You would imagine that success is something that we all desire. You would imagine that when we have it, we are delighted and we celebrate it. But there is a strange phenomenon, that many, many people have lurking in their subconscious, which can ultimately undermine their ability to be successful.
In our current society, we are always encouraged to set goals, set milestones, set KPI’s, in other words, define over and over again what success looks like. But we are less comfortable with recognising that every time we don’t hit those goals or milestones or KPI’s we are failing.
We are very poor judges of risk as human beings. In our society we invest huge amounts of money in reducing some risks, then are very careless about other risks.
There is some very interesting research, which has looked at the attitude to learning in young people, which, I think, translates very strongly to anybody, in whatever walk of life they are.
We are all leaders of some sort or other. We don’t need to have a senior position be a leader. We lead others positively or negative, simply by the way we are with other people. Ultimately, it’s our attitude to those other people that will determine the leadership that we offer them.
So much of lasting change that we can embed in our lives comes through establishing habits, our attitude to habits is crucial to our long-term success. We can go out and do a big push to make something happen but the change you can create by doing 1% better every day for 90 days is almost 2.5 times. Habits are the key, once you’ve established a habit it’s a foundation on which you can build.
Your attitude to self is a critical component of your success. I’ve recently become very interested in the thinking behind the model of Voice Dialogue. The people who founded the movement that has become Voice Dialogue realised, in summary, we don’t have one self.
In my experience there are very different ways in which people carry an attitude to challenge. I see there are some people who want to go out and pick a fight with the world, and there are others who, when confronted run away and hide. Between these extremes some will step forward in response to those who move towards them, while others will step back.
It may be a trite truism that failing to plan is planning to fail but planning is an essential attitude for success. Planning is part of an overall process which is often initiated by goal setting. I want to focus on a rhythm of planning that reflects a powerful attitude for success.
Success can often be a lonely journey to achieve and there are many bumps along the way but there is a really powerful psychological tool that I have found makes a huge difference to how we see our world. And as we shift our attitude to our world with an attitude for gratitude then somehow the pathway to success seems smoother.
Underpinning any desire for success is a desire that things should be different. If you have already achieved success, then you may not want anything to change but most of the people I meet who are successful are not prepared to rest in the status quo.
We all want more success don’t we! When I look back through my life almost all my success has come from my attitude to opportunity. It was Napoleon who said, “Don’t give me great generals, give me lucky generals” and I think the attitude of a lucky general is to see opportunities and then seize them.