Exploring Resilience via Lifes Burning Issues

Tag: success (Page 2 of 3)

How to build a successful tomorrow

“learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow” Albert Einstein

Yesterday, today was tomorrow and tomorrow, today will be yesterday. It is a simple logical statement isn’t it. Did you notice that today is in the middle of both statements? But is this where are you spending your time?

The problem with yesterday

One of the biggest problems a lot of us face is that we spend too much time living in our yesterdays, thinking about their successes, their good feelings, their glory or wallowing in their failures, the associated bad feelings and misery.

Yesterday is over, we shouldn’t hold on to it with a load of what if questions, but we shouldn’t forget our yesterdays either.

All of our yesterdays have valuable lessons contained within them.  Those lessons are only powerful if we apply them to our today.

Applying yesterday to today.

Yesterdays success carries with it valuable lessons that can be re-applied today to help us succeed today.

When we look at yesterdays success, it is not to dwell in its glory and the associated good feelings, but to examine it in a way that sheds light on the steps that led to that success. If we can look back on those yesterdays and see patterns of behaviour that have led to success it makes it easy to repeat those behaviours so that we can use them on whatever it is that we are working on today.

Examining our successes from our yesterdays and re-applying the patterns of behavior that led to those successes will help us to build upon that pattern of behavior, and when we repeat any pattern of behavior over and over, it becomes a habit. I am sure we would all rather have successful habits than unsuccessful ones.

Similarly if we are dwelling on yesterdays failures and the associated behaviors that led to those failures we risk sabotaging what we are working on today but allowing those feelings to negatively impact on today’s projects. However, just like examining our successes and finding patterns of behaviour to repeat, we should examine the failures of our yesterdays in such a way that sheds light on the patterns of behaviour that contributed to those failures.

When we can clearly see the shortfalls in our previous patterns of behaviour we are afforded to opportunity to avoid repeating them. When we actively avoid repeating behaviours that have led to failure, at the very least we have set out on a new course that provides the possibility of an alternative path.

Applying today to tomorrow

The patterns of thinking and behaviour that we are building today, are forming the foundations for what we are building in the future. As mentioned above we would all prefer to be building successful tomorrows. Like any structure our success needs to be built on a solid foundation and that means that we need to make a choice to spend our time today applying the lessons from yesterday so that tomorrow we can build our success.

image by Zoutdrop Via Flickr

Are you suffering self development overload?

Self Development overload and achieving your goals

There is SO much great information available on setting goals, getting where you want to go and achieving what you want to achieve. BUT….how many people are really actually close to achieving their goals? How many people are still off course and just devouring material without putting it into practice? How many people are really just suffering from self-development overload?

The Simple Message

When you really examine a lot of the self-development material there is really a few simple messages that emerge with a lot of different ways of looking at those messages.

One of those messages is just how close we are to really being able to achieve what we want to do, and how simple the process of implementing the necessary changes can be if you really want to.

Great examples of delivering on this simple message

Life often throws up serendipitous moments…..(Despite the fact that I hate him  )  I have been working my way through Tim Brownson and John Strelecky’s book.

Tim and John do a great job of cutting through a lot of material to provide clear steps you can take to examine what really drives you, and actions you can take to live in alignment with what drives you.

Another person who has done an AMAZING job of examining what drives us is Dan Pink, and this RSA Animations is entertaining but hits home….. what is your PURPOSE.

There are also classic examples of a clear message about altering course to achieve your goals and this piece by Viktor Frankl, the famous author of Man’s search for meaning is a prime example.

Ben Lumley over at Six Aliens has put together a great compilation of pieces by Anthony Robbins, Jim Rohn and a real blast of a video that shows how a great mindset can (and should) start really early in life. You can check out his compilation over at his Friday’s Personal Development Homework post.

The simple message is really clear… figure out your values, live your life in alignment with them, realize just how close you are and don’t be afraid to alter course by a millimetre or two to REALLY achieve your goals!

What do you think?

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