How To Be Successful

We hear a lot about motivation and striving for success, but often we chase the wrong goals because they look good on someone else. So we either gain success and feel empty or we fail because we can’t get motivated.

We get excited and get more done when we are enjoying something or it aligns with what we care about. It is hard to get motivated about something that we don’t care about, but very easy to get a lot done with very little motivation when we are passionate about the thing we are doing.

Success comes when we figure out what we care about, what we are passionate about, and we put our energy into succeeding in that area. We don’t need better motivation, we need clearer values and beliefs, because these will highlight the things we care about. Then we can be successful and feel fulfilled by the success.

2022 Goals: Self Mastery

One thing that all gurus, mentors and motivational coaches advocate for is self mastery. Whether it be mindfulness meditation or achieving goals, understanding and mastering how we think, feel and act allows us to move skilfully through the world.

Step 2 in the Pathway To Fulfilment is Self Mastery, which begins with self knowledge and extends to establishing what you believe, what your values are and what your ethics are. It is a process of self examination and is built on a foundation of acquired wisdom and will lead toward Defining Your Purpose, which is Step 5.

What will you try to develop in yourself this year?

It could be overcoming procrastination or starting a journal. It could be trying new things or mastering what you already do. My advice is to pick no more than two or three things to work on at once, but start, be consistent and set deadlines for your goals, so you can check your progress.

Love What You Do

We hear the motivational mantra “Do what you love” a lot in the motivational coaching sphere, and in society generally, but I think it is bad advice if the suggestion is to have the thing you love as your source of income. The thing you love may not be something that you can be paid to do, or at least difficult to get paid for.

This is not to say that you shouldn’t do what you love, but assuming everyone can is misleading. By all means do what you love, but make sure your rent and bills are paid. You will find it even harder to be a success if you end up homeless.

When you are wanting to be successful it is more effective to love what you do. Some people sell coffee in a coffee shop, others create meaningful experiences for customer that lift their day and make them feel good, while selling them coffee. Some manage a team, others lead a team in such a way that every member of the team contributes and works towards a shared vision.

You get my point. Sometimes it is better to love what you do, but also do what you love when you can. We all want different things and have different life experiences and constraints. Don’t feel that you have to do what you love because society says so, do what is best for you.

Don’t Look For A Mentor

This is something that I picked up from Seth Godin. I have been watching a lot of interviews with him on YouTube and there are many wise insights to be had, and this is just one of them.

A lot of performance coaches and motivational speakers will tell you to go and find a mentor who is doing what you want to do and ask them to mentor you. The point Seth Godin has is that the number of people who could be mentors is small and the number of people who are looking for a mentor is high, so the likelihood of getting a mentor to support you is really low.

It is better to find Heroes. Find someone who is doing what you want to do and use the internet to find out what they had to do to get to where they are and reverse engineer your own success.

It is easier to find a ‘hero,’ or more than one, and the insights that their journey and daily practice can provide are freely available, if you do the research. This is a better approach because it has better odds of succeeding and you can do it today.

Sometimes people will use the excuse of not being able to find a mentor to let themselves off the hook, so they don’t have to do the demanding and scary work of putting themselves and their work out there into the world. Be brave, find a hero and do the work you need to do to move forward.