Take Care of Your Relationships

Relationships are one of the most important aspects of your life and in determining whether or not you will be successful. These relationships are between you and your significant other, your co-workers, your friends, your neighbors, your colleagues (in your industry), and even with people you don't know but that know you. All of these people play a part in helping, or hurting your progress towards living the type of life you want to live. It's very important to make a good first impression on those who could influence your future, and to gain and maintain the respect of those whom you already know. By doing so these people will help, rather than hinder your progress towards becoming a success. 


The most important and influential relationship you will have is the one with your significant other. If they do not support you, your journey down the road of success will be filled with even more twists and turns and the speed limit will be pretty low. However, if they do support you, then your road of success will straighten out and the speed limit will increase. Think about it this way: If you do not have a significant other, then your road of success will be a "normal" one with some twists, turns, pot-holes, and an average speed limit (say 60 mph). You can do live the type of life you want to live and become a successful person, no doubt about it. If you have a significant other though, then that road will change either for the better or for the worse,....it cannot stay the same. If the relationship is a good one, then they will be there to challenge you and push on the gas when you get too comfortable and are going too slow, stand behind you, support you, and help you watch out for pot holes and road blocks when you are working towards your goals, be the shock absorber that helps keep your ride somewhat smooth when you are traveling over the bumps, be there to hand you the tools you need when there is a little maintenance necessary, and be there to celebrate with you every time you reach one of your goals. But if the relationship isn't a good one, then they will distract you so that you hit more pot holes and take wrong turns, criticize your driving style and navigational skills, and make the ride uncomfortable by turning the radio to a station your don't like and turning the temperature on too hot or too cold.


If you are in a relationship, you'll know exactly what I mean. If you aren't, then take my word for it and I'm sure you'll find out soon enough. So take care of your relationships and your travel down the road of success will be faster and smoother. If you need to take a pit stop to work on your relationship a little bit before continuing...do so...it will be well worth it.

Patience

I know it's been a while since my last post,...but that's because I was helping you to work on what this post is about - patience. =)

Really though, patience is a very important trait to possess as you travel down the Road of Success. No matter how much you want to achieve a goal, or "become successful," in order to do it right, it will take time. How much time depends on many factors, but most important things take more than just a few days or even weeks to accomplish. There is a natural sequence and timing for almost everything. I'm using the word natural here as in "nature" as in successful people have a certain nature that you can predict and usually be right. For instance it's in the nature of a successful person to be honest, to have integrity, to be ambitious, to get along well with people and/or be very intelligent, etc. You must align yourself with the nature of success, and one of it's aspects is to have patience. Picture it this way:

You are in your car driving down the Road of Success and you know that your next destination that you want to get to is Goal A Station. "Goal A Station" signifies a particular goal you are working toward (creative huh?). You know that Goal A Station is 247 miles away and that the best way to get there is to keep driving on the Road of Success. The miles represent the many different steps you need to take in order to achieve the goal you are working toward. But no matter how badly you want to get to Goal A Station (achieve the goal), you still have to travel all 247 miles until you can get there! You can't take a short-cut because there aren't any or there may be some that look like they are but those roads are littered with potholes, broken glass and nails, and dead ends that you can't see until you get close. And your car can only go so fast, there's a limit on the speedometer after all and if you try to go too fast you'll burn up your engine (or "burn-out" as they say). So no matter what, even if you go as fast as you can without risking burning up your engine, it's still going to take you a certain amount of time to travel all 247 miles before you'll get there.

Since I mentioned nature a little while ago, let me give you another example. Picture a farmer who is really ambitious. He wants to grow and sell as much corn as he can so he can make a lot of money and feed thousands of people. So he plants seeds in the Spring in his whole field and keeps working as much as he can to get it done as soon as possible, only stopping to sleep for a few hours each night and eat a couple of meals per day. When he finally gets his whole field seeded, most of the other farmers are only half-way done with their fields. But then what? There is a natural sequence and time-frame for growing and harvesting crops, and no matter how much ambition the farmer has, or how intelligent, or nice, or popular he is...the seeds will take time to sprout, grow, and fruit so the corn can be harvested and there's not much the farmer can do to speed up that process. If he tries to give it the plants water faster than he should, they will die. If he keeps putting more and more fertilizer on the field, they will die. If he plants the seeds earlier in hopes that they will grow and produce corn earlier, they probably won't even grow in the first place because the ground will still be too cold and will kill the seeds. But if he plants the seeds at the right time, gives them the right amount of water and fertilizer, and is patient, he will grow healthy productive plants and have plenty of corn to sell. He must be patient and wait for the natural cycle to be complete in order to achieve his goal.

So too must we continue to do all of the things we know we should to in order to be successful and achieve our goals, while being patient at the same time. We can be super ambitious, intelligent, happy, optimistic, determined, and persistent,...and maybe we'll be able to achieve our goals a little faster that way. But we still have to be patient and realize that some things, especially important things, just take time.

Are you trying to rush success? Stop it! Keep that ambition, optimism, and determination....but be patient. You will succeed, but it may take some time. Be patient.

Don't Worry, Be Happy

I bet you didn't know that Bobby McFerrin was a success coach did you? Well he was! Way back in 1988 when he sang the song "Don't Worry, Be Happy" he wasn't just singing a catch acappella song, he was giving advice on how to be live a successful life.

Not that I've lived an extremely long time yet (I'm only 25 after all), but in my lifetime I've come to learn through my own experience as well as by watching others that worrying about something, anything, never does anything to help the situation. But so many people worry about things all the time anyway. Are you one of them? It's okay, I used to too! But no more, I've stepped into the light and realized that if I can't change something or I don't know what's going to happen and there's no way I'll know until it happens, then there's no point in worrying about it either. Seriously, what's the point of worrying about something you can't do anything about? All that you accomplish by worrying is to make yourself upset, scared, apprehensive, (fill in whatever other crappy feeling you want here), and if you talk to others about things you worry about then you are influencing them to feel negative emotions as well! But did any of that worrying help the situation? Nope. So all you did by worrying is make yourself feel bad and probably influence someone else to feel bad also. So if I'm doing my math right, that means you just hurt yourself and someone else and didn't get anything good out of it and neither did anyone else AND the situation didn't change even one bit. So you aren't just back to where you started from, you're worse off than when you started! Why on Earth would anyone want to do that?!?!? It makes absolutely no sense...

However, it's not enough simply to understand this principle at an intellectual level - you have to internalize it and actually make your part of your standard operating procedure for all situations you encounter in your life that you can't do anything about. I'm sorry that I can't tell you how to do that, you just have to do it. The way I started doing it is by praying the prayer "God please grant me the courage to change the things I can and should change, the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen." It's worked for me, it'll probably work for you too. Once you do finally get this down, you will not believe how much better you feel about your life! There are so many things that you have no control over, but when you realize that worrying or getting upset about those things will only hurt you and won't help the situation so you just let it go (and "give it to God" as I like to put it, just let Him handle it His way and in His time), you will have such an amazing feeling of peace and contentment... You'll wonder why it took you so long to come to your senses. I hope you get there soon...the more people that realize this, the better place this world will be...