By Jack M. Zufelt, “Mentor To Millions for Exitus Elite
Success is not found somewhere out there. Success resides inside, for each of us. You already have what it takes to succeed in life. You were born with all you need. Your birth certificate doesn’t come with any guarantees of success. When you were born you came fully equipped with talents, abilities, desires, and choices. As you grow and progress through every stage of life, you discover that there are things you really want; things you now have your heart set on. As you identify those things and make wise choices, your success is assured.
My book “The DNA of Success” will give you a new paradigm for what it takes to achieve. A paradigm is a way of seeing something; a viewpoint from which you operate. When you embrace a new paradigm, it will cause you to experience quantum leaps of growth and achievement in all areas of your life. With this new understanding, you will move forward confidently and quickly, creating the kind of life experiences you want and deserve. You will leave behind all the wrong paradigms and incorrect concepts you thought were keys to success, but that in fact caused you to fail.
WHY WE FAIL
For years I have researched the reasons people succeed and why they fail. In our quest for achievement, we typically make the same mistakes, over and over again.
We don’t know what we truly want.
We live in a wonderful time when we can be, do, and have whatever we want. So why do so many of us still struggle to achieve the things we want in life? I believe the primary reason is that most of us, regardless of our age, simply do not know what we really, truly want-we only think we know.
It’s very easy for us to know what we don’t want. It’s another matter entirely for us to know what we do want.
We buy into conventional success methodologies and self-help thinking.
We believe that setting goals, affirming goals, visualizing results, listening to motivational speakers, and reading self-help books are the answer. We think that the exercise of writing goals will somehow help bring them
about. But the reason we don’t achieve most goals is that they are not our true desires but merely things that we mistakenly think we want. So we set goals that aren’t real to us and start moving down a wrong path. We continue to put our faith, money, and time into success techniques and technologies without realizing that they can’t make us successful. Not only do these things not work, but they also create negative feelings.
We fail to seek or utilize qualified mentors.
We listen to the wrong experts-to people whose knowledge, experience, and ability are not aligned with our wants, needs, and desires. Most of these advisers are well-intentioned, but they don’t know or understand us. They only presume, perhaps based on proximity, intimacy, or psychological assessment, to know what’s best for us.
We expect too much too soon.
We expect dramatic, short-term results or perfection from ourselves when we most need to be thrilled with any progress. Hot-air promotions that promise “fast,” “instant,” “free,” “easy,” and “dramatic” results often
inflate our expectations. Almost every product is sold with a guarantee or promise that in ten, thirty, sixty, or ninety days, we will have our desired result. The popularity of cosmetic surgery suggests that many people
don’t want to wait even thirty days for results, especially if it means submitting to any real discipline.
We fail to seek feedback and make course corrections.
Pride so often precedes a fall because we simply won’t seek objective feedback, ask for help, or make adjustments, opting instead to keep going until we hit a brick wall or have some other traumatic wake-up call. Then it is either too late to make a change, or very expensive, or both.
We focus more on what we lack than on the strengths, assets, and resources we possess.
When we habitually compare ourselves with others who are allegedly the models of how we should look, act, think, or feel, we tend to see all that we are not. We see only our deficits and weaknesses-and if we can’t see them, others are often very eager to point them out. We lack faith and confidence in our ability to learn, grow, change, and become whatever it takes to achieve our desires. Our doubts destroy our faith and lead to disillusionment and despair.
We procrastinate and succumb to the paralysis of analysis.
When we are intimidated by the enormity of a task-or the reality of a risk-we tend to do nothing but endless and pointless analysis, or at best we make an energetic but futile first attempt.
We move forward without a plan or strategy and then quit too soon.
Taking improper action makes it easy to be distracted and hard to maintain focus on what we need to be doing. Having no plan or strategy makes every obstacle appear overwhelming and impassable. We often stop at the first sign of difficulty, whereas had we gone on a little longer and exercised a little more persistence, patience, or perseverance, we would have attained the prize. When we can’t see the end of the tunnel, we tend to think that our current condition or circumstance is a permanent state-or that the light we do see is only the light of an oncoming train.
How many times have you tried a product, plan, program, or prescribed remedy, for a period of time without experiencing the success promised? When we don’t achieve the promised success, we often begin to doubt ourselves. We think we don’t have what it takes, that there is something wrong with us. Worse yet, we may see ourselves as failures.
Then what do we do? Far too often we jump back in and reapply ourselves to the same techniques that failed us before-only this time we “try harder.” We keep repeating this cycle. We remain stuck in a continuous, self-defeating] cycle of effort, then failure, because we embrace a paradigm of success that simply doesn’t work.
Incorrect assumptions are the foundation upon which many self-help theories and practices are established. And so we see many people climbing prescribed mountains, only to discover that they don’t really want to be on that mountain at all. For them, the climb is always difficult, never fun, and at some point, they say, “It’s not worth it to me,” and quit climbing. Perhaps for them, the thought of reaching the top was just a whim, a wish, a fantasy, or a dream. But your desires will only be fulfilled if they are things you really want to do or become.
Once you discover what it really takes to experience success, happiness, peace of mind, and joy-once you discover the true source of success in all areas of your life-self-motivation becomes automatic. You will let go of all the techniques and methods you have been taught about success.
For example, I stopped setting goals many years ago, and I still achieve everything I want and at a very high level of satisfaction and joy in all areas of my life. Once you learn the source of all success, you can, too. Everything I have accomplished, I have done without setting any goals.
Goal-setting experts who tell us to shoot for the moon because even if we miss we’ll still hit a star ought to be told, “We don’t want a star. We want the moon!” What if our Apollo astronauts were these types of goal setters who ended up missing the moon and settling for some star?
Why should we settle for less in our lives when we can learn a better way to have what we most desire? By accepting a star instead of the moon, we are being told to settle for less. Settling for less is simply not acceptable.