Embrace Success

First of all, you must embrace success.

This may seem strange. As much as you want success, a part of you might fear that success may cause you too much pain. What kind of pain might this be? You might lose the support of your peer group. Birds of a feather do flock together. You could be getting subtle hints that your friends would feel jealous or hurt if you become more successful than they.

If it should be the case, the first thing you need to do is be aware of what they are doing. Awareness give you a choice. You can agree with their discouraging comments or reject them. However, this wastes your energy. Better to hang around people who are positive and encourage your success. Although leaving old friends, even if they are negative, can cause you some immediate discomfort.

Positive Self-Image

The second key is a positive self-image.

This includes not only believing in yourself, but liking yourself. This is vital. Believing in yourself gives you high motivation and conveys credibility to other's like nothing else can. Others will not like you anymore than you like yourself. If you don't like yourself, people may feel sorry for you and console you, which is different from liking you. If you genuinely like yourself, you become irresistibly attractive.

Furthermore, your success is tied to your self-esteem.

If you think of yourself as a five, on a scale of 1 to 10, your success level will hover around the number five mark. If you're performing below a five, you will feel uncomfortable and do what it takes to succeed at least up to that level. If you are performing above five, this will be incongruent with your self-image and you will unconsciously do something to sabotage that success. It might be something as simple as getting lazy and not working, or you might start making serious mistakes. That's called self-sabotage.

Self-Confidence

Lastly, you need to develop self-confidence.

When you are self-confident you are naturally motivated to do things. You have high self-esteem and will achieve more.

You can improve your self-confidence. Hang out with supportive people. People who have a positive outlook and are optimistic. They dwell on your strengths and encourage your efforts.

Avoid unsupportive people who will "ding" you. It is easy to spot people who are outright critical and maybe even hostile to you. Hopefully, you automatically avoid this type. However, there are subtle detractors. They may cut your self-esteem with a raised eyebrow or snicker. Or when you do something that deserves some praise, they remain silent. I call this kind of behavior "dinging." It's like when you drive your shiny automobile over a dry gravel road. Another car may drive by throwing tiny stones and ding the surface of your car.

When you cannot avoid people who ding you, simply be aware of and laugh at their game. They are trying to make themselves feel good by making you not OK. While they have the power of making you not OK with them, only you have the power of making yourself not OK with yourself.

Self-confidence is something you create moment by moment. Self-confidence is not something you have. You create self-confidence when you think about your successes or anticipate a successful outcome. Dwelling on your successes is a good habit to get into. There also are mind programming techniques with which you can create self-confidence instantly. These techniques are taught by Neuro Linguistic Programming, Tony Robbins.

Summary

Ultimately, the success of your business rests on you.

To build a life and the business of your dreams, you have to have a solid foundation. You need to build these three cornerstones: full acceptance of being a success, a positive self image, and the ability to be supremely self-confident whenever the need arises.

Copyright (c) 2007 Stan the Mann