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# Success: Why You Fail Where Others Succeed - 5 Life-Changing Personal Development Tips You Wish You Knew (Success Principles Book 1) (English Edition) by Meurisse, Thibaut ## Highlights and Notes ### 1. Your Current «Reality» is Never Reality and Can Always be Changed Do you know what the difference between pessimistic and optimistic people is? It's simply their focus. In your daily life, you can always identify an infinite number of negative things, but you can also identify an unlimited number of positive things. Being pessimistic or being optimistic is a choice. Every day we are creating our reality by choosing what to focus on. Jim Rohn once wisely observed that "Poor people have a big TV. Rich people have a big library." TV can certainly be entertaining but it won't help you grow. If you were to never think again about that particular problem again, it would disappear. Why? Because your reality is always created by your own mind. If you don't think about something, for your mind it simply ceases to exist. Conversely, focusing on a problem, reinforces the connection in your brain between the problem and the emotional attached to it. Your problems are only as big as you want them to be. Some of us have great difficulty getting rid of our problems because they've slowly become part of our identity, sometimes this occurs without us being consciously aware of it. If you are stuck where you are, it might be because you are buying into your current struggles or problems without necessarily being aware of it. It is time to stop playing the victim and re-empower yourself. You are the victim only in your own mind. Your reality is defined by your belief system. Your belief system consist of all the beliefs that make up your subjective reality. What is a belief? A belief is simply something that you accept as true, regardless of whether or not it actually is. Where do your beliefs come from? Your beliefs come from the way you interpreted past events and are the result of: What you have heard (from your parents, your friends, your teachers, the media…) What you have experienced Positively: love from your parents, good results at school… Negatively: trauma (abuse, humiliation, failure…) There are two ways your beliefs were created: Strong emotions Repetition 1. Strong emotions: A shocking event in your childhood sends a strong signal to your subconscious mind that it should protect you from experiencing similar events in the future. That's how phobias or fear of failure is created in the mind. 2. Repetition: Repetition is the key to create new beliefs and it is also how most of your current beliefs were created and often it's done unconsciously. Why does it control your life? Because your belief system creates your thoughts, those thoughts create emotions and those emotions create behaviors. That's why profound changes are impossible without working with your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind has no critical thinking skills and has no way to tell whether what you are telling him is in your interest or not. If you repeat something to your subconscious mind enough times, it will eventually believe it. That's why you have to be extremely careful about the way you talk to yourself. That's also why positive affirmations work. Have you noticed how we tend to compare our weakest points directly to our friends' strongest points? It is totally biased and doesn't make any sense so stop comparing apples to oranges. Because of this pattern of thinking we start to believe that people around us are better off than we are. Jim is smarter than me, John is way more confident than me, Jerry is definitely better-looking than me… So what? Is it a fair comparison? It misses the most important point: you have no way to tell how happy they really are. And if they are happier than you, so what? What does it have to do with you? The way we constantly compare ourselves with others diminishes our self-esteem and clouds our judgment regarding our own great abilities and strengths. The cheetah doesn't look at the elephant and think "wow I'm so small." If you tell your subconscious mind all the things you are good at then it will start looking for more things that you are good at. It will progressively change your current perception of reality. Similarly, taking 5 minutes to focus on what you are grateful for in life will train your subconscious mind to focus on things to be grateful for. Sometimes, a single piece of information can shake your beliefs and change your perception of reality. ### 2. Your Thoughts Never Define Who You Are and Who You Can Become Your personal story is changing all the time though because you are constantly interpreting events that happen to you through your thinking process. Your past does not exist anymore and thus cannot define who you really are unless you think of it in the present. Become aware of the thoughts that pop up during the time you spend doing what you are doing. Don't get caught by your thoughts. Just observe them. Become the witness of what you do. Watch every movement you are doing. Focus your attention on your body. How do you feel in your body while doing your current activity? (It helps you become more aware of your body and prevent you from thinking. You cannot think and focus your attention on your body at the same time) Mindfulness has a lot of benefits and can even be more effective in reducing stress, unhappiness and procrastination than medicine or other popular treatments. Kelly McGonigal demonstrates in her book "The Willpower Instinct" how repeatedly being aware of any urge we have (smoking, drinking, checking email, etc.) and "surfing the urge" - that is to become aware of how we feel and how the urge is manifesting itself in our body - can effectively reduce non-productive cravings and desires. Generally speaking, staying in touch with our negative emotions and observing them as if we were external observers is more effective than trying to repress those emotions. This is a critical distinction, too often we try to repress such emotions only to find them rebounding ten times stronger. Accept it Observe it as a scientist would (how does it manifest in our body? Which parts of your body are tensed? How does it make you feel?) Ask yourself if you can let go of that thought and consciously discard it The more you accept your thoughts and stop trying to suppress them, the less power they will have over you. ### 3. Your Definition of Success is All that Matters Success is not something you pursue, success is something you become. Timeless: If you could use a time machine and go back in time or into the future, your life purpose would remain the same. Universal: If you were born in a different part of the world your purpose would still be the same. Inspiring: Your life purpose should be truly inspiring and allow you to unleash your full potential and experience a real sense of fulfillment. When your purpose really resonates within you, what you are doing doesn't really feel like work anymore. Transcend your ego: most of us work in order to make a living, to gain recognition or to feel accepted by society. A true life purpose should come from a place of love not fear. When you have a clear life purpose you don't act out of fear anymore (fear of not being good enough, not being worthy, not being smart enough…). Although we are unlikely to completely get rid of our ego, we should try to base our actions from a place of love as much as we can which becomes possible when our ego is under control. How can I leverage my problems? Think about how you can give meaning to your problems and challenges. Rather than complaining about a problem, it is often possible to take advantage of it by seeing the meaning it brings to your life. Victor Frankl in his book "Man's Search For Meaning" observed the odd phenomenon during his time in a Nazi concentration camp where individuals that were physically very strong often died long before smaller, skinnier and weaker individuals simply because the smaller guy had found meaning to his suffering. Did you know that the word "enthusiasm" means "god within." Having passion will lead to fulfillment, which is real success, not just money or fame. How can I better serve? How can you create more value for society? Stop thinking about what you can get from society. Think about what you want to give to society. ### 4. You are Responsible for Everything in Your Life Are you giving your power away? Each time you fail to take responsibility in any area of your life, you give your power away to circumstances and people around you. Each time you play the victim you disempower yourself and limit your ability to change yourself and move forward. Not taking responsibility means that you refuse to acknowledge that you have at least some control over most of the things that happen to you. You refuse to look for possibilities to make your life better. Emotionally speaking, blaming people or circumstances is much easier than looking within yourself for possible shortcomings and mistakes you might have made. It also protects our ego. It is always easier to blame others than to change. Taking responsibility is accepting the reality and realizing you have at least some power to change it. While you are not responsible for this event you are responsible for the way you choose to react to it. Martin Luther King once said: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." Here are some areas where you should take responsibility: Accepting reality Your attitude Your happiness Your relationships Your emotions Your career Your time Saying no No real change is possible before you accept reality. Don't give your power away by reacting. You are better than that. "Your attitude not your aptitude, will determine your altitude." – It is only when we assume responsibility for our happiness that we will have a reasonable I believe that the mechanism that leads to happiness is the same for every human being and should be known by everyone. The implication is that, what happens to us has very little impact on our happiness level. The only way we can significantly increase our happiness is by changing our thoughts and our actions. Happiness comes from within you not from outside of you. Goals should help you become the person you want to be rather than getting things you want to have. The best way to feel more grateful is by practicing and getting into the habit of shifting your focus from what you don't have to what you have Don't try to change your partner's values and don't try to change your values to adapt them to your partner's values. We are attracted to people who are similar to us and this is also true for values. Happiness, sadness, stress, hopelessness and any other possible kind of emotion that you feel doesn't actually exist out there. They are only created by your mind. You are responsible for your emotions so it's up to you to do something about your emotions. If you constantly think about bad events that happened to you in the past, you are responsible for that! If you constantly worry about the future, you are responsible for that too! If you react too emotionally to a present situation guess who's responsible? That's right, you are responsible! That's why many spiritual teachers stress the importance of: Living in the now (the only reality that exists) Acceptance (stop resisting and begin to fully accept reality) Be aware that each time you react and get angry, or try to take revenge you're choosing to give your power away to the person who is offending you. Actually, those behaviors reveal how insecure you are inside no matter how confident you might pretend to be on the outside. A person with high self-esteem feels less need to be respected or approved of by others. "What is insulting is not the person who abuses you or hits you, but the judgment about them that they are insulting. Another person will not do you harm unless you wish it". I acknowledge that I have a feeling of anger and focus on how anger feels in my body. Focusing on my emotions allows me to dissociate from them. Then I analyze why I am feeling that emotion. I reframe the situation: This person has probably some problems in his life (he lost his job, he just broke up with his girlfriend, someone died in his family or maybe he is just a jerk). I transform my anger into pity and see them as weak for lacking self-control. Often, when people get angry at you, it is not personal. Are you controlling your time? Or are you letting situations and people steal your time? Your life can be described as a very short period of time that you were given on earth. Your time is one of the most precious assets you have. Before accepting an invitation, or responding favorably to a request, you should always ask yourself, is it the best way for me to spend my time right now. ### 5. You Can Turn Your Dreams into Goals With the Power of Goal Setting A goal is a dream with a deadline. —Napoleon Hill Nothing happens, no forward steps are taken until a goal is established. Without goals individuals just wander through life. They stumble along. Never knowing where they are going, so they never get anywhere. It gives direction to your subconscious mind that Maxwell Maltz calls a mechanical goal-seeking device. "Your automatic creative mechanism is teleological. That is, it operates in terms of goals and end results. Once you give it a definite goal to achieve, you can depend upon its automatic guidance system to take you to that goal much better than "you" ever could by conscious thought. "You" supply the goal by thinking in terms of end results. Your automatic mechanism them supplies the means whereby." You realize that you have the power within you to achieve goals that truly excite you and get you the life you deserve. Achieving goals you set for yourself is a powerful way to build self-esteem. Start with small goals. The more goals that you achieve the more you will believe in your ability to achieve even greater goals and build an even healthier level of self-esteem. "The value of goals is not in the future they describe, but the change in perception of reality they foster." -David Allen, Getting Things Done It opens you up to new opportunity and makes you realize that you can overcome your limiting beliefs. You progressively become aware of the fact that your present reality can be changed. Putting goals on paper moves those goals that you enjoy daydreaming about from the abstract world to the physical world. Daydreaming is a trick that you might use to feel good right now but it is an illusion that rarely produces results. Rather than saying you want to make more money, decide the exact amount of money you want to earn and commit to a specific deadline. Ex: I will earn $ 10,000 per month by December 31st of next year. If the goal is too far beyond your reach then you will lose motivation and your self-esteem will suffer. When the why get stronger the how get easier. Having a goal is like being on a cruise. You don't care that much about the destination but you definitely want to enjoy the journey! The fastest way to succeed is to double your failure rate. We tend to be overoptimistic regarding our ability to achieve a goal and underestimate the amount of work and time necessary to perform the required tasks. In the past I had many goals but I didn't achieve most of them. One of the reasons was my lack of confidence and was not prepared mentally to face major setbacks. If you already made up your mind up that huge setbacks are likely to occur, you will be prepared to face them and be able to keep moving forward. You should already know how you're going to react to potential setbacks before they occur. If your objective is to lose weight or to stop smoking for instance, you should avoid temptation. Identify all those situations where you are at risk, think of what caused you to fail in your previous attempts and see how you can avoid repeating such situations. Maybe you like to have a cigarette when you are drinking coffee, when you eat outside or when you are under stress. Identify those kinds of situations and come up with an effective strategy.