How To Get Success

By Author: Thedooverguy
Total Articles: 5
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Advice on “how to get success” is abundant. Everyone has an opinion on how to get success. Those opinions, however, are just that in most cases… opinions. Advice on how to get success varies from “it’s who you know” to “only the lucky make it” to “there’s no substitute for hard work.” To some degree, there’s some truth laced within all of that advice. A rarely mentioned, if it’s ever mentioned at all, piece of advice on how to get success, however, could actually be the most important tool for the average person to become successful. It’s one of the biggest unknown tools to producing results.

Before disclosing this unknown tool of how to get success, it’s important to create a plan for success, and it’s vital to work that plan. Second, it’s important to set milestones within that plan. Without milestones, you can’t measure your progress; And if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. By incorporating these two steps, you will know exactly where you are going, how you’re going to get there and how far there is to travel.

When placing milestones within your plan you will ...
... know with each milestone you knock down that you are getting closer to your goal. The challenge for so many is that the time spent in between milestones can vary greatly. When the time in between exceeds expectations, frustration and doubt can interfere with progress.

Milestones are actually necessary to maintain motivation for bigger goals with longer time spans. However, milestones do nothing with regard to measuring the certainty of goal achievement. There is another type of measurement tool that can be implemented within your success plan that measures the certainty of your success. This relatively unknown tool is the key of how to get success. Failure will be impossible if implemented and used with integrity.

Imagine a basketball team from your local high school has a goal of winning the state championship. The milestones that must be knocked down on the road to the state championship are the city championship, the county championship and then the regional championship. With each milestone knocked down, the basketball team can monitor their progress, but they can’t monitor their probability of reaching the next milestone without the “unknown” tool.

This unknown tool will measure the certainty, and increase the likelihood, of winning the state championship. This tool measures the daily routine the players and team conducts in between games. Routine activities like practice, conditioning, nutrition, and rest will make the biggest contribution to the team’s success, therefore, they should be measured. These activities are the basics, the mundane activities that must be performed day in and day out in order to become a better basketball team. The secret of how to get success is mastering the basics.

For example, a basic skill of a basketball player is their ability to effectively shoot free throws. There are a certain number of free throws a player must shoot in practice on a daily basis over a period of time to develop the basic skill that contributes to the team winning. There is also a certain distance a player must run in practice on a daily basis over a period of time to develop the stamina that contributes to the team winning. Further, there’s a specific diet to which a player must adhere on a daily basis over time to maintain his or her health that contributes to the team winning. These are three specific basic activities that make a significant impact on determining the probability of whether a player will contribute to his team winning, or not… and they can be measured.

If you were to ask John Wooden, UCLA Basketball Coach Extraordinaire, how to get success, the answer would be somewhere along the lines of “master the basics.” He built his unprecedented coaching career on having his players dribble up and down the court for hours, perform hundreds of basic passes, shoot hundreds of free throws and practice other mundane activities over and over and over… everyday! Mastering the mundane is how to get success!

One reason this ideology is an unpopular teaching is that “mundane” activities aren’t fun. Most coaches know that if an activity isn’t fun to some degree, activity decreases, intensity diminishes and motivation wanes. Getting success by performing mundane activities over and over takes a special type of mindset. Not many are cut out for that type of commitment.

Enter the game! Human beings respond well to games. Action persists, intensity increases and motivation lasts during games. Most of all, games are fun. When fun is present, so is focus. When our focus is clear and sustained, nothing is impossible. By creating a game around the pursuit of your most important goals, you accelerate your progress and significantly increase the probability, if not the certainty, of success.

I implement the use of a daily scorecard as a sure-fire means of how to get success. I assign a point value to the mundane activities and I keep score daily. I make a game out of it. I compete with myself, and sometimes I will pull a co-worker or associate in on the game and we will compete with each other. A game arouses competition, and competition gets things done. A game drives planning and course correction so that your goals and dreams are not perpetually goals and dreams. A game gives you a framework in which to accomplish new things, things you never thought possible for you.

What there is to do next is to identify what daily activities, repeated consistently over time that you can measure that will contribute to the probability of you reaching each milestone, and ultimately your goal.

In my real estate investing business, I have assigned a point value to each property I analyze, to each purchase offer I submit, to each escrow I open and to each escrow I close. These are the basic activities within my business that if I perform consistently over time that assure my success. By doing this, I come home every day feeling like I am “getting there,” instead of stressing out about how much further I have to go. For an example of how to get success by using a scorecard, you can download a copy of the Excel spreadsheet I use to keep score at http://DoOverDownloads.com.

Feel free to use and modify my scorecard for your success plan. For example, if your goal is to be the #1 salesperson in your company, you might assign points to the number of new prospects you meet, the number of appointments you set, the number of presentations you give, and the number of products you sell. Or, if your goal is to lose weight, you may want to create a daily scorecard for, and assign points to the number of…wait…I believe Weight Watchers already has something like this, don’t they? Do you know anyone who has ever lost weight using the Weight Watcher’s food scoring system? If you do, did they gain their weight back? If they did, did they stopped using their daily scorecard? Keeping score works.

One note about creating a game, it’s your game. You know your situation better than anyone else, and you will know how to create a game that motivates you into daily action. Paying undue attention to other people’s games will slow you down. Don’t compare yourself. Every moment spent worrying about whether or not someone else is winning their game is a moment wasted on moving forward. Play YOUR game is how to get success!

Matt “the Do Over Guy” Theriault is an entrepreneur, author and success coach who shows people how to start over and begin a new life setting goals and objectives so they can create wealth and live life to the fullest. To subscribe to Matt’s newsletter and receive a FREE mp3 audio “The 3 Pillars of Creating the Ultimate Do Over” go to http://theDoOverGuy.com

Working on yourself is How to Get Success. Your achievement, success and income will never surpass your personal development skills, especially these 3 skills.