How to Guarantee Success…

To be successful in any pursuit at some stage you are going to run into hurdles, face difficulties and experience times of not knowing what to do next. So how do you guarantee success?

I know from my own experience that there were long periods of time when I didn’t know how to get out of the daily grind that was preventing me from achieving my dreams and aspirations.

In fact, being stuck and not knowing what to do is exactly what has led me to this post and originally to the creation of The Investor’s Way.

Without having experienced the emptiness and frustration of those periods of failing I would not have developed the skills required to be successful. Nor would I be in a position to help people like you to achieve your wealth creation goals.

It took a long time, I’m a slow learner you see, but eventually, it became clear that to achieve great things in life, there is one characteristic that every successful person has developed, resilience.

The Success Contributor

I believe that resilience is a developed trait because it is a characteristic that requires testing in order to be a contributor to your success.

Unless you have faced difficulties, loss, or hurdles, you are unlikely to have learned the skills required to manage the highs and lows of life…

You will not have learned how to overcome adversity and continue in the pursuit of your goals.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that “Every great success is ultimately the triumph of persistence.”

I’m sure you know someone who seems to just breeze through life without any worries at all. However, I am prepared to suggest that behind the scenes that person is managing their own struggles, fears, and frustrations. It’s just that they don’t project them in public.

And this is where the magic happens. Resilience is having the ability to become unstoppable, to project to the world that you are not going to be affected by the negativity that comes along, you are going to power your way to your destination.

Becoming Unstoppable

Brian Tracy describes it so well in this quote – “A common thread that runs through every successful person. No matter who they are or what they are doing. Every single one of them, without exception, has developed that wonderful quality of resilience that has enabled them to bounce back, to persevere, and to finally, become unstoppable.”

Successful people don’t quit – they refuse to stop. Now this is not something that you can just switch on when you want to, it’s a habit and mindset that develops over time.

The more times that you demonstrate persistence, the more permanent a character trait it becomes in you.

This is going to take self-discipline, and persistence is self-discipline in action.

The more times you face adversity, defeat, or loss, and persist, the stronger and better you become. The more resilient you become.

Luck and Success

You probably know of the success of Richard Branson and the Virgin group of companies, a phenomenal story – if you haven’t read his book I highly recommend you get it and read it a couple of times.

Most people will look at Richard Branson and consider him lucky or fortunate, but what they don’t know are the stories of struggle and adversity that he faced in becoming the billionaire that he is today.

On several occasions he faced losing everything, and only with the power of resilience and his unwillingness to be stopped was he able to survive and thrive.

Another famous story of resilience is that of Thomas Edison. He conducted thousands and thousands of experiments with the one idea in mind, that success was inevitable if you kept learning from every experience and getting marginally better each time.

This is absolutely true for me and you too. There is nothing that can stop you from achieving your dreams and aspirations except yourself.

One of the best ways to develop, there’s that word again, the habit of resilience, is to learn from adversity.

The Seasons of Life

In the post “The Seasons of Life” I talked about winter being the season for contemplation, where you ask yourself questions about why you are in the position you are in.

Well, these questions are a way of reviewing the moments of adversity – asking yourself “What did I do right? And “What could I do differently”, preparing yourself for the next occasion, building your capacity to continue in spite of adversity.

If you commit the answers to the above questions to paper and focus on the positives, you are far more likely to learn from the experience and set yourself up for success next time.

Have you ever noticed people who blame everything that is bad in their life on others or their environment?

There is always an excuse for why they are in the position that they are in, and it very rarely has anything to do with them.

My experience is that successful people don’t have excuses – no matter what their personal limitations may be, or what adversity they face on a daily basis – successful people just get on with it, they are more concerned about making progress than excuses.

There are thousands of examples that could be used to support this notion – Ghandi, Steven Hawking, and Oprah Winfrey to name just a few.

Conclusion

As long as you keep bouncing back from adversity, setbacks, or failures, you will become stronger and more resilient, and ultimately successful.

If you become unstoppable then success is almost guaranteed.

So to be wealthy, or rich if you prefer that term, you are going to need to be resilient. Start practicing being unstoppable today.

Remember information without action is useless – take massive action today.

Let me know what you are going to do to develop the habit of resilience…

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