How to be Successful in Life – Success Principle #5

Pure Gold

And here we are at the half way mark ready to explore How to be Successful in Life – Success Principle #5.

If my readers’ feedback is anything to go by, many of you have been waiting with baited breath for the next success principle.

I’m sure you would agree that the content I’ve shared so far around the 10 Principles for Successful Living is pure gold.

As always, it’s worth your while getting your head around the previous success principles if you haven’t already done so and to begin to explore and apply them personally.

After all, this is for your success and about who you want to be.  Make yourself a priority.

You need to know that putting yourself first is important and ok.  We’re no good to anyone else unless we look after and start to know ourselves first and though it may be scary, it’s necessary if you want change for the better.

With that, it’s time for more gold.

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The 10 Principles for Successful Living

Quick links to previous principles to refresh or get up to speed.

Principle Number 1: Boundary Conditions

Principle Number 2: Cause and Effect

Principle number 3: What we focus on is what we get

Principle number 4:  The map is not the territory

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Principle number 5:  There is No Failure only Feedback

When you embrace this theme or belief that there is no failure only feedback, you are becoming a learning machine.

Having the perception that you cannot experience failure allows you far more freedom to be willing to play, to explore, to learn and to grow.

Everything that happens, including the results we don’t want, is simply feedback.

It is telling us that we can adjust our choices.  We can change our behaviour.  We can shift a belief.

And as a result of that, we can experience a different type of feedback or outcome.

If we choose, we can develop the behavioural flexibility to keep adjusting what we do and what we choose to focus on until we get the results we want because we are not going to take feedback personally.

Welcome feedback as an opportunity to learn.

A person who keeps telling themselves why they can’t do something is searching for evidence of failure.  They have that in their language.

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Language and Beliefs – Out with the Old and In with the New

I want to suggest something to you.  What if your language created your experience?

What if the way you communicate with yourself and those around you was instrumental in determining the results that you have got?

What if words like failure and mistake and not good enough and can’t do it and it’s too hard determined the type of results you are going to get (or have gotten) and more importantly determines the actions you are willing to take.

I have a belief.  Now just a point on beliefs – they are all made up.  They can be whatever you want them to be.

There is no absolute truth in all situations.  This implies for myself that I am free to change it in a moment.  I don’t have to hold onto it like it’s set in stone. 

One of the mistakes that people make in life is that they decide that something is true and they never question it again.  It becomes a true belief and an absolute for them.  It becomes a total sense of certainty that this is the way it is all of time.  It is such a rigid approach and a waste.

What if it is not true all of the time?  Wouldn’t you have it up for grabs that everything is changeable?

Now some people might read this and go, no way please don’t change anything, I want things to stay the same.  Well, that’s a belief as well.  It’s all belief, it’s all up for grabs. 

We are all capable of changing whatever it is we believe to be true about ourselves and about our world and everything around us.

Personally, I want the freedom to know that it isn’t set in stone – that the belief I have today won’t necessarily be the belief I have by the time I go to bed tonight because I am willing to explore different beliefs.

I am willing to create the change.  I am willing to try on different beliefs just to see what will happen, just to see the kind of results and feedback I get because I truly appreciate that there is no failure, there is only feedback.

Ask yourself a question

Does this belief serve me?  If not, throw it out and replace it with one that does.

CAN BELIEFS BE CHANGED? HOW TO CHANGE YOUR BELIEFS TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE

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Results vs Outcomes

One of the things that I do for myself and in my coaching is this.  Rather than looking for results, I look for outcomes.

A result implies did you get the result you wanted?

With an outcome, I get to use the language, what outcome did you get?

Did you get the result is a yes or no answer and it limits the possibilities for exploration.

Asking what outcome did you get invites discussion.

I got this outcome.  What outcome were you looking for?

I was looking for a different outcome.  What do we need to do to accomplish that?

It opens up a world of possibilities.

So, I want you to start playing with the possibilities that language creates your experience.

If you didn’t have a word for failure, what would become available to you?

If you didn’t know that failure was an option what would you be willing to do?

If it was not failure but simply feedback, what would you do differently next time?

This is about being willing to say to ourselves, I did not want that outcome.  So, what I am noticing that I need to do differently this time is this, this and this.

1:1 coaching can help

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Just Imagine

Imagine this scenario.

If you are in business and you want to build your business and you only have one client and you are saying to yourself, “I’m a failure because I only have one client and I want 10”.

What if that’s simply feedback that tells you you’ve done what it takes to create one client and now what you need to do is either replicate and enhance it or do it differently so you can enable yourself to create and manifest 10 clients.

Let’s go back a step to focus.  If what you focus on is what you get and if you focus on how you failed, what are you going to get more of?  Of course, more of the failure because that’s the language you are using.

What if instead you say this is not the outcome that I am looking for.  The outcome I am looking for instead is to get two clients.

So, ask yourself:

• What do I need to do to create that?
• What attributes or qualities within me right now do I need to notice?  What do I need to do even more of?
• How about this question – what do I need to do less of?  Like beating yourself up for instance.
• What do I need to believe is true and possible?
• Who would I need to connect with?
• What language would I need to use?
• What do I need to study or learn?
• How would I need to communicate with myself?
• What would I need to tell myself is possible?
• What phone calls would I make?
• What systems should I put in place?

Now in the beginning I had one client and I celebrated.

And after a while I only had one client and I started saying to myself I only got one client, I’ll never get another client.  And for a while I was right because I was focusing on what I lacked.

Remember, you only get what you focus on to the exclusion of everything else and I was only focusing on that I was no good, I only got one client to the exclusion of I’m good enough to have 30 clients.

The longer I did self-pity and was in the physiology of non-excellence and told myself what I couldn’t do and focused on what I lacked, I kept getting that.  What a surprise.

So, then I decided I needed to move myself to cause.

How did I need to change my language?

How did I need to change how I communicated with myself, what did I need to start telling myself about what was possible, what did I need to believe?

I needed to re-jig my beliefs.

 

Some examples of empowering beliefs are:

• What do I need to believe is true and possible? 
• Who would I need to connect with?
• What language would I need to use?
• What do I need to study or learn?
• How would I need to communicate with myself?
• What would I need to tell myself is possible?
• What phone calls would I make?
• What systems should I put in place?
• There is always a way around something or through something if I’m willing
• All I have and all I need is within me now
• There is a practical and spiritual solution for everything
• I will find a way
• Whatever somebody else has done and succeeded in I can do as well

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Realign

You then need to align with these new beliefs.

To do this you then have to ask yourself what you need to do e.g. what did I do to create one client? Can I replicate that or what else do I need to do to create 10 clients?

So, ask yourself what it is you need to do.  It might be that you need to do different marketing campaigns or start to network.

For me, I invested in a coach.  I was then and now a credentialed coach.  But, the best and most successful coaches in the world also get coached.  No word of a lie, the day after I was coached, I got another paying client.  Amazing.

My next little obstacle though was that after seeing a client 3 times I was thinking, oh they won’t come back for a fourth session.  Did they come back?  Nope.  What you focus on is what you get.  So, I had to look at my thinking, my focus and my language.  I had to change it.  I thought, well hey, I went to a coach for more than 3 times, why would anyone else be any different.  There you go.

All I did was use the principle there is no failure, there is only feedback and I realigned.

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Opportunity to grow and learn

And the next step is that not only is there no failure, but every opportunity for feedback is an opportunity to grow and to learn.

This is an awesome opportunity for us to learn how to do it differently.  What can I do right now that will turn this around?

What is the easiest thing I can do? What can I learn from this and how can I apply this next time?

My invitation to you is to do the same thing in your own life whether it be personally or professionally.

My next question to you is, if you choose to hang on to the possibility of failure, what results will that not invite into your life (again personally and professionally)?

Because failure has a weight to it. It lacks possibility.

“I failed ” – those two words alone to me are so anti to what we are looking to create here.  You say those two words and there is just a weight to it – so many possibilities shut down.  Why would we do that to ourselves, it makes no sense.

What about instead of that, we say, you got great feedback, what an awesome opportunity to learn and what am I going to do differently now that I know this.

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Here’s what you need to do next!

1. Look at your beliefs and language. Change what doesn’t serve you.
2. Start to think in terms of outcomes instead of results. See your outcomes as feedback and opportunities to learn, adapt or change if necessary.
3. Invest in a coaching product.  I have done so and have never regretted a penny spent.  Check out my Top 10 Recommended Book List on mastering your mindset and creating the life your want.
4. Get some coaching.  Nothing beats it.  Try Life Energy Coaching or Life Coach Hub.
5. Subscribe to my website (scroll to the top or bottom of the screen) so you don’t miss out on Success Principle Number 6.

I would love your comments and feedback on this article.

Until next time, I wish you well on your success journey!

Martine