Why are Some People More Successful Than Others

Have you ever asked yourself this question?

What answers did you get? Have you researched why?

The Powerful Question

Why are some people are more successful than others?

Everything counts!

Since birth your choices, habits, actions and beliefs have played the major role on the stage of your life.

Does life throw everyone curve balls? Sure they do, it’s how you dust yourself off, pick yourself up and keep on swinging. Being persistent in spite of all the odds against you. Is it easy to blame circumstances, of course it is. Will that get you to where you are going? It may make you feel better for the moment, but does nothing to propel you forward to your goals and dreams.

You can create your own future by changing your behaviors. Age makes no difference.
You can make new choices and decisions that are more consistent with the person you want to be and the things you want to accomplish with your life.

The only real limit on what you can be, do and have is the limit you place on your own imagination. You can take complete control of your destiny by taking complete control of your thoughts, words and actions from this day forward.

My father loved to read, and had a small office off our kitchen. He had bookshelves filled with books, from autobiographies to positive, uplifting books. As a young man I would go into his office, and made a habit of reading all those books, I would then highlight specific important points and then I would carry those over to 3X5 index cards. At one point I put the top 10 on giant poster paper and attached it to my sliding door closet in my bedroom. I made it a habit to read those every morning when I got dressed, when I got undressed, and before I went to bed.

One of those first books I read was “The Power of Positive Thinking” by Norman Vincent Peale. WOW…what a difference it made in my life at an early age. As a young man, I applied this to sports, today it is business. What would you apply this to?

Some other great books were:

“As a Man Thinketh” by James Allen

“Psycho-Cybernetics” by Maxwell Maltz

“The Greatest Salesman in the World” by Og Mandino

“Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill

“How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie

In today’s face paced world, and being bombarded with negativity daily, it is imperative that you control what goes into your mind. Take time to feed your mind with positive, uplifting and inspirational information.

The Power of Habit

Perhaps the most important discovery in the fields of psychology and success is that fully 95% of everything that you think, feel, do and achieve is the result of habit. Beginning in childhood, you have developed a series of conditioned responses that lead you to react automatically and unthinkingly in almost every situation.

To put it simply, successful people have “success habits” and unsuccessful people do not. Successful, happy, healthy, prosperous men and women easily, automatically and consistently do and say the right things in the right way at the right time. As a result, they accomplish ten and twenty times as much as average people who have not yet learned these habits and practiced these behaviors.

The Definition of Success

Often people ask me to define the word “success.” My favorite definition is from Earl Nightingale, the Founder of Nightingale-Conant:

**“Success is the progression of a worthy ideal.”**

It’s short and to the point. Sometimes I think we are sold a standard to live up to in today’s society, that doesn’t match our values or ethics.

Although each of us is unique and different from all other human beings who have ever lived, we all have four goals or desires in common. On a scale of one to ten, with one being the lowest and ten being the highest, you can conduct a quick evaluation of your life by giving yourself a grade in each of these four areas.

1. Healthy and Fit

We all want to be healthy and fit, to have high levels of energy and to live free of pain and illness.

2. Do What You Love

We all have in common is to do work that we enjoy, to do it well, and to be well paid for it.

3. Excellent Relationships

We want to enjoy excellent relationships, intimate, personal or social, with the people we like and respect, and who like, love
and respect us in turn. Fully 85% of your happiness will be determined by the quality of your relationships at each stage, and in each area, of your life.

4. Achieve Financial Independence

You want to reach the point in life where you have enough money so that you never have to worry about money again. You want to be completely free of financial worries.

All Habits Are Learned

The good news about habits is that all habits are learned, as the result of practice and repetition.

You can learn any habit that you consider either necessary or desirable.
By using your willpower and discipline, you can shape your personality and character in almost any way you desire.
You can write the script of your own life, and if you are not happy with the current script, you can rip it up and write it again.

Just as your good habits are responsible for most of your success and happiness today, your bad habits are responsible for most of your problems and frustrations. But since bad habits are learned as well, they can be unlearned and replaced with good habits by the same process of practice and repetition.