10 Success Principles -Angel Chernoff

10 Success Principles We Often Forget

-Angel Chernoff

Sometimes we find ourselves running in place, struggling to get ahead simply because we forget to address some of the basic success principles that govern our potential to make progress.  So here’s a quick reminder:

1.    You are the only person responsible for your success.  The best part of your life will start on the day you decide your life is your own – no one to lean on, rely on, or blame.  You are in full control of your future.  Believe with all your heart that you will do what you were made to do.  It may be tough at times, but refuse to follow some preordained path.  Make your own rules and have your own game plan.  There is no happiness and success to be found by playing it safe and settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.

2.    You don’t have to invent the wheel.  Actually, to be successful you don’t have to invent anything at all.  Coming up with a new invention or idea is one way to achieve massive success, but it isn’t necessary. And it can be the most challenging roads to success there is. You see many people have found lots of success just by taking something that already existed and simply putting their own twist on it (their unique selling proposition).  Think about Apple for instance.  As Steve Jobs once said, “Good artists copy, great artist steal. Creativity is connecting things.” Connecting things means seeking inspiration from great ideas that already exist and adding your own useful twist

3.    There is no progress without action.  What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.  Some of the greatest ideas never made it.  Why?  Because the genius behind the idea failed to take action.  Just remember, no action always results in a 100% failure rate.  So get into action now, and begin to move in the right direction.  Once you get started every step afterwards gets easier and easier.  Until eventually, what had once been invisible, starts to become visible, and what once felt unattainable, starts to become a reality.

4.    Persistence always wins.  As Winston Churchill once said, “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”  It may take more than one swing to compose an efficient hit, so make sure not to give up on strike #1.  And remember, a river cuts through rocks not because of its power at a given moment, but because of its persistence over time.

5.    Focus is everything.  When you are too busy looking behind and around you, people are passing you.  If you never focus clearly on something, you will never be 100% efficient at anything.  Multi-tasking might seem to make you efficient at getting multiple tasks done at once, but it usually reduces your efficiency in dealing with each individual task.

6.    Failure is necessary.  Don’t wake up at seventy-five years of age sighing over what you should have tried, but didn’t because you were afraid to fail.  Just do it, and be willing to fail and learn along the way.  Very few people get it right the first time.  In fact, most people fail to get it right the first 5 times.  If what you did today didn’t turn out as you hoped, tomorrow is a new opportunity to do it differently.  Interpret each failure as a lesson on the road to success.

7.    Positivity fuels productivity.  Thoughts are like the steering wheel that moves our life in the right direction.  Success comes from positive energy.  You can choose to get caught up in the negativity surrounding you, or you can decide to do something positive about your situation.  You always have a choice.  Remember, happiness is an element of success, and the happiest people don’t necessarily have the best of everything, they use positive energy to make the best of what they have.

8.    You must believe you can.  You must find the place inside yourself where anything is possible.  It starts with a dream.  Add confidence, and it becomes a belief.  Add commitment, and it becomes a goal in sight.  Add action, and it becomes a part of your life.  Add determination and time, and your dream becomes a reality.

9.    Helping others is a big part of being successful.  Successful people constantly come up with new ideas, new projects, and new and innovative ways of helping others.  This means that your aims and objectives just benefit you, but also help benefit others as well.  Bottom line:  Your long-term success is directly tied to how well you serve your community. 

Success is a journey of countless baby steps.  It’s a constant process of growth.  If you want to be successful, you must continue to hold yourself to a higher standard than anyone else, and strive to improve.  Oftentimes a person or organization will be successful, but then drop off.  A person may become lazy, and an organization may succumb to weaknesses or competition.  Sustained success means continually improving even if others may not see a need for it.  Remember, the great thing in the world is not so much where we stand at any given time, as in what direction we are moving.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?