Tag: commitment

What are the keys to success?

Posted on by philipdodson

So I was reading something on Facebook listing the keys to success and that got me thinking about what I would put in a such a list. Not that I disagreed with the poster’s views, it’s just I felt it missed a few things that were for me important.

Also, I am not saying I’m right either, after all success should be a personal thing and not what it looks like for others.

So here goes, here is my take on this and in no particular order of importance, other than the first two for me are essential:

1. Know your values

This is something that I now realise has to be the bedrock of everything in life and if you don’t know what your values are, then success will be hard to come by. Often when something doesn’t feel right, but we’re not sure why, it’s because something is conflicting with our values. It won’t go away and the moment we start to compromise our values, then things start to go wrong.

So not just knowing your values, but living by them. Then decisions in almost everything become straight-forward.

2. Be happy

Happiness leads to success not the other way round. You can choose to be happy or not. It is a mindset that we control and if you have a positive mindset and choose happiness, then success will come in whatever you choose to do.

There is a great book on this called ‘The Happiness Advantage’ by Shawn Achor.

3. Help others

Part of helping us to feel good and therefore happy, is when we help others. It is important to help others without an agenda too. Random acts of kindness have a massive impact on personal well-being and happiness.

4. Believe & never give up

Belief in what you do or your dream is essential for success. It seems an obvious thing to say, but that belief has to be cast iron and with that you have to keep going, whatever shit comes your way on the journey. Never ever give up hope or the belief.

5. Commitment

Once you have your dream and you are full of belief, then you have to work at it, you have to sacrifice things, you have to be prepared to be disciplined and do whatever work is needed to make that dream a reality.

6. Look after yourself

This may again seem an obvious one, but it is important to not only look after yourself physically, but even more critical is to look after your mental well-being. So eat the right stuff, get your sleep, take breaks, do exercise and take time for yourself.

Make sure that you allow time for fun, meditation, and time spent when you switch off from the day to day.

You can only work at warp factor 9 for so long, no matter who you are and spending time on you is vital for success.

For example, just taking 5-10 minutes a day to meditate will have a huge impact on mental and physical health. People who meditate are much happier too.

Taking time to write your thoughts down each day helps unwind and work out challenges. I use 750words.com

7. Collaborate

It is important to realise that you are not brilliant at everything and as long as the others you work with share your values, then collaborating with other people/businesses is a critical element in being successful.

You can then concentrate on what you are best at and as mate Brad Burton says ‘there is no cavalry you have to build your own’.

8. Dare to be great

To many people worry about what the critics might say, don’t. Step into the ‘ring’ and don’t worry about the people sitting on the sidelines, as they didn’t have the courage to step into the ‘ring’ and take the knocks.

There is a great book by Brene Brown called ‘Daring Greatly’ that is a definite read for learning about success.

9. Take the small steps

Once you have a vision of your dream, it is then important to break it all down into manageable steps, that if taken daily with discipline, will lead you to where you want to go. As Mao said ‘A journey of a thousand miles starts with one small step’.

These daily steps are what creates the compound effect that will catapult you and will build the momentum that will lead to reaching your goals.

There is another great book by Darren Hardy called ‘The Compound Effect’ which illustrates this concept brilliantly.

10. Have no fears

Regret is what comes when we allow fears to dominate us and stop us from action. Fears can be overcome, but regrets are very hard to remove. So easier said than done, but don’t fear failure, as mistakes are what makes us stronger.

The mistakes we make, we would make again, even if we could go back in time, as every decision we make is based on our knowledge/experience gained up to the point we make that decision. So it is futile to worry about these things, just move on from mistakes and learn for the future.

11. Enjoy

Again might seem a very obvious thing to put, but we are going to have today and therefore it is better to enjoy the day, have fun and cherish the moments that day brings. Shit will happen some days, but it is how you react to it that will shape your life and success.

12. Surround yourself with the right people

If you are to be a success, you must choose and surround yourself with positive people who have shared values and who will stick by you whatever. This is so important.

As Debbie Huxton my coach talks about ‘remove toxic relationships’.

Commitment

Posted on by philipdodson

I got up and went into to work on Saturday. I am finding more and more, that I am committing to things that I say I am going to do.

Comittment

It is a discipline that is building and forming a habit, one which is starting to grow and grow.

The things is, in the past and until more recently, I have at times said that I was going to get something done and due to a number of factors, one especially being focus, often it didn’t get done or wasn’t done promptly. Focus is something that has always been hard for me.

All my life from whenever I can remember, until more recently, I have been easily distracted, which I think is due to the fact that I felt that there was always something better going on. Thus, if I didn’t stop and find out, then I might be missing something. I have learnt that it’s better to focus on what you’re doing and create your own ‘better things’.

This has carried on to a certain extent into adult life and the lack of focus has at time cost me dearly.

Doing this writing everyday on 750words.com has been a real winner, as it is a commitment and like everything in life, we have to be committed, whatever we are doing.

It isn’t all about work, it’s about life, as life and work are the same thing. Relationships take commitment, losing weight needs commitment, getting fit needs commitment, eating more healthily takes commitment and so on.

So for me doing this writing is having a massive effect on helping me to learn commitment in everything that I am doing. As the commitment thing grows, guess what you start to get more done and getting more done leads to better results. Better results gives you more confidence and so the cycle continues.

As you gain confidence you take on more and add in the commitment to that and guess what? you get more good results.

So for me it is all about challenging the gremlins, challenging the ‘truths’ that we tell ourselves in our head. I am on a mission to defeat those gremlins and replace them with positive auto-pilots in my brain, so that future good behaviour becomes automatic.

I was one of those people who used to believe that ‘leopards can’t change their spots’. However, I now believe (sounds like I’m some preacher!) that you can change almost anything if you are determined enough to do so.

So I have in the last 18-24 months dealt with many of these gremlins and like all of us, I have shied away from some of the more difficult ones, as I now deep down that these are going to be the toughest and they are some of the habits that I have had all my life.

One of the biggest ones that I have nailed in the last the 3-4 years was my habit of over eating, drinking too heavily and eating the wrong type of food.

That one was a BIG ONE and it has been hard, so hard. But now after many years, it is well and truly beaten, that gremlin, which I have had all my life, has gone. I used to comfort eat and drink, I used to eat mainly good quality food, but all the wrong things for health.

I have gone form nearly 23 stone to 15 1/2 in 4 years and gone from a XXXL to L and gone from a 44 inch waist to a 32. I have literally shrunk myself back to how I was in my mid to late 30’s.

I now know completely, that I will never go back to that life again. Occasionally now, I go ‘off the rails’,however, I immediately get back on it and it never has a chance to become a habit.

Now the one I have killed just recently, which wasn’t with me all my life, in fact, it came about in my early 40’s, when I’d lost all my self-confidence, was the over-thinking gremlin, which leads to indecision and inaction. Over-thinking is a bad one, as you end up talking yourself out of doing most things and that then kills your self-confidence further. As you say that you are going to do something, then the gremlins hijack that and help your ‘chimp’ brain to convince you not to do something. The longer you think, the less likely you are to do that thing.

So that one is gradually being dealt with and that is helping me massively grow the auto-pilot of commitment. Commitment helps with the curse of instant gratification, which is another issue.

I’ve grown up in world that has created/massively encouraged instant gratification and that is the antithesis of doing, as you will always opt for something ‘now’ without committing to building something sustainable for the future. So you are not prepared to sacrifice things for later gain.

The later gain, if you commit and sacrifice for long enough, is always better than the short-term now gain. This is because the compound effect builds momentum and that then creates something much more rewarding than anything you can get easily now.

Commitment is one of the biggest keys to success in life.