Success Articles

What Is Success Anyway

(category: Success, Word count: 531)
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Our society often makes the mistake of equating success with wealth. It's not a surprise that we do this. After all, wealth has the advantage of being measurable. When we can measure something, we can rate how we're doing versus everyone else. We love to compete with each other.

But aside from providing us with a handy way to "keep up with the Jones'," what does the equation of success with wealth really do? It's commonly accepted that money doesn't buy happiness. If someone is wealthy and unhappy, is he or she successful? Of course not!

Success is less about money than it is about worth. A successful person is one who looks at what he or she contributes and is satisfied with what he or she sees. Success is recognition, even if only internal (because in the end, you're the only one who's completely a part of your life). If you're happy, then you've succeeded.

Unfortunately, while American traditions hold that the pursuit of happiness is an inalienable right, happiness itself is far from guaranteed. Indeed, the pursuit of happiness can be a frustrating battle of competing priorities, high prices, and lost time. These very real costs give us the illusion that our unhappiness is caused by what we have spent along the way, to which we readily conclude that if we had fewer responsibilities, lower expenses, and more time, we would be happy. We devote much of our lives to attaining a level of financial independence at which we can at last retire and enjoy our hard-earned free time.

Yet, do you know that the average life expectancy of a retiree who doesn't take up a new challenge to occupy his or her time is about five years? Humans thrive on stimulation. We can't go from overwork to perpetual vacation. We get bored, and we die.

The secret to real happiness, therefore, is neither to have money nor to accumulate money for the future. Both of these may be useful (and up to a point, they're perfectly sensible), but it's much more important that you identify what it is that you like to do with your time than to find ways to free it up sooner.

If you don't know what you want to do - and especially if you're sure that whatever it is, it's not what you're doing now - you probably can't just quit, but you can start to make changes that will make you happier. Start looking for other options. Sign up for some adult education classes at a community college, the kind that have a flat fee and meet once a week for a few weeks. Study languages, maybe. Or art. Or cooking. Try everything you can. You'll know what you like when you find it.

And once you do find it, see how you can incorporate it into your life. We spend most of our lives sleeping or at work, and odds are that you need your sleep. You probably need to work to live, but you might as well be working at a job that you enjoy. Then you'll be on the road to happiness. That's success.

If All You Have Is A Hammer Everything Starts To Look Like A Nail

(category: Success, Word count: 842)
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We were watching the film Mulholland Drive yesterday and it suddenly hit us like a bolt of lightening. How many times we misdiagnose a situation. How many times we carry on a path not knowing that our assumption have taken us miles off course.

It's like playing golf and only knowing how to use three clubs and having to use them in every situation.

It's like looking through a camera zoom lens instead of a wide angle.

It's like blindly following another's opinion.

The fact is that most of our lives are spent reusing the information collected in our formative years. Thus, when anything new enters our arena we immediately go to the past to try to make sense of it.

The outcome is: we each live an illusion. We each see our world through some really heavily tinted spectacles. We each act as though we are a hammer and everything that comes in front of us is a nail.

The problem is. IT DOESN'T WORK.

We were amazed how easily we fell into the trap. How easily we interpreted what was happening before our eyes and made it logical. How easily we searched for closure.

To make us comfortable we wanted to put things into a comfortable category. We wanted to place happenings in a box in the same way a librarian codes books for easy access. Ah! That goes in the family box. That is rude behaviour. That is unacceptable in public. That shows he is uneducated etc etc etc...

Yes, you could argue that this form of coding is important in life because it helps us get through life quickly.

BUT!!!

Why do we like to put ourselves and others into 'psychological boxes'? What is it about us that we like to say we are this type of person or that? Why do we want to limit ourselves? Why do we want to sell ourselves short?

It's like being a carpenter who only has a hammer in his toolbox. We are restricting ourselves beyond belief. Just imagine how restricting it would be if you only had a hammer in your toolbox? How can you get passionate about anything if all you are capable of is knocking the brains out of any information that comes your way?

How do you find out what you were brought onto this planet to do if all you can do is respond in the same way to whatever is put in front of you.

How do you develop and grow your children if all they see is the same behaviour irrespective of the problem posed.

How do you rise to the challenges of our society if all you do is apply the same reasoning even though it doesn't fit?

As Howard Schatz. The famous New York dance photographer stated in one of his books:

"I told each dancer that when it was easy, it had probably been done

before, probably many times. I explained that only when it was so hard

that it was nearly impossible were we perhaps close to getting something

unique and extraordinary."

Is this why we like to categorise situations and people? We actually don't like hard work.

Is it that we don't like the pressure of being our true selves? Because to do that we have to stand out?

Is it that we can't cope with being unique and extraordinary, so we just want to be similar and ordinary?

Is it that we are afraid of who we might be? Are we afraid that we can be successful? Afraid that if we admit to ourselves that we have talent we might have to do something with our lives?

Is it that we don't really want to find out who we really are and what we are capable of?

We don't know about you but we want to be unique, we want to find out and use our uniqueness. We want to be fulfilled. We want to find our energy source that is released when we are doing what we are intended to do. We want to be in the flow, as some writers describe it.

We have come to realise that what stops us from being in the flow all the time. What stops us from releasing our passion. What stops us from behaving naturally. What makes us waste energy.

FEAR.

Fear keeps us placing people and situations into categories.

Fear stops us from leading ourselves.

Fear stops us from letting go of the past.

Fear keeps our habitual patterns in place.

Being frightened and feeling second best stop us from finding our true selves.

Fear buries the natural me.

"A musician must make music, and artists must paint,

a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

What a man can be, he must be"

(Maslow)

What about you?

Good Luck

www.desktop-meditation.com

Success In Relationship Can Help You Succeed In Business

(category: Success, Word count: 234)
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Our relationships give us the comfort we need. Our relationships also give us pain. A relationship can work in both the ways and either way it affects our career and business success. Let us see how?

Why Relationships? We relate with someone because otherwise we feel incomplete. We need a person to share our life. We want to talk about our inner thoughts, desires, pains and pleasures with a partner. We feel incomplete without a relationship. That is the primary reason of our relationship.

What does relationship do? A relationship gives us peace and a friend. It helps us beat our loneliness and gives us a partner to share. A relationship gives us somebody who will inspire us at the time of our defeats.

Relationships and career- If we enjoy a healthy relationship, we feel good. We feel very optimistic. Our state of mind is positive. We are empowered to fight any odd and dream of great achievements. A good relationship gives us a high that can help us achieve a lot in our business and career. No body can achieve great success if his/her relationship is not good. That is a personal failure and takes away lot of time in thinking and negative mental state. Those who enjoy a healthy and enriching relationship, have a higher chance of enjoying big success in career.

Your Dominant Thoughts How To Take Advantage Of Them

(category: Success, Word count: 550)
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Self belief is a wonderful thing.

I know from my own life experiences that whenever I have been filled with dread or doubt I am unable to perform at a satisfactory level. Just the other day I was using a claw hammer and a lever to dismantle a packing crate. At the time I was making quite a noise hammering away when my wife came down to the workshop to see what I was doing.

Jokingly, I quipped: "I haven't hit my fingers with the hammer yet!" Guess what I did within minutes of uttering those words? Yep. Bang. Yeeowch! Actually, I didn't say that. It was something more colorful.

You see, in retrospect, what I did was plant the seed in my mind that I was going to hit my fingers with the hammer. My mind set about fulfilling the thought.

Not only do we become what we think about, we do what we think about. Whether your thoughts are positive or negative your mind will act on them.

If we are directed by our dominating thoughts, why not implant our minds with things that will benefit us? For instance, if you really want to become a pilot then concentrate on that. Become obsessed with it. Learn all you can about it.

Do you think that Michael Jordan became the greatest basket-baller of all time by not thinking about and concentrating on the game of basketball? During his brief sojourn into baseball was he successful? Basketball was his love. He couldn't get it out of his mind. So he returned to basketball to lead the Chicago Bulls for another three years before retiring, making yet another comeback then retiring for good in 2003.

What are your dominating thoughts? Are you thinking about the things that will make you the person that you ultimately want to be? Do you have deep and powerful thoughts about these things?

If the first step to becoming the person that you want to be starts in the mind then set that train in motion.

One thing that can really help you is to sit down and write out your life goals. Take as many pages as you need. After you have crafted your life story and the way that you want it to unfold start summarizing it. Try to get it down to a single page.

Once you have done this you should read it as often as possible. At the bare minimum you should read it at least once a day. Preferably you should do this first thing in the morning and make it the last thing you do before going to bed at night, then as many times in between as you desire. It all depends how strong your desire is.

The more times you read your plan, the more you will implant it into your mind. Remember, your mind cannot discern between reality and fiction. It will simply act on it - just like my mind did when I joked to my wife about not hitting my fingers with the hammer.

Think negative and you will receive negative. Alternatively, think positive and that is what you will receive.

So, do you have a plan? What thoughts are dominating your mind?

Instant Gratification Vs Delayed Gratification

(category: Success, Word count: 508)
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In life we all have certain basic human needs. Some of these needs include security, love, leisure and respect. However whilst we all have the same basic needs, the way we satisfy those needs will vary from person to person.

The 2 main ways that needs can be satisfied are immediately or at a later date. This is often called immediate or delayed gratification.

Immediate Gratification

Immediate gratification is the most common way people fulfill their needs. This means that rather than waiting for something to happen in the future, they prefer not to wait, and to have it now.

However immediate gratification usually comes at the expense of long term failure in life. This is because when needs are satisfied immediately, they are often done so with little or no regard for future consequences.

For example, comfort is one of our most basic human needs, and everyone seeks a certain degree of comfort in their lives. However should you choose to fulfill that need immediately, such as by choosing to sit and watch TV or play video games all day, then it is most likely you will not achieve anything significant in life if that is all you do.

Delayed Gratification

This does not mean having comfort is a bad thing. If you choose to delay satisfying the need for comfort and instead focus on other areas of your life, such as financial or romantic, then in the long run you are likely to achieve greater success in life.

However delayed gratification is much harder than it sounds. The fact is, the society we live in tends to promote a greater desire for immediate gratification. By providing us with instant quick fixes and on demand entertainment. As a result people have got used to expecting things immediately, whereas only 50 years ago, they were more willing to work and wait for the things they wanted.

This has also resulted in a mentality that if results are not seen immediately, then it is best to give up and try something else. Consequently you often see many people complaining of a lack of success in their life, even though they put minimal effort and time into what they were trying to achieve. If they don't "make it" within a few months, or worse a few weeks, then they usually just give up.

This is an extremely important characteristic to recognize, because highly successful people are masters of delaying gratification. Rather than trying to fulfill their needs immediately, with instant fixes or get rich quick schemes, they recognize that success takes time and hard work. And this means delaying the natural urge for immediate gratification.

Since successful people are no different from you and I, this means they still dislike doing the same things we dislike. However they are able to do them anyway, because they understand that is the only way a person can ever become truly successful. So how do they delay the temptation for immediate gratification? With discipline, and lot's of it!

Your Power Of Real Concentration

(category: Success, Word count: 539)
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Did you ever stop to think what an important part your thoughts, I mean real concentrated thoughts, play in your life?

The ability to concentrate all your attention is so important, no matter what task or job you have to get done... as nothing great or significant can be accomplished without proper effort and concentration.

And almost all of us have some sort of difficulty in the concentration of our attention.

Workers in business and industry, students in high school and college, and even professors in universities, complain of the same difficulty.

It is said that the power to concentrate all your attention is vital as it stands at the very centre of most (if not all) mental activity. No matter from what angle we view the mind, its excellence always seems to depend upon the power to concentrate all our attention.

Concentration may be defined as being that state of mind in which the entire energies of the individual, physical as well as mental, are focused upon the thing they are doing or thinking. All actions and all thoughts NOT connected with what they are doing or thinking are kept out of the mind...

If we examine a growing child, one of the first things we will see is the power they have in them to "pay attention or to notice things".

When we examine the ability of normal adults we do so by means of tests that require close concentration of attention, and we regard anyone who is able to maintain close focused and concentrated attention for long periods of time as a person of strong mind or will.

So real concentration may be broken down into just 2 parts:

1. The voluntary focusing of all our power and attention in the selecting of certain objects to be attended to.

2. And the ignoring of other objects which act as distractions.

But even in spite of our most careful provisions, there will still be distractions which cannot be eliminated. For example, you cannot stop the noise of planes flying over or cars driving past while you are trying to work, plan or study.

And you cannot build a fence around the thoughts and focus of your mind so as to keep out unwanted and irrelevant ideas... the best thing you can do is to accept the inevitable that the presence of some distractions will always exist, and to realise that in order to concentrate and pay attention properly, it is necessary to form the habit of ignoring these distractions.

You can simply start out by making a strong determined effort to ignore all distractions... practise ignoring them, and try your best not to let a slip occur.

Also at the same time, try to develop interest in the object you are concentrating all your attention on, because we tend to pay more attention to those things in which we are most interested.

It's easy for any one to say, "concentrate"... but you need to know exactly how to concentrate. Remember that to concentrate is merely the act of applying your entire body and mind, to the task or action in hand.

Every effort of the mind, whether it's to...

What Was Albert Einstein Thinking

(category: Success, Word count: 122)
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Albert Einstein once said, "You can't solve a problem with the same mind that created it."

To solve a problem you've obviously helped to create, you need to start with a new and fresh mind. For example, a woman thinks, "If I can change my job, my life will be better." Possibly. But life doesn't usually work that way. That woman is likely doing and thinking the same thoughts as always. Nothing new or fresh gets in. If you want to effect a change, get outside yourself and look at the situation with fresh eyes. See how you might assess your problem using a different mindset.

Try these six ways to think with a different mind

Why Failure Is Good For You

(category: Success, Word count: 659)
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How do you view failure? Do you see it as something negative that you don't want to be associated with or do you see it as something positive? Most people in the world don't like failure.

Fear of failure is the main reason why more than 80% of people in the world are not prepared to change their circumstances. Why do people fear failure so much? The reason for this is because people don't understand the dynamics involved in success and failure.

Everything we do in life has either a right way of doing it and a wrong way of doing it. When we do it the right way we meet with success. Needless to say that when we do it the wrong way we are unsuccessful.

Understanding this is important because it puts failure in its proper perspective and removes the fear around it.

When someone who doesn't understand this dynamic meets with temporary failure he gives up thinking that he is not good enough or that he will never make it. But is this really what it is? Does the fact that you didn't make it the first time mean that you are not good enough? Does it mean that you'll never make it? Not at all! All it means is YOU HAVE NOT FOUND THE CORRECT METHOD YET!

So what do you do next?You go back and try and find out where you went wrong. Then you try again this time employing a different method. When this doesn't work you go back and look at everything you have done so far. Talk to successful people who have made it in this area. Think of what you might have left out and try again.

Whatever you do, don't give up. Why do you need to do this? Because, "Every failure, every adversity and every heartache, carries with it the seed of an equivalent or a greater benefit", says author and mentor to many great men, Napoleon Hill. Failure contains the seed of victory and of success.

Failure teaches you what works and what doesn't. When you study the reasons for your failure and learn from it, you'll find the key to your success. The great inventor Thomas Edison knew this truth better than anyone else. It took Edison 8000 trials to perfect the Edison battery? Afterwards he uttered this famous quote, "At least we know 8000 things that don't work".

You should also be like that. Every successful person has had to overcome temporary defeat at one time or another. Know this! You haven't really failed until you ACCEPT defeat. Do you envy those who got success easily? Don't! Success earned in spite of earlier failure is so much sweeter than if you would get it otherwise.

Those who earn success in this way know the road to success. They are not afraid of losing what they have because they have learned how to become successful. Those that easily got success don't know the road.

They got there so quickly that they didn't bother to look around. Let me use the following analogy to illustrate. Take two guys traveling to the same destination, with this difference. The one is going by airplane and the other by car, but the one arriving by car had a few breakdowns along the way.

If you take these two guys back to their original position and ask them to find their way to their destination, who do you think is going to remember the road better the next time? Surely the guy who had a few breakdowns and spend some time on the road, because he had the opportunity to look around.

Let temporary defeat no longer be an obstacle. You have many hidden talents, so start working towards realizing your dreams. Don't be put off by the fear of failure. Failure is an ally because it contains the seed of success.

Concentration Finds The Way

(category: Success, Word count: 338)
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Everyone has two natures. One wants us to advance and the other wants to pull us back. The one that we cultivate and concentrate on decides what we are at the end. Both natures are trying to gain control. The will alone decides the issue. A man by one supreme effort of the will may change his whole career and almost accomplish miracles. You may be that man. You can be if you Will to be, for Will can find a way or make one.

I could easily fill a book, of cases where men plodding along in a matter-of-fact way, were all at once aroused and as if awakening from a slumber they developed the possibilities within them and from that time on were different persons. You alone can decide when the turning point will come. It is a matter of choice whether we allow our diviner self to control us or whether we will be controlled by the brute within us. No man has to do anything he does not want to do. He is therefore the director of his life if he wills to be. What we are to do, is the result of our training. We are like putty, and can be completely controlled by our will power.

Habit is a matter of acquirement. You hear people say: "He comes by this or that naturally, a chip off the old block," meaning that he is only doing what his parents did. This is quite often the case, but there is no reason for it, for a person can break a habit just the moment he masters the "I will." A man may have been a "good-for-nothing" all his life up to this very minute, but from this time on he begins to amount to something. Even old men have suddenly changed and accomplished wonders. "I lost my opportunity," says one. That may be true, but by sheer force of will, we can find a way to bring us another opportunity.

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