Tag: helping others

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’.

Goodbye old school

Posted on by philipdodson

Goodbye old school – by Philip Dodson

old school

The old system has run it’s course now, education, politics and business.

I am 46 and have grown up in a world where most of the values and ways of doing things were drawn from the 1800s. From a time of empires, industrialisation, capitalism, socialism, communism and so on.

The world is now entering a new age – a digital age and an entrepreneurial revolution. But even more so, it’s entering uncharted territory, 7 billion of us, dwindling resources and global issues, that need a global approach. A totally disengaged and disillusioned young – who can’t relate to the old world.

We are at a fork in the path – many will want to selfishly lead us onwards back to the old school nirvana.

The old system is stifling the creative thought, supressing the changes we need and strangling radical new ways of doing things.

Party politics no longer engages with people, as we have heard it all before, very little fresh thinking, corruption, people on all sides who are not experiencing the world as most are.

Mainly policies that are there to ensure re-election in 4-5 years time, rather than the right policies. One lot promises one thing for their followers, the others in their dogma disagree with it all and then come to power and change it. Often regardless of whether or not it works.

None of this is a political statement – it applies to all of them. The system no longer works. We need business leaders, community leaders and others to take over and work on policies together – ditch left, right centre and whatever else – bring in common sense.

Then turning to education – this is kicked around like a political ‘football’ with little real thought to the end product. Children are growing up with smart phones and tablet PC’s, yet we send them to school and sit them down to read text books. The system is largely preparing children for a world that doesn’t and will not exist by the time they leave. Is it not that 20% of the jobs today didn’t exist 5 years ago?

Just think of the technological changes that are happening, think about the entrepreneurial revolution – the fact that within 10 years self-employment will be the norm in the developed world.

We need to get entrepreneurial leaders involved more and more in education. There are already some great examples of this happening . However it is still scratching the surface.

Then the system of doing business is still very old school – however within commerce, there is a different order, here customers make the choices. Old school ‘HMV’s’ didn’t adapt and they failed.

In business some of the old ways of sales, marketing, running business, employee relations, working environments and so on, have been ditched by forward thinking organisations, as they have seen that they have failed. Just look at the rise globally of co-working and collaborative businesses.

The old system of greed and win at all costs, which blossomed in the 1980s, has to a greater or lesser extent created a great deal of the global issues we face. It for me it symbolised the last death throws of the old system, which came to an end in 2008.

With self-employment likely to dominate the next decade and beyond, there is a chance that the new ways of collaboration, sharing and helping others to succeed could well be the catalyst for massive global change in society in general.

We stand at the fork and it’s time to say ‘goodbye old school’ and start to bring back a society not driven by short-term greed, but one driven by helping others, sharing, re-creating communities and one that realises that prosperity is about people not materials.