the things we tell ourselves are negative. So it is critical to learn techniques to replace the negative with positive.

In life you don't get what you want. You get what you are. The best way to improve yourself is to change what goes into your mind. We are a product of what goes into our minds. What you think determines what you do. What you do determines what you accomplish.

Olympic Athletes understand this. We know that what we put in our mind will ultimately determine how well we do in our competition. Think of each thought as a computer "bit", the smallest unit of information possible. Many thoughts add up to become beliefs. What we believe determines how high we will go. The good news is there are ways to raise your belief level.

Beliefs are extremely important. For example, in April 1954, the belief in the world was that no one could run the mile in less than four minutes. Then along came Roger Bannister. Bannister did what nobody in the history of the world had ever done. He broke the four-minute mile barrier! The phenomenal thing is that later the same month, several other athletes did it too! And since then, over 20,000 people have run the mile in under four minutes. What changed? The BELIEF changed. All of a sudden athletes knew "If Roger can do it so can I".

Most people never attempt to do something they don't believe they can do.

Ever since I was in the third grade I wanted to be an Olympic Athlete. I respected the Olympians because they were an example of what I believed in - they are willing to commit to a goal, willing to risk adversity in the pursuit of it, willing to fail and at the same time keep trying until they succeeded. But it was not until I was in college and saw Scott Hamilton compete in the Sarajevo games that I made a decision to train for the Olympics.

How did I raise my self-belief level between third grade and college? Two ways - through what I read and through the people I associated with.

I read countless biographies of great people. Before long, I realized that the common denominator in the success of those great people was the fact they had a dream they were passionate about and they never gave up. Perseverance is the best trait you can have. But how do you keep yourself going when the going gets tough? It comes back to your beliefs.

The other thing I did to raise my self-esteem was to regularly associate with people I respected. When you hang around people that think big, you start to think big. And when people you have respect for believe in you, you start to believe in yourself.

Four years after making a decision to begin training for the Olympics, I had the honor of competing in the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics in the luge. I went on to compete in the 1992 Albertville Olympics and I just competed in the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics at the age of 39.

How does someone who did not even take up the sport of luge until he was 22 become a Three-Time Olympian? As I tell thousands of people in my speeches, I'm not a big shot. I'm just a little shot that keeps on shooting. I'm proof that ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary things if they will just put the right things into their minds.

Olympic Athletes consistently and persistently use specialized techniques to program their minds to achieve peak performance. The following simple techniques performed consistently over a period of time will change your outlook in life and ultimately your outcomes.

Write your Goals Down!

Magic happens when you put your goals down on paper. Your subconscious mind starts trying to figure out ways to make your goals become a reality.

In 1960, Harvard Business School did a study of their graduates 20 years after they had graduated. They found the top 3% moneymakers made as much money as the other 97% put together. The only difference between the two groups was the top 3% had always written and regularly read their goals. As a result, everything they did on a day-to-day basis was focused on reaching their goals.

When Tiger Woods was a young boy, he wrote down on a 3x5 card that he intended to break all of Jack Nicklaus' records. Jack Nicklaus agrees that Woods can do it if he stays on the track he's on.

The most effective way to write your goals down is to take a 3x5 card and on one side write:

"I intend to . by (date)."

On the other side of your card write why.

"I intend to accomplish this because"

Then write at least three reasons why you will do it. The reasons increase your belief.

Read your card first thing in the morning EVERY DAY to stay focused on the objective. Then read your card EVERY NIGHT before turning out the lights so your subconscious can work all night on ways to make it happen.

Vividly Imagine the Desired Outcome .

Several times a day close your eyes and for a couple of minutes vividly imagine what it's going to feel like when you achieve your goal. Really get into it. Feel it as if it were really happening. Get excited! Your subconscious does not know the difference between imagining it and it really happening. By doing this, you become passionate about your desire, your belief becomes unshakeable and you become unstoppable.

The luge team is taught to visualize their sled runs every day. Especially right before practice. We "run the mental tape" in our minds of each twist, turn and body movement so when we're hurling down the track at 80+ MPH, we instinctively know what to do in all situations.

I constantly visualized what it was going to be like when I walked into the Olympic Stadium at the Opening Ceremonies. I could see the crowds waving at me. I could see the flags and the balloons. I could hear the roar of the crowd, the fireworks, the Olympic Hymn. I could feel the cold wind blowing snow onto my cheeks. I could feel the tears of joy streaming down my face. I could feel the goose bumps running up my back and over my shoulders. I thought about it all the time, even while jogging, while lifting weights, in the shower, etc. It was my dream! And when I finally entered the Olympic arena, it was just the same only 100 times better.

Find a Mentor

The "Why?" is always more important than the "How?". Don't worry how you will make your dream come true. The dream gives you the energy. Find someone who has already been successful in doing what you want to do, not just someone who talks the talk. Ask them to be your mentor and teach you how to be successful as they are. If you are serious and committed to achieving your dream, they will see the passion in your eyes and will be honored to be asked.

As soon as I decided to take up the luge and train for the Calgary Olympics, I contacted the U.S. Luge Association in Lake Placid, NY. I asked the USLA if they would teach me how to luge and prepare me for the Olympics four years away. They said they had a plan in place and that if I would follow the plan and not quit, I would have a good chance of making it. Without knowing what the plan was, I humbled myself to my new mentors and let them know I would do whatever they said I needed to do.

That is the ideal mentor-mentee relationship. A hungry, driven, eager to learn, yet humble mentee together with a giving, knowledgeable, successful mentor.

Setting goals, visualizing the desired outcome, and finding a mentor are basic yet critical steps to succeeding in life. Every Olympic athlete I've ever met does all three consistently. It's just a decision. By consistently and persistently following these steps , you will reach your goals and dreams faster than 95% of the people in the world.

Chase your Dreams, Go for the Gold, and Never, Ever Give Up!

A peak performance expert, Ruben Gonzalez speaks on the principles of success he followed on the road to the Olympics. Ruben inspires and equips his audiences to "Go for the Gold" in life. www.thelugeman.com

Challenge Your Failure

 Have you ever wondered: "Why do things never work for me? Why do I never succeed while others do? Why do some people reach their goals, while others don't? " I bet most of you have asked yourselves those questions before. Have you ever started doing a certain activity, but after trying a couple of times, decided that it was too hard for you?

Maybe you thought that you lack the qualities needed to perform the required activity. Or maybe you've done like most people, and started complaining about your bad luck, the weak economy and all of the other external conditions that affect you.
But the truth here is totally different, life has proved that anyone can achieve anything that he wants, given that he tried hard enough. "But how hard is hard enough?" You may wonder...
Here's an example. Let's say that you need to fall about one hundred and fifty times before you can reach a certain level of proficiency in skating. Let's assume that you only tried one hundred and ten times. You might stop trying and call yourself a failure because you fell 110 times. But if you knew the truth - that you were only 40 trials away of achieving your goal - you wouldn't have stopped then.
Off course, there isn't any known constant number of trials that you need to complete for every activity - because the number of required trials depends on your skills.
Take the skating example. If you were very skilled at sports, with good feet co-ordination and balance, you may need to fall twenty or thirty times only before you could do it well. An average person may need seventy trials, while someone with zero sports background may need to try more than a hundred times. But in the end, after all did their required trials, they are all capable of skating!
If you're still not convinced, just go ahead and read the those few examples:
Thomas Edison failed nine hundred ninety nine times before he succeeded at inventing the lamp. On the 1000th trial!!! When he was asked how he managed to continue trying in spite of failing all those times, he told them: "Whenever it didn't work, I would never say that I failed. I just say that I've found another incorrect way to make the lamp".
Another story regarding sports, it was previously thought that a man can never run a mile in less than 4 minutes. That belief was there for years, that no one ever dared to doubt its correctness. That was until Roger Banister proved that this was not true, by running a mile in less than 4 minutes. Just after that in the same year another 37 runners broke the record, followed by hundreds later.
What's interesting here is that if anyone of those runners had tried hard enough before Banister, he could have done it. But they all gave up to the belief and didn't try enough times because they thought trying was useless in this case. "Why bother with something impossible?" they thought.
More examples: Henry Ford lost all of his fortune 6 times, and each time he did bounce back and rebuild his empire.
Walt Disney's idea of creating a cartoon character called "Mickey Mouse" was rejected more than 5 times, until he managed to find someone who supported the idea and then Mickey came to life.
English novelist John Creasey got 753 rejection slips before he published 564 books.
If you think that this happened only to those people then you are totally wrong; it did happen to all of us before!! Many times!!
Let me give you an example. When you were a kid learning how to walk, how many times did you fall down? How many times did you try to stand up but couldn't do it?
If you were exposed to that situation with the mentality that you have now, maybe you were going to whine about life becoming so hard, and that babies can't walk easily these days, and parents not giving us the required support that we want when we ask them (chocolate maybe?). Or maybe you would have thought that other kids are going to laugh at me because I can't walk. I will stop trying.
Funny but true, so let's take a look at this situation deeply. Why didn't you give up here? Why did you keep trying until you did it? Simply because at that time you had not yet learned how to give up, or how to blame the circumstances for everything that you fail to achieve. Or maybe you still had not learned to get depressed when you face an unsolved problem.
Enough with babies, let me give you a more recent example.
When you started to learn how to drive, how many times did you fail to make the car move forward? or how many times did the car suddenly stop from you while driving? Do you remember the people yelling at you because you were blocking the road with your car, and you couldn't do anything about it?
This also happened to all of us, and the question here is the same, why you kept trying again and again until you became someone who can drive while listening to the stereo and maybe eating at the same time?
The answer is that most probably you just saw everybody driving successfully and you never saw someone who is learning how to drive and failing and calling it terms like "difficult" and "impossible".
So you knew you could do it, and you didn't give up until you learned how to drive. But what's amazing here is that driving is one of the most difficult activities a person can learn, did you notice how you need to move both of your legs and hands in different directions at the same time! You are controlling your four limbs at the same time, each one in a different direction! Moreover, you are using your mind to concentrate and to make calculations, estimates and decisions in order to follow a certain route, stop at a precise location and avoid hitting something.
The conclusion that we've reached here is just one of the laws of life that God created. If you kept trying and trying you will reach what you want, whatever it is. As for people who don't achieve in life, they aren't people who didn't have the resources to reach their goals - but they are people who gave up so early while they were just about to reach what they wanted.
Like a farmer who planted the seeds, poured the water, waited and waited and nothing happened, so he left. Hours later, the green plant showed up, but there was no one left to take care of it, so it died.
"I Can't Do It" Is never the truth, It's Your Decision.
By M.Farouk

Awaken your inner giant

Have you been to the circus lately?

Yes, I know it's an odd question to ask in a self-development article - but please hang on with me.
In the circus you've got clowns, gymnasts and animals of all sorts. These might include snakes and monkeys, but there is one animal that you're almost guaranteed to find there. It's the Elephant.
Notice anything here ? The Elephant is a huge animal. If the elephant decides to run away, I seriously doubt that anyone could stop him. Well, at least not without some serious destruction to the whole neighbourhood. But why doesn't the elephant try to escape ?

The answer is: whenever a new elephant is brought to the circus, it is chained & tied to a heavy iron ball, and the elephant struggles to escape - all in vain. Everyday, the elephant tries to escape again and again - until it reaches a point where it loses hope. Now the elephant believes that it can never escape! Only then, the chains are removed. The elephant has built a fake belief that it's impossible to escape, and will never try to escape again although the chains were removed.

Have you ever felt like that? All of us were put in that elephants situation at some point of our lives. It's not our fault. We're being brainwashed everyday by our friends, colleagues and the media. The media and society are always creating certain 'barriers' that are supposed to be impenetrable by any normal human being. They are simply out of reach, except if you're a genius or a very lucky guy! below is a list of fake beliefs you may have acquired throughout your life:

• I can't learn a new sport while I'm grown up, I should have started when I was a kid.
• It's very hard to find a job these days, there is no way I could ever work in this country.
• You can't get everything that you want.
• When you get married you won't have time for anything.
• I can never stop smoking, even if I did I will come back to it.
• I'm not lucky, if I had the required luck I would have everything that I want.
• There Is something called luck!!!

If you're still taking the issue lightly, let me tell you a story that will change your perspective. It revolves around two guys: Joe and Bob. Joe and Bob were friends, they used to hangout together - often to play basketball.

Joe was taught by his family that no one can take everything in life.

Joe and Bob started applying for jobs, and by coincidence they got an interview at the same company.

After passing the interview, they were told that the job requires working 12 hours per day, with only a one-day vacation per week. This means that whoever accepted the job would have to quit playing basketball, because he won't have time for sports.

Joe thought: "Well, I can't take everything. I'll accept the job and give up on basketball". He took the job.

Bob thought: "No, I'll pass this one. I'm sure there is a better job somewhere, one that could provide me with some spare time to play basketball". He didn't take the job.

In a few months, Joe started to feel that something is missing. He was used to the elevated blood flow that regular training used to provide him. His brain was used to getting more oxygen, thinking better and felling better in general.

Now Joe started to feel depressed, without knowing why. Even more, he left his job, thinking that he was bored of this type of work.

Unfortunately, this was a true story. And what's worse is that similar stories keep happening every day, because of people having similar fake beliefs. Most people are unaware of their powers. Some people have lots of tools and opportunities to go for but their fake beliefs are the only thing stopping them. They think that everything is working out smoothly and that this is life.
I know lots of people that don't take enough action to improve their life, thinking that they need to be lucky or inherit a fortune in order to improve their life.

They are not trying to learn anything new, thinking that it's so hard to get a job anyway. Some of them indulged themselves into bad habits like smoking and doing drugs. They think that they can never stop it. People quit sports and get fat, thinking that their marriage and career should take their whole time. "Well, you can't get everything in life" they say.

Now it really gets funny when people start spreading fake beliefs without even TESTING them. I was once seeking a certain computer certification, and whenever I asked someone I was told that it's very hard to pass the exam. I have to admit, I started falling to the trap and believed them. I then paused for a while and asked them what was so difficult about the exam. You'll be amazed at the reply: "We don't know. We never tried to take it". Haaah !!

It's an endless cycle. People believe it's so hard just because other people told them so, and so on it goes... Fake Beliefs !

So, what can you do about that? What's the correct action to take when dealing with other peoples opinions that are about to become beliefs? In my opinion, you should first test that belief. Yes, simply test it. If someone told you that you can't lift that box over there, just try to do it. Just because he can't lift it, doesn't mean that you can't. Don't take his word, just give it a try. If someone didn't have the qualities required to land a job, it doesn't mean that you can't either. People differ in their qualities, strengths and weaknesses. Let's just sum it up in one quote:
If you think you can do it, then you will. But if you think you can't, then you are right.

By Farouk
www.2knowmyself.com

my quote :

Trying to become most effective personality  :  MYSELF