Lead Yourself to Success

Everyone is striving for success.  Many are looking for The Secret, some are searching for the right connections and many are continuously learning from the those who have made it.

My teacher Andy Ferrari Norman once told me that you must follow the right leader if you want to be successful.  For a leader will point to you the direction to success and you can also avoid many mistakes and reduce your chance of failure.

What if there is no right leader leading you?  Or you have a bad leader that you just cannot follow?

As a Coach, I believe that everyone is powerful.  Everyone is a leader for leadership is not a position or seniority thing.  Leadership is influence, nothing more nothing less. 

Since everyone is already a leader, everyone can lead himself to success.  In fact that leading yourself to success is easier than following a leader for you are in full control of the situation.

There are 5 ways that you can lead yourself to success:

1.    Realize that Service to Others is your Highest Purpose

If you have a ‘Service to Others’ as your highest purpose in life, you will realize that as long as you are serving others, you cannot fail.  For example, a worker getting stuck in one position is considered a failure by many.  But to me as long as he is doing his best for the job, that ‘service to others’ is by itself a success.  For not everyone can get promoted and we also cannot promote everyone or there will be no workers working!

The real failures are those who have ‘Service to Myself’ as their highest purpose.  These people may have material success that many envy (like more money), but if they achieve their success through making use, misleading or harming others, they are really serving themselves and to me that is a failure!  Just look at those traders that made huge bonuses for themselves while making their employer banks go bankrupt with the trading loss and you’ll know what I am talking about.

2.    Proper Planning Propels You to Peak Performance

Nobody plans to fail, but many fail to plan. So if you plan to fail, you are indirectly planning to fail! Many spent weeks planning for their year-end vacation but spent nothing planning for their life success.  Many do not even have a career plan, family plan or business plan.  They just drift along and one day just wake up and realize that they are on the way to the waterfall!

So you must really plan for yourself if you want to be successful.  Start by having a 1-year plan, followed by Quarter Plan and then move on 5-year plan and Life Plan.

Remember: not planning is planning to fail!  No great leader can lead people to success if they don’t plan to be successful themselves.

3.     Remove Your ‘Held-Down 7’

I once used a calculator that always calculates wrongly by adding a ‘7 ‘to any computation I made.  For example, if I press ‘2 + 2’ it will give me eleven as the answer.  The reason is that the ‘7’ button on that faulty calculator is always pressed down (2 + 2 + 7 = 11), and as a result this calculator cannot compute correctly.

The same goes for human beings.  It is said that human beings are always right, for even if they do something wrong, they have good reasons.  In short, it is their thinking that is wrong.  Then what causes them to think wrongly?

It is the something that is holding you down that makes you unable to think or act correctly.    For example, many people get into alcohol addiction because they have something inside them that is holding them down. 

The common things that are holding us down include:

•   Past bad experience and failure;

•   Past success (it makes us complacent and thus we fail);

•   Many reasons, and they are just excuses or justifications so that we don’t feel bad

                       

To be successful, just move on and remove your held-down 7 now!

4.     Get Rid of Your Dark Shadow

The story goes that when Alexander the Great (the King from Macedonia that conquered an empire all the way from Greece to Iran and Pakistan) was a boy, he was offered a horse that cannot be ridden.  Nobody expects anyone to be able to ride this horse because this horse is so stubborn and fierce and will throw people off.   When Alexander approached the horse, he spoke to the horse gently and reminded it that its shadow is just a shadow and not some creature waiting to harm him.  He told the horse that if he just look up and charge forward, he will not be away to see the shadow, i.e. the shadow will go away.  The horse believed Alexander and they both became a strong team in all their future conquers.

What is your dark shadow?  Is it something that you think is going to harm you if you move forward? 

Many people are afraid that if they move towards success, they will lose some of their friends, their freedom or even their own comfort zone.  Some are afraid that people will criticize, ridicule or berate at them if they fail.  These are all shadows, and they are dark shadows for they make us feel small.

Remember, until you get rid of your dark shadow, your dark shadow will continue to haunt you and you’ll be too paralized to move towards your success.   So get rid of your dark shadows and you’ll be on the road to success like Alexander’s horse!

5.    Appreciate the Journey

Yes, they say that it is the journey that brings us happiness, not the destination.  Many also said that as long as you have a good journey, you are already successful.  The final destination or reward is just a Recognition of your Success.

So base on this understanding, you are already successful, as long as you never give up and continue on the journey.  To be able to push on, you need to appreciate the journey and be happy when the going gets tough.

If you too want to get the most out of your career and life, practice the above ways and you’ll reap the rewards like what my coaching clients and seminar participants have achieved.  For more information, email to me at andy@asiacoachingtraining.com,  You can also visit www.asiatrainers.com/SeminarsList.php or text me at 65-82014347 or message me at www.facebook.com/AndyTheCoach.