“All personal achievement starts in the mind of the individual. Your personal achievement starts in your mind. The first step is to know exactly what your problem, goal or desire is.”
W. Clement Stone
The first question you need to ask yourself when you decide to go for greatness as a leader or business owner is not what you are willing to do, but what it is you are not willing to do. This might not make any sense to you, but if you really want to know the truth about yourself and whether you have the courage to make the necessary transformation from where you are now to where you say you want to be in life, you have to be willing to look at the points where you will quit before you arrive.
You cannot read the story behind any great leader’s achievements without taking note of the failures they had to face before finally making it. Their determination to get up after they had been knocked down again is what separates them from the rest of society. Powerful people know that any time they make a decision to move forward with a plan that could make a positive difference in the lives of many, they will be met with opposition. It is simply the nature of living in a planet where duality exists – dark/light, day/night, good/bad. Catch the idea?
Once you determine to move forward in a powerful way, you will always be met with an equal opposing force. If you can accept this early on in the game you can prepare yourself to expect it and have strategies in place that will divert the opposition long before it gets to you. The keystone upon which it all rests is your attitude toward dealing with the challenges. Whatever it is you don’t want to do is what will sneak up and bite you in the posterior.
For example, if you want to become an Olympic class athlete but you can’t handle getting out of bed before 6am to train you might as well throw in your towel before you even get started. It’s what you won’t do that will stop you from being the best, achieving the most. If you want to become a motivational speaker but your ego is too big to take constructive advice from a “gray dog” that has been on the circuit for a while you will never have the influence over people you dream could have. If you want to become wealthy through a business venture but you are not willing to break loose of “job consciousness” you will never be more than an employee of your own company. These are the opposing forces you will never get past, and guess what – they are all inventions of your own limited way of thinking.
So here is what you have to do if you are serious about making it happen the way you envision. Write down everything you say you are not willing to do. Identify your weaknesses and the circumstances that will make you bolt and run. Then make a plan for how you are going to deal with these things, because they will surely happen. If you can make your way through your own shortfalls, no matter how tough it gets, success is a done deal.
