By: Shantanu Das Sharma, Sr. Associate Editor-ICN Group
Patterns of Excellence in Lifestyle
The Blueprint of Success Formula (Contd.)
Quick recap of what we have covered in Part 3
Step 1. Be Very Specific about Your Goal
Step 2. Develop a Strategy
Goal → Strategy
Step 3. Take Consistent Action
Goal → Strategy → Action
Part 4
There are many people I know who seem to brim over with great ideas and they have the acumen & intelligence to be successful, but they lack the personal mastery to direct their emotions into getting themselves to take action. They may have a great business ideas but their fear holds them back. They may set inspiring new goals, but they basically lack the motivation to do what it takes. They may even get themselves to take action initially, but by nature stop once they experience frustration or anxiety.
In this article series, you will learn how to take charge of your emotional states in order to consistently perform at your peak.
Step 4. Turn Failure into a Learning (Developmental) Feedback
Goal → Strategy → Action
↑ ↓
Success Failure
As you follow your strategy and take consistent action, there are only two possible things that can happen. The first possible outcome is that you experience success by moving towards or achieving your goal. However, we know that we do not always achieve our goals. We can take action and get what we don’t want. Many of us call this failure! Does failure happen to everybody? Of course it does. All of us will fail at one point of time or another. In fact, the more action you take in life, the more likely you are to experience failure. That is why people who experience a lot of success also experience a lot more failure than everybody else around them.
Three Ways of Dealing with Failure
What separates people who enjoy success from the majority who end up never getting what they want is how they respond to failure. It is what they do about failure that makes a big difference.
There are three ways in which people respond to failure.
Pattern 1: Give Excuses, Lay Blame & Give Up
Action → Failure → Give Excuses, Lay Blame & Give Up
What do some people do when they don’t get what they want? They will start giving themselves lots of excuses and blame everything and everyone around them. They say things like, ‘It’s not fair’, ‘I’m just not smart enough’, ‘It’s just too difficult’, ‘I’m too young’ or ‘I’m too old’, ‘I just didn’t have the luck’, ‘The depressed economy affected me’. Feeling helpless and frustrated, this first group will stop taking action and give up! They will resign themselves to their goal being out of reach and live a life of mediocrity. These are the people who will often say, ‘I’ve tried that
before and it didn’t work!’
Know anyone who consistently exhibits this pattern? Have there been times when you have done this as well?
Pattern 2: Keep Trying the Same Thing Over and Over Again
Action → Failure → Try Again → Excuses
These are the people who have a lot more determination than the first. When they don’t get their outcome, they will not quit. They will get themselves to take action again. The motto of this group is, ‘I failed because I did not try hard enough’ or ‘If I keep trying, I will eventually succeed’. So they keep taking action, putting in more time, energy and effort. No matter how many times they fail, they just keep trying harder and harder. Will they eventually achieve their goals? It depends. If they set small, incremental goals, they may, with enough time and efforts eventually succeed. However, if they set big and exceptional goals, like becoming the top in their field, they will never be successful by just trying again and again. They may experience a better result, but they won’t reach the goals they desire. Why? Because, although they keep taking action, they do not change their strategy. If you keep using the same approach to doing something, you are going to keep getting the same result. I have seen so many professionals and businessmen repeat this limiting pattern.
I know many businessmen who fail in their business only to start again and do the same thing. They keep putting in ads that don’t work, they hire ineffective people or they use the same business model. I have worked with salespeople who put in more time and energy every month, without significantly increasing their sales. Why? Again, they keep targeting the wrong customers, selling the same products and making ineffective presentations. Pretty soon, they start to get frustrated and disillusioned. Eventually, they too will resign themselves to believing that they do not have what it takes, and stop taking action.
Now, do you know of people who have fallen into such repetitive patterns in their life? Have there been times when you have fallen into this category?
Pattern 3: Get Feedback, Change Strategy and Take Action Until You Succeed
Goal → Strategy → Action
↑ ↑ ↓
Success Feedback Failure ✗
So what is the pattern that all successful individuals exhibit? When they don’t achieve their goals, they don’t think of it as failure. Instead, they perceive it as learning feedback. Either feedback that the strategy they used was ineffective or that they did not take enough action. They then use this feedback to immediately change their strategy and take action again. If they still don’t succeed, they will get more feedback, change their strategy and take action again. They keep repeating this process until they get what they want. They do whatever it takes. So, remember, every time you don’t get what you want, it is life giving you feedback. It is this continuous feedback you need to help you learn and adjust your approach until you hit your target.
It is said that Thomas Alva Edison took almost 10,000 attempts before inventing the light bulb. When asked how he did it, he said that he had to first find 9,999 strategies of how not to invent the light bulb. He then used this feedback to change his strategy until he got what he wanted. There you have it! This is the formula for ultimate success! These are four steps to get anything that you want in your life. Just know what you want specifically, develop a strategy, take action, get feedback and change your strategy until you succeed.
But wait! If achieving success is so easy, why doesn’t everybody do this? I could teach this formula to a hundred people, but not everyone will end up putting it into practice. Why? I have found that there are two more major elements that affect whether or not people will follow this formula. These are our Beliefs and our Values.
Step 5. An Empowering Belief System
Our beliefs act as the ‘on’ and ‘off’ switch to our brain and our inner resources. Without the right beliefs in place, none of the other steps in the success formula matter. Our beliefs determine what we want and what we do when we don’t get what we want. If you have limiting beliefs like, ‘It’s too difficult’, ‘I’m too young’, ‘It’s not possible’ or ‘I am not a good speaker’, it is highly unlikely that you will set inspiring goals in the first place. If you don’t have empowering beliefs, you will not set goals for yourself. And nobody can set goals for you either.
Similarly, limiting beliefs about yourself and the situation will make you ‘give up’ rather than change your strategy and take action until you succeed. If you believe that you don’t have what it takes to learn, the capability or that ‘it is too difficult’, then you are more likely to quit than change your strategy and take action until you succeed. So an empowering set of beliefs is truly one of the keys you need to seal in, to set the rest of the formula in motion.
In subsequent articles in this series, you will learn how to analyze your current set of beliefs and discover if they have been empowering you or limiting you. You will also learn how to develop a powerful belief system that will drive you forward.
Step 6. Values: Our Driving Force
The second key that drives the Blueprint of Success Formula is our values or what we hold dear to us, and live by. Values are like emotional hot buttons that drive our behaviour. They are what we value as important in our lives. All of us regard values like ‘success’, ‘freedom’, ‘security’, ‘love’ and ‘happiness’ very differently. And it is the way we internally rank these values that determine the kinds of choices we make, and the actions we take.
Some people are driven towards reaching their goals because of their need to feel secure. Others may be driven by a different value, like freedom. ‘I want to earn enough to be free’ (free from want, free to walk out of a boring job) is an often-heard goal. The important thing is that whatever our values are, they must be aligned with our goals. The main reason why most people never feel driven towards their goals is because their values are not aligned and their values may even be in conflict with their goals.
The Ultimate Success Formula… in Action
The Ultimate Success Formula is the most powerful series of steps you can ever use to achieve whatever you want. Individuals and corporations who follow this formula create consistent success. Those that fail continuously are those that fail to follow any one of the six major steps.
Beliefs Values
↓ ↓
Goal
↓
Feedback → Change → Strategy
↑ ↓
Failure ← Action → Success → Exit
We tend to focus on how smart and fortunate winners are to be in the right place and at the right time. We often admire them like super human beings when they are really ordinary people. What made them different was how they stuck tenaciously, like superglue, to the Blueprint of Success Formula.
Be Flexible – and You Will Control the Environment You Are In
Does this formula apply in the area of personal relationships and even parenting? You bet! Remember that one of the keys to the Blueprint of Success Formula is ‘flexibility’. Flexibility is the ability to constantly change our strategy and do whatever it takes (within ethical bounds, of course), to get the result we want. Unfortunately, most people try two or three things and give up, saying that ‘They have tried everything!’ So, you see, with the right amount of flexibility, you can accomplish just about anything. In fact, in any situation it is often the person with the most flexibility of behaviour who will end up in control. This is why kids tend to end up controlling their parents instead of the other way around. As adults, we tend to be a lot less flexible and a lot more predictable. Children, on the other hand, tend to be flexible in their approaches and will do whatever it takes to get what they want. The moment we become even more flexible than our children, we start taking back control over the situation and hence the outcome.
So, how can you use the Blueprint of Success Formula to achieve all that you desire in the different areas of your life? In your career? In your relationships? In your finances? In your health? We will show you how in each subsequent articles as we focus on each component of the formula.
(I facilitate Thought Leaders, Change Makers; Professionals & Business Owners translate NLP concepts into actions to achieve and elicit personal excellence. I conduct NLP Lifestyle Coaching Certification programs for individuals, corporate and celebrity clients. In the next article, I will conclude this article about ‘How to achieve anything you want’ and after that you will come to know in the following articles, how you can utilise concepts of NLP+ in all walks of your life to replicate the success blueprint of a winner mindset to win through life. So, stay tuned every Monday & Saturday and fasten your seat belt to ‘Enhance Your Lifestyle With NLP+’)
My #1 Amazon Best Selling book ‘Awaken The Incredible Within – Incredible Is The New Giant’ is available at Amazon in English at http://bit.ly/Awaken-The-Incredible-Within
Shantanu Das Sharma, Creator of the concept NLP Lifestyle Coaching with NLP+, Founder of Neuromind Leadership Academy is an Amazon #1 Best Selling Author, NLP Lifestyle Master Trainer & Coach, Clean Language Facilitator & Strategic Interventionist.
