You will never reach your goal

Have you ever almost reached your goal, only to have the rug pulled out from underneath your feet just when that goal was in sight?

Have you ever actually reached your goal, but before you can start to enjoy it you find something has happened to make you walk away from it?

Be honest here.  These are two very common problems faced by most people.  If this has never happened to you then all I can say is that you are very lucky and are in a very small minority.  And just because it has not happened yet, this doesn't mean it will never happen to you in the future!

As this is such a common problem I feel it is very important to address it again, even though I have referred to it in a number of different blog articles.  What can you do to stop this happening, or at least to minimize the chance of it happening?  The first step is to recognize the problem.  If you understand the causes you have a much better chance of moving in a different direction and stopping the "self sabotage" from happening in the first place.

There are three distinct reasons here, any one of which can result in the prize of your achievement being snatched away, and all of which can work together to make it virtually impossible for you to realize your dreams.  If you do not address them I would go as far as to say you will never achieve your goals.

The first I will call "Fear of Failure".  The second is "Fear of Success".  The third is "Incorrect Goal Identification".

Fear of Failure

Fear of Failure is very common.  I would go as far as to say virtually everyone suffers from Fear of Failure.

Recently I read a novel by Celeste Ng called "Little Fires Everywhere".  This is a well written novel with quite a complex plot line.  But to me the strongest element was the self-destructive instincts of a mother who was afraid her youngest daughter would not develop in the way she hoped.  You could almost say she loved her daughter too much, although I personally don't believe in the concept of "loving too much", but only of allowing that deep love to express itself in inappropriate and destructive ways.  Because she was so afraid that certain things would happen, the mother unintentionally caused those very things to happen.  If she had simply expressed her love for her youngest in the same way as she did for her other children, my reading of the novel is that her youngest daughter would have grown up as "completely normal" rather than the maladjusted child she became.

This is very typical of all of us.  We are afraid that we won't achieve what we want to achieve.  This causes us to focus on all the things that could go wrong rather than on all the things that we could do to ensure we are successful.  Often we get very close to success despite all that wrong focus.  But eventually the wrong focus comes home to roost.

We often see this in the way a lot of relationships go wrong.  One party fears the other might stop loving them and find someone else.  They have no logical reason for this fear, but gradually it grows and takes over their life.  Instead of being the beautiful positive thing it should be, the relationship becomes toxic.  The party who feels this way begins to read the wrong signs into everything.  If their other half smiles at someone they believe this means they are transferring their affections to that other person.  Every innocent action is given a completely different reason, building a picture of betrayal - a betrayal that simply doesn't exist, yet!  The more this goes on, the more toxic the relationship becomes.  The other party is almost forced into a position where they stop loving the other, or at least find that love considerably diluted.  They cannot understand what has happened, but simply know that the relationship is not working.  And so they start looking for a better relationship elsewhere - the very thing that the person responsible for this change feared would happen.

The same thing can, and often does, happen with other life goals, not simply relationships.

You want to become wealthier.  At first you are excited by this goal, imagining you now have all the things you could have if you WERE wealthier.  Having imagined having them, you then imagine them being taken away or never having managed to get them in the first place.  This makes you feel rotten.  But you now believe this is the most likely outcome.  You think of all the things that can go wrong and stop you achieving your wealth goal.  Your focus changes from what you can do to get wealthier, to what can stop you getting wealthier.  All the negatives seem to add up to something much more powerful than the positives.  Eventually, the Universe gets the message - you are focussed on not getting wealthy, so that is what it is going to ensure happens to you.

Be aware that this not only CAN happen, but very often does.  Defeat it by focussing again on the goal and the pleasure it will bring, and don't allow all those negative voices to take your power away from you.

Fear of Success

Fear of Success is really a kind of evolved Fear of Failure.  You recognize that when you achieve what you want to achieve you can easily lose it.  So you then focus on how that would make you feel.  Your impression is that if you achieve it and then lose it you will be a lot unhappier than if you never achieved it in the first place.  I think you can immediately see where this is leading.  The closer you get to success, the stronger you feel this worry about how achieving and then losing is worse than not achieving at all.  So your subconscious decides the best thing is to ensure you never achieve success in the first place.  Once your subconscious makes this decision you may as well give up trying.  You cannot defeat your subconscious - it is far more powerful than your conscious mind.

The answer, of course is to ensure you do not send this kind of message to your subconscious in the first place.

The reality is that we win and lose things all the time in the game of life.  Take pleasure from your wins, and don't focus on the losses.  Don't allow the very real fear that something in the future will change and take away what you have initially achieved, to stop you from achieving in the first place.

Incorrect Goal Identification

Again this is something I have covered many times in different blog articles.  But it is extremely important.  If you don't give a great deal of thought to the goals you are working towards I can almost guarantee they will be the wrong goals.  The desire for success comes from deep within.  As it rises to the surface it becomes modified.  And when it reaches your conscious mind it is usually something completely different from the original intended goal.  

When you then start going after what you think is your goal, your subconscious sees it is not the original goal.  So it doesn't try to help you achieve it.  Even worse, in many cases the modified goal will be counter-productive and will move you away from what the true goal should have been.  If so, not only will your subconscious not help you achieve it, but it will actively work to stop you achieving it.  In the unlikely event that you achieve the goal, you will never be really happy with it, as it is not the goal you really wanted to achieve even though you never knew this.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to dive deep within yourself and find out what that original true goal is.  You do this by noting down what you think are your goals and then sit still and meditate on it.  As you do so you will be going deep within yourself where you are more likely to find the true goal itself.  When you come out of that meditation, note down your feelings and thoughts arising from the meditation.  You will probably need to do this many times before you truly identify your real goals, but every hour you spend doing this is an hour very well spent.  Identify your true goals and you will be setting yourself up for really achieving them.

You Are Special

Are you special?

Of course you are!  There is absolutely no doubt about that at all.  You are very special!

How did it make you feel when I said that?  Despite the fact that this is a very impersonal conversation - one where neither of us knows anything about the other and we are not talking to each other directly - I am guessing it made you feel good, even if only for a brief moment.

You are special, but not because someone else says or thinks you are.  You are special simply because you are YOU.  There is nobody else quite like you.  There has never been anyone quite like you in the past, and there will never be anyone exactly the same as you in the future.

This is all true.  So true that you shouldn't need me, or anyone else, to confirm it for you.

The trouble is, most of us DO seem to need constant validation of this simple fact.

This can be especially the case in relationships.  You thrive on compliments from your spouse or significant other.  You want them to tell you that you are more beautiful, handsome, caring, intelligent, etc than anyone else.  Perhaps in the first flush of love that is what they truly believed.  But maybe now they don't.  Not because they love you any the less.  They still love you deeply, but no longer need to believe you are more beautiful, handsome, caring, intelligent, etc than anyone else.  They love you for who you really are, not for the projection of what you believe you should be.

That true, deep love is very important.  And it illustrates a deeper, wider lesson.  That you don't have to be "more".  It is enough that you simply are.

You don't have to be "more successful" than others.  It doesn't matter how successful others are.  Well, it does for them, of course, and we should always be pleased for the successes of our friends, colleagues and relatives.  But you do not have to be more successful than them, only as successful as you want to be.

Life is an experience, a beautiful experience, not a competition.  There will always be someone better than you in almost any aspect, any characteristic, any skill.  The purpose of life is not for you to be the best, but simply to be all that you can be.

You don't have to look in the mirror, ask it who the most beautiful person in the world is, and then expect it to answer that you are.  We all know the fairy tale where someone did that.  Look at the damage she caused before she was forced to wear a pair of red hot shoes (and by "hot" I am not referring to how popular they were!) and dance in them until she dropped dead.  You don't want to be the evil queen in Snow White!  And you don't need to be either!

It is enough that you are special and that you know you are special.  That you are talented (even if you haven't developed all those talents yet) and that you know you are talented.  But especially that you are loving and kind and that the world is a better place because you are here.

You are special, very special, but don't go looking for anyone else to confirm that to you.  It is enough simply that you ARE.

Abundance Blocks

If you have been studying personal development for a while you have probably come across the term "abundance block".  But what exactly is it, and why is it important?

Your unconscious mind is very much like a computer.  Program it in the right way and it will give you the right answer.  But the term "gigo" (garbage in - garbage out) very much applies here.  It has no good way of testing the truth or otherwise of what it is told.  Again, just like a computer.  If you write a program instructing your computer to do certain things, and if you use the right syntax to write the program instructions, it will do exactly what you say.  It doesn't care whether or not there is any logic in what it is being told to do, even though it is an entirely logical machine.  It just does it because it has been told to do it.

On being told this, some people think all they need to do is give the right instructions to their unconscious mind and all will be well.  They prepare the right "affirmations", recite them every day, and then expect their unconscious mind to start creating opportunities which will lead them to their goal.  In theory this should work.  In practice it often doesn't, and it is then tempting to say "affirmations don't achieve anything - they are a complete waste of time and effort!"  But the reason it doesn't work is because there is some deep seated underlying "programming" which is taking us in a very different direction.  This underlying programming creates "abundance blocks".

Abundance blocks can be created at any time, but many of the more powerful blocks were created many years ago, often during very early childhood.

There are many different kinds of abundance blocks.  The way in which they block us differs, but the end result is the same.

A very common abundance block is the belief that we do not deserve abundance.  That abundance may be wealth, and it often is.  But it may be, for example, good relationships, a satisfying career, etc, etc.  Anything, in fact, that we would like to achieve.

So your unconscious mind may have been programmed to believe you do not deserve to be wealthy, or do not deserve to have love, or do not deserve to have a good job.  Often, it is so deeply buried that you don't even realize it is there.  You try to become wealthier, but your unconscious mind "knows" that you do not deserve to be wealthy, as that it what it was programmed to believe many years ago.  And so it refuses to let you become wealthy.  Or allows you to become wealthy for a brief period and then lose it all.

Or it may have been programmed to believe that whatever it is you want is evil.  Typically this will be wealth, although again it may be anything that you would regard as signalling success.  Perhaps it believes you cannot be spiritual if you are aiming for success in one way or another.  There is no conflict between a good, happy relationship and spirituality.  There is no conflict between a satisfying career and spirituality.  There is no conflict between being wealthy and being spiritual.  Did you react at all when you read any of those statements?  Did you feel some resistance inside you?  Perhaps when I said there is no conflict between being wealthy and being spiritual?  Did your unconscious mind feed you some phrases along the lines of "money is the root of all evil"?  This is a very common unconscious belief (sometimes a conscious belief too), which is completely untrue but which has created an abundance block that will prevent you becoming or remaining wealthy.

Sometimes these abundance blocks have arisen from a direct comment.  Perhaps your parents told you when you were a child that money is the root of all evil.  Or they may have told you that if you want to be successful you have to work hard.  On the surface that sounds a reasonable thing to say.  It is certainly good to work for success, to do things likely to lead you to success.  But if your unconscious believes you can only be successful if you work hard, then all the time you are not working hard (because, for example, you are getting the sleep you need, or eating the food you need to eat to stay alive!) it will decide you cannot become successful because you are not working hard.  It has a very simple program equating success with working hard and cannot recognize that sometimes you have to do something else.

Sometimes the abundance blocks have arisen indirectly.  For example, as a young child you may have heard your parents arguing about money.  Maybe not a very bitter, long argument, just the kind of "spat" most of us have from time to time.  But to your young child's mind there is now an association between money and unhappiness.  That will create a powerful abundance block.

Abundance blocks like these are usually buried very deep.  It may take some time to identify them.  One way to recognize you have them is to see how you react to words like "wealth", "money", "love", "success" etc.  Any feeling other than great joy and happiness suggests you have an abundance block you have to remove before you can receive the abundance the Universe wants you to receive.

Although it is possible to identify and remove these abundance blocks yourself, it is a lot easier to enlist help to do so.  Use a coach who specializes in this area.  Personally I have taken programs run by the excellent coach Christie Marie Sheldon.  You can attend one of her webinars free to identify and remove one of your abundance blocks, and then consider following one of her programs to deal with the many other blocks you almost certainly have.

Inner Voices

If I came up to you and told you that I hear voices inside telling me what to do, and that I listen to them and act on them, I guess you would be afraid.  Probably very afraid!  After all, this is typically what a schizophrenic says, isn't it?  And what if those voices told me to kill you?

Don't worry.

First of all, I am not going to walk up to you, as you are probably many miles away, perhaps even many thousands of miles away.

Secondly, I am not referring to something that is symptomatic of schizophrenia or any other psychotic disorder.  Well, I guess I would say that anyway, wouldn't I?  But keep reading and I think you will agree with me.  Hopefully you will even start to hear voices yourself.  No, don't get scared - I am talking here about something very positive and good, not the negative voices which also exist.

We all have inner voices.  These voices are, in a sense, real.  They are real aspects of our own selves.

If the voices you hear are nasty, asking you to do things that go against your nature, then these are not voices you should listen to.  Instead you should talk to a psychiatrist or a clinical psychologist, as this could be the start of a pyschotic episode, and you should not simply wait and hope that they go away.

But these are not the voices I am talking about.

There are some negative voices that do not fall into the above, psychotic category.  These include Mr or Mrs "Yabut".  I have already spoken about this voice in an earlier blog article.  This is the voice that always seems to give you a reason why you cannot achieve whatever it is you are trying to achieve.  When you start thinking about one of your goals, this voice says "yah, but ..." and what comes after the "but" is a whole host of reasons you should not pursue that goal.   We all have a Mr or Mrs Yabut.  You should listen to what is said, but only so you can identify your limiting beliefs and then squash them.  None of the reasons given should mean you cannot achieve your goal.  So listen to what is said, eliminate the limiting belief, and then banish Mr or Mrs Yabut.

The voice you are listening out for is a much more encouraging one.  You have a voice within you that wants to help you achieve what you should be achieving.  Notice exactly what I said there.  Not "what you want to achieve" but "what you should be achieving".  I have said this many times before, but very often the things we think we want to achieve are not the things that deep inside we really want to achieve (or to put it another way, the things we should be achieving).  Listen carefully for this voice.  It can lead you in a very unexpected direction, and a direction which is far better for you and far more likely to achieve success for you than the one in which you are travelling right now.

If you are spiritual (notice, I did not say religious) you can view this voice as the voice of God, or of Atman, or of the Spirit, or of the Universe - whichever word you prefer to use the meaning is really the same.  It is a voice from someone or something that knows far better than your conscious mind what is best for you.

It is the voice you will hear if you sit quietly and calmly, allowing peace to fill you.  The voice John Greenleaf Whittier referred to in his poem "The Brewing of Soma" as the "still, small voice of calm".

Spend time every day listening for this "still, small voice of calm".  Some days you may not hear it.  Perhaps this will be the case on many days.  But sometimes you will.  And the more you practice the more often you will hear it.  You may think of this as a form of meditation, which I guess it is.  You may find it helps at first if you can be alone in a quiet room.  Ultimately, though, you should be able to listen for this voice no matter where you are and no matter how much noise there is around you.

When you have spent some time practising this you will find the voice sometimes appears even when you are not consciously encouraging it.  That is good.  It will particularly appear in this way when there is something you should do right now, so take particular notice of what it is saying.

Listen for the small, still voice of calm, and take note of what it tells you.  Act on it.  If you do this you will find you will move quickly along the path to your ultimate goals - perhaps goals you didn't even realize you had until you started this little, but powerful, exercise.

Failure

Always think in positive terms, not negative.  Use positive thinking to focus on what you want to become, not on the negative things you want to remove.  This is a major plank of Law of Attraction philosophy and is something to which I subscribe wholeheartedly.

So why have I named this blog article "Failure"?  Isn't that a very negative way to start?

Actually, failure isn't negative at all.  I hope by the time you have read this article you will agree.

Listen to the words of Charles Kettering, who was head of research at General Motors, inventor of the electric starting motor, and a holder of 186 patents.  Kettering said "Failing is one of the greatest arts in the world. One fails toward success."

Or how about this comment from Thomas J Watson, the man who turned IBM into an international business to be reckoned with, and who was hailed as the world's greatest salesman.  Watson said "The fastest way to succeed is to double your failure rate."  He was certainly speaking from experience.  Watson failed in his first job as a teacher - he gave up after only one day!  If you read his biography you will realize he failed many times, at many things, but that didn't stop him from becoming the richest man in the world.  In fact, he believed that was why he became the richest man in the world!

How successful was Abraham Lincoln?  He went to war as a captain and returned a private!  He failed as a businessman.  He failed as a lawyer.  He failed when he tried to become a congressman.  He failed when he tried to become a senator.  He failed when he tried to become vice-president.  But all those failures were steps in his progress to becoming one of the greatest presidents of the United States.

Perhaps the most famous example of failure leading to success is Thomas Edison.  Edison designed the first commercially practical light bulb.  But only after failing to create one 1,000 times.  When he was asked how he felt about failing 1,000 times, Edison said that each of those 1,000 failures was a step towards his success.

And that is the key.  Failure is not something negative at all.  It is a step towards success.  Often, a necessary step.

Learn from your failures.  Edison found 1,000 ways a light bulb would not work, which is the reason he was eventually able to find one way it would work.

Don't try to avoid failure.  Embrace it.  See it the way Edison saw it.  Each failure is one step you have made closer to your ultimate success.

Greylag Geese and Why You are Not Successful

Has your past influenced the way you are now?  Of course it has!  We all have free will, but the decisions we make when we use that free will are highly conditioned by things that happened to us in the past.

In many cases that is a good thing.  You have a bad experience because of something you did, and that teaches you not to do the same thing again.  If this were just a memory, from which you could then make a logical decision, this would in many cases not give you enough time to modify your behaviour before it caused the same problems.  So we are all equipped with a way to make the "right" response instantly, before we even have time to think about the response.  This is called "imprinting".

The 19th century biologist, Douglas Spalding, discovered the phenomenon of imprinting and published his results in "Nature" in 1872.  Konrad Lorenz popularised the concept, particularly in his books on the studies he did on the behaviour of greylag geese.  Lorenz found the geese bond with the first object they see after they had hatched.  Normally this is a good thing, as it will be older geese who will show the younger geese what they should and shouldn't do.  But sometimes the process goes wrong, and the geese are inappropriately imprinted.  When this happens, the badly imprinted geese behave inappropriately, even when that behaviour causes them problems and maybe is even very dangerous for them.

The same thing applies to all of us.  Except our imprinting is certainly not limited to the first thing we see after we are born.  Many things influence us in this way throughout our childhood and on into our adult life as well.

For example, imagine as a child you hear your parents having a big argument.  This makes you very unhappy.  You notice the argument is about money - which is one of the commonest reasons for a couple to argue.  This imprints on you the idea that money is bad because it causes arguments and makes people unhappy.  And that imprinting creates within you a block that will always try to stop you making money.  Unless you find a way of dealing with this block it will be almost impossible for you to make much money.  Even if you do manage to make some, the block will act to make sure you lose it quickly!

Very many people have at least one "money block" that was imprinted on them from early childhood.  I would go as far as to say the majority of people have "money blocks".  They also have many other blocks, which stop them from achieving anything they have set their heart on - success, a fabulous life partner, etc.  Which means the majority of people will find the manifestation techniques they learn simply don't seem to work for them.  They study all the books they can find on the Law of Attraction, try to put it into practice, and eventually give up in disgust.  They decide all this talk about affirmations and how you can attract all you wish for through the power of thought is nonsense.

Does this sound at all familiar?  Perhaps you have reached this phase and are ready to give up trying.  Or maybe you are not as far down that road, but are still getting frustrated that nothing seems to work for you.  It could even be that you have only just started, are full of enthusiasm, and have not yet realized how difficult the journey is going to be.

Whereever you are on your journey to your definition of success, you need to find and eliminate the many blocks you have which will either make it impossible or very difficult to reach your goal.

Escape from Prison

"If you want to get ahead, you have to make sacrifices and work all the hours God gave!"

Has anyone ever said that to you?  For that matter, have you ever said that to yourself?

This belief is so common that I am sure, in one form or another, this has been said to you so many times that deep inside you really believe it to be true.  Even if you don't consciously think this way, subconsciously you probably do, without even realizing it.

Many people, on hearing this (or something very like it), have decided that they are simply not going to bother.  They don't want to sacrifice time with their friends and family.  They don't want to work themselves into an early grave.  So they opt out of the race to success.  They know that they are never going to make it without sacrificing more than they are willing to sacrifice.  And so they give up.

Most people I meet fall into one of these two camps.  Either they are working so hard they don't have time to stop and smell the roses, or they have thrown away all the ambitions they had when they were younger because they know they will never achieve them.

Do you fall into either of these two categories?

If so, you are missing a vital trick!

It is simply not true that the only way to become successful is to make unacceptable sacrifices.  You only believe that because you have been told it too many times, and now even repeat the mantra to yourself.  This creates an inner block which makes it virtually impossible for you to be successful.

For as long as you have this inner block it is as though you are in prison.  But in a prison cell you created for yourself.  And a prison cell for which you have the only bunch of keys.

There are several doors you must pass in order to break out of that prison, and you have a key to each of those doors.

The first door you must open is the one to the room that tells you what it is you really want.  Surprising as it may sound, most of us do not know what we really want.  You will need to sit quietly as you reflect on what it is you think you want and see what bubbles up to the surface.  If you do this properly you will probably find what you really want is quite different from what you thought you wanted.  Once you have opened this door you are well on your way to freedom from your self-imposed imprisonment.

The next door is one labelled "It is ok!".  What do I mean by this?  I mean whatever it is you really want, you have to know that it is ok to want it!  Recognize that the Universe (or God, if you prefer) really wants you to succeed.  You have a destiny you can fulfill if only you will recognize it.  Once you really become aware of this you will feel really positive.  And that positivity will propel you forward towards your goal.

Then there is the door labelled "Visualize".  Having found your real goal, and recognized it is right for you to achieve it, you need to find ways to focus your emotions on achieving it.  Some people refer to "affirmations".  As long as you invest those affirmations with a strong positive emotion, and repeat them in the present tense rather than as a hope for the future, then this is a good way to move forward.  Some people refer to a "vision board", on which they put pictures of whatever it is they want to achieve and what their life will be like when they have achieved it.  Again, this is good.  However you do it, visualize yourself having achieved success.  Feel what it is like.  Immerse yourself in it.  Know that you have achieved it.

Unlock these three doors and you are well on the way to escaping from the prison you have made for yourself and achieving the success of which you have always dreamed!

Defining Success

Do you want to succeed in life?  I guess the answer is a resounding "yes!"  Otherwise, why would you be reading this blog?  For that matter, who would not want to succeed in life anyway?  If you do want to succeed, then read on!

The first step you must take may seem obvious, yet it is one that most people do not take.  You must decide exactly what success means to you.

Think about this carefully.  There is no one "right" answer.  The answer for you will be different from the answer for me, so I cannot give you that answer.  Nor can anyone else, no matter how good a personal development trainer or coach they may be.  Your own answer is unique to you.

The answer will also change as you move through life.  What you thought constituted "success" when you were at high school will not be the same as your definition of success once you started work.  And that definition of success will not be the same a few years later.

It is very good, of course, that your unique definition of success is changing.  Otherwise you could achieve that success and then be bored and unmotivated for the rest of your life!

The very first answers you give, before you have time to rationalize and perhaps water them down, will be very significant and will probably be a key to what will really motivate you to succeed.  So capture those thoughts, writing down everything that comes to you without discounting anything and without criticizing yourself.  Even if you feel some of your answers are immoral and should not be part of your life, still write them down.

Once you have a nice long list, start questioning yourself about each answer.  Ask yourself why this is important to you.  Don't then just accept this answer.  Ask yourself again why the things you have said are important really are so important to you.  With each answer you give yourself, dig deeper and find another answer underneath it, and then just keep digging.

Eventually, for each of your original definitions of success you will find you have something that is probably quite different.  You have reached what I call the "bottom drawer", something in your personality that you may never have seen before.

With some of your initial answers you will find they have become weaker and weaker as you dig down.  The final stage you reach will seem unexciting and will not motivate you in any way.  These are illusory definitions of success.  You should discard these, as they will just be a distraction from the steps you need to follow in order to be truly successful.

Others will really resonate.  They will empower and excite you.  These are your true definitions of success.  Write them down in a separate journal, giving a brief paragraph for each one outlining why it is so important to you.

Now that you have your true definition of success you can start to produce a plan in order to achieve that success.  Use the techniques you will find throughout my blog.  If you are really serious, if what you want to achieve really excites you, choose a coach from the many I recommend from time to time in my newsletters (if you don't receive those newsletters, then request them now at www.beallican.com).

Inspirational Stories of Success

Last month I wrote an article about the excuses most of us use to avoid being successful.  Yes, read that again - most of us actually try to avoid being successful and then have to give ourselves excuses why we didn't achieve success.  We have to find those excuses as really it is very easy to be successful, so when we stop ourselves from realizing our dreams we need some good excuses that will convince both ourselves and those around us.  That isn't quite how I put it then, but that was the essence of my article.  If you missed it, check it out at http://iwanttoimprovemyself.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/the-reason-i-cannot-realize-my-dream.html.

In my article I referred to a number of people who have achieved success against all the odds.  A lot of you contacted me and said how much those snippets of others' success stories inspired you, so today I thought I would expand a little on some of them.  So here are a few inspirational stories of success.  If you like reading this kind of story let me know and I will occasionally give you a few more such motivational stories.

Ingvar Kamprad

When you read this name you may have said "who?".  But try another name - IKEA.  Heard of that store?  Well it was founded by Ingvar Kamprad.

Ingvar was born and raised on a small farm, Elmtaryd, in Småland, Sweden.  Like most farmers, his parents were not particularly wealthy.  In fact, they were really quite poor, as were most other farmers around the rural village of Agunnaryd.  But that did not stop Ingvar!

At the age of six, Ingvar discovered he could make a profit by buying matches in bulk and then cycling round the village selling them to his neighbours.  This was just the start of his business career, a very early start.  He graduated to buying and selling fish, seeds, pens, Christmas decorations - in fact anything he found people around him wanted.  All while still a young child.

When he was 17, Ingvar founded IKEA (Ingvar Kamprad, Elmtaryd, Agunnaryd).  He began it as a mail order business, supplying mainly furniture made at low cost by local craftsmen.

What Ingvar learned very early on is that the way to become wealthy is to help other people achieve their own dreams.  He helped local manufacturers find a good outlet for their work and he helped people all over the world furnish their houses and apartments with good but inexpensive furniture.  This simple concept led to IKEA becoming a multi billion dollar business known all over the world.

Glenn Cunningham

Perhaps another name that is not familiar?  But certainly a great success.

Glenn suffered severe leg burns at the age of 8.  His family were told by his doctors that he would never walk again.  But Glenn simply did not accept this.

Every day he got out of his bed, the bed to which his doctors had condemned him for life, and began forcing his legs to work again, little by little.  This caused Glenn great pain, but he refused to give up.  He refused to accept the invalid life everyone told him was all that was left for him.

Gradually he not only began to walk again, but managed to jog.  Then to run.

Not content with simply achieving the miracle of walking and running, Glenn announced he intended to run faster than anybody else in the world had ever run.

In 1934 he fulfilled his dream, running a mile in 4 minutes and 6 seconds, a world record.

Anthony Burgess

Have you heard of Anthony Burgess (born "John Burgess Wilson")?  He is perhaps best known for writing the novel "A Clockwork Orange", which was turned into a hugely successful film by Stanley Kubrick in 1971.

When Anthony was 40 he was diagnosed with cancer, a brain tumour, and was given less than a year to live.  He was penniless at the time, and didn't want to leave his wife, Lynne, with nothing when he died, so he decided to write and publish some novels to give her a legacy.  Notice the plural here.  He wrote not one but FIVE novels and was halfway through the sixth by the end of the year he had been given.

Fortunately for us, the prognosis was wrong.  Anthony Burgess did not die of cancer at the end of that year.  He went on to live for nearly 40 more years, writing more than 70 books, as well as translating into English the classic works Cyrano de Bergerac, Oedipus the King, and the opera Carmen, and composing more than 250 musical works.

How about you?

These three stories of success show you do not need to be wealthy, or lucky in order to achieve your dream.  All three achieved their dreams against all the odds.  What is your dream, and why not go out there now and turn it into reality?

The Secret of Success

Many people search for the "Secret of Success" as if it were the Philosopher's Stone which will change base metals into gold.  They look for a hidden, magic secret.  Something really magical and obscure.  The one ingredient that will change everything.  All they need to do is find this one magical ingredient and their whole life will change!  Just as the alchemists failed in this task, so those who search in this way are doomed to fail too.

There are, of course, many "Secrets of Success".  Some are vital, but many are additional helpful tips likely to improve your search for success but not absolutely essential.

I regularly give my readers many of those additional tips, both here and in my newsletters.  If you have not already added yourself to receive my newsletters, do so now at http:\\www.beallican.com and also receive four free e-books to help you achieve success, however you may personally define success.

One absolutely vital "Secret of Success" is to define "Success" properly.  What exactly does success mean to you?  Do not just accept the first glib answer that comes to mind.  This is an extremely important step.  If you do not get this right it is just the same as trying to plan a journey somewhere when you have no idea where it is you are going but do know it is vital you get there and nowhere else!  Can you imagine anything sillier?  Yet this is the way most people unfortunately begin their search for success.  And then they wonder why they do not succeed!

When you do arrive at an answer, do not simply accept it.  Question it.  Why is this so important for you?  What will your life be like when you have it?  How will that make you feel?

Sometimes, this questioning process will make you realize what you are aiming for is not so important after all.  This is a good result.  It means you can now find what really is important.

If you are really aiming for the right result you should find strong positive emotions are attached.  This is both a sign you are on the right track and also a vital tool that will help you reach the end goal.  Those emotions are what will drive you there as long as you keep expressing them.

There are many tools out there to help you focus those positive emotions and use them to drive you to your goal.  This is what affirmations are all about.  It is what vision boards are all about.  Stoke up those emotions and you will find yourself well on the way to achieving whatever it is you want to achieve.

Now you will need persistence, of course, and the ability to learn from failures so you find the right way to reach your goal.  If that goal is worthy of your efforts there will probably be roadblocks in the way, so you must not give up at the first block you encounter.  But where does this persistence, and the determination to keep going no matter what, come from?  It comes from those powerful emotions you stoked up when you defined your goal and which you keep stoking up every day to keep you on course.

So that is the "Secret of Success" in a nutshell.  Find what you truly want to achieve, live it in your mind and spirit, and supercharge your journey towards it with powerful positive emotions.  Do this properly and you will get there.  Certainly use the great tools that are out there to help you get there quicker, but never forget that this is the true "Secret of Success".

What Does Success Mean?

If I asked you whether you want to be successful, I guess you would answer with a resounding "yes!"

But what exactly does success mean?  What is success?

This might seem like a question with an obvious answer.  But think again.  It is not obvious.

Let me ask it another way.  What does success mean to you?

That is the key question, and only you can answer it.  But I can perhaps put you on the right track to finding your own answer.

Almost certainly, success does not mean lots of money.  Money is only a tool which may allow you to do the things you want in life, and simply getting more money does not make you successful.

Let me explain this a little further.  When a client says "I want more money!" I probe deeper with the question "Why do you want more money?"  Maybe the answer is "I want to buy a luxury villa somewhere on a South Sea island!"  OK, already we are getting past "money" - we now have a villa.  The next question is "why do you want to buy a luxury villa somewhere on a South Sea island?"  My client may answer "I want to be able to holiday on a lovely South Sea island whenever I want!"  Well, that doesn't necessarily mean you have to buy the villa.  One of my colleagues who coaches people how to achieve anything they desire is a very wealthy lady.  She used to have a very similar phrase on her wish list.  As she is very good at doing what she coaches, and is an expert in manifestation, she soon acquired this villa.  But after owning it for a few years she realized it was not really what she wanted so she sold it.  Instead she manifested friends who owned such a villa and were happy for her to use it whenever she wished.  Now she had what she really wanted, but without the hassle and responsibility of the ownership of property.

I suggest in order to be in the best position to be really successful you ask yourself the right questions.  Find out what success really means to you, and then challenge yourself.  Think about what you have said and dig deeper.  Ask yourself why this represents success or whether there is really something underlying it that better defines success for you.  Until you do this you will not be trying to manifest the right things, and you will probably be disappointed in the results.  Don't blame the universe for this - it is your fault for not really digging deep and answering the question properly, "what does success mean to me?"

Asking yourself this question, "what does success mean to me", is absolutely key to becoming successful.  Spend some time right now defining it and be sure the answer you give is the right one (or rather, the right ones, as almost certainly there will be a number of answers).  If you do this you will really be on the right road to success.

How to Become Successful

So many of my followers approach me and ask me how to become successful.

What exactly must you do to become successful?

The very first thing to do is to recognize that you CAN and WILL become successful.  Until you do this you will find there will always be a nagging voice inside you, no matter what you are trying to achieve, saying "you won't make it!".  The voice is wrong.  You WILL make it.  But only if you completely silence that reactionary voice.

Somewhere I read that when Karl Benz was building the Benz Patent-Motorwagen a neighbour kept saying "It won't go!".  He ignored the neighbour and kept building it.  When he finished and started driving it he heard the neighbour shouting "It won't stop!".  I have no idea whether this story is true or not, but it doesn't really matter whether or not it is true.  All that matters is the great truth within it.  Karl Benz ignored that voice completely and achieved his success.  You must do likewise.

How do you ignore or even silence that voice?  By having a strong belief that you are right and that it WILL work.  Spend time building up that confidence.  Sit quietly and meditate.  Feel yourself merging with the power of the Universe, which you can imagine as a ball of light way above you.  Bring it down inside you and feel the warmth and love of it filling you.  Know that with this infinite power within you can achieve anything you desire.

This is a practice you should repeat often.  Make it a routine part of your day.  The more you practice it the easier you will find it and the more you will be able to ignore and defeat that dissenting voice, the voice that wants you to fail at everything.

You will now have removed the main obstacle to success.  The next step is to determine what it is you want to achieve.

It is important to have a very clear idea of what it is you want to achieve, and why this is important to you.

Spend some time thinking carefully about this.  Write down any ideas that come to you.  Treat this in the same way as you would a group brainstorming session - at this point write down everything, without critically rejecting it.  When you have a good list of ideas read through each and see which ones really resonate with you.  cross out all the others.  You now have a list of things you want to achieve which are close to your heart.

Against each of these ideas write down all the reasons they are important to you.  As you do this you will find some are not really goals you want to achieve, and you can delete these.  You should find you end up with a minmum of three and a maximum of six that feel right and that have a good list of reasons why they are so important.

For each of these goals sit and meditate again.  Begin your meditation by recalling a time in your past when you felt really happy and really relaxed.  Perhaps it was lying on a beach during a special vacation.  Maybe it was wandering in a meadow in cool, fresh air.  Whatever it was, bring back that image.  Place yourself there and let it stimulate all your senses.  See the beauty around you.  Hear the sounds you heard, perhaps the sound of birds.  Smell the salty air of the sea, the fresh smell of flowers around you etc.  Feel the soft, fine sand pouring through your fingers, the feel of the waving grass as you walk through it etc.  Recall your feelings at that time, a feeling of happiness, contentment, love.  When you are fully into this meditation bring in your goal.  Does it still feel right?  If not, discard that goal and replace it with the next goal on your list.  You will find one really fits and feels just right.  This is the goal you should work on next.

Now that you have the right goal, create an affirmation around it.  Follow the rules of making good affirmations.  Read this article by Natalie Ledwell to get some good ideas on the correct way to create an affirmation: http://iwanttoimprovemyself.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/5-simple-steps-for-creating-powerful.html.  Repeat this affirmation as often as you can.  The more you repeat it the faster you will achieve your goal.

Write the goal in a notebook you reserve purely for this purpose.  Include pictures of how your life will be when you have achieved it - either pictures you find in a magazine etc and cut out and stick in the notebook, or simply draw them yourself.  It doesn't matter if you are not artistic - just ensure the picture encapsulates your dream as much as possible.  Even better, create yourself a "mind movie" of the goal.  If you don't already have the software to create a Mind Movie you can get it here: http://www.mindmovies.com/mm4/changeyourlife.php?25923.

Follow the above and you WILL achieve goals fully aligned with your inner desires.  But the key to success has one more essential ingredient.  That ingredient is simply recognizing that success is not actually achieving specific goals at all.  Success is an ongoing journey, and the knowledge that you are on the right road.  You never reach the end of that road but are successful simply because you are travelling it and achieving goals along the way.

Success Is Almost within Reach

A few months ago I reproduced an extract from Napoleon Hill's classic, "Think and Grow Rich".  If you are really serious about achieving your goals (whether or not they are financial goals), you simply have to get a copy of this book and start putting into practise what Napoleon Hill preaches.

In the meantime, here is another valuable and informative extract, this time showing just how easy it is to give up when you are on the brink of success!

"Now, let us ... study a man who had plenty of tangible evidence of riches, but lost it, because he stopped three feet short of the goal he was seeking. 

THREE FEET FROM GOLD 

One of the most common causes of failure is the habit of quitting when one is overtaken by temporary defeat. Every person is guilty of this mistake at one time or another. An uncle of R. U. Darby was caught by the "gold fever" in the goldrush days, and went west to DIG AND GROW RICH. He had never heard that more gold has been mined from the brains of men than has ever been taken from the earth. He staked a claim and went to work with pick and shovel. The going was hard, but his lust for gold was definite. 

After weeks of labor, he was rewarded by the discovery of the shining ore. He needed machinery to bring the ore to the surface. Quietly, he covered up the mine, retraced his footsteps to his home in Williamsburg, Maryland, told his relatives and a few neighbors of the "strike." They got together money for the needed machinery, had it shipped. The uncle and Darby went back to work the mine. 

The first car of ore was mined, and shipped to a smelter. The returns proved they had one of the richest mines in Colorado! A few more cars of that ore would clear the debts. Then would come the big killing in profits. 

Down went the drills! Up went the hopes of Darby and Uncle! Then something happened! The vein of gold ore disappeared! They had come to the end of the rainbow, and the pot of gold was no longer there! They drilled on, desperately trying to pick up the vein again-all to no avail. 

Finally, they decided to QUIT. They sold the machinery to a junk man for a few hundred dollars, and took the train back home. Some "junk" men are dumb, but not this one! He called in a mining engineer to look at the mine and do a little calculating. The engineer advised that the project had failed, because the owners were not familiar with "fault lines." His calculations showed that the vein would be found JUST THREE FEET FROM WHERE THE DARBYS HAD STOPPED DRILLING! That is exactly where it was found! 

The "Junk" man took millions of dollars in ore from the mine, because he knew enough to seek expert counsel before giving up. Most of the money which went into the machinery was procured through the efforts of R. U. Darby, who was then a very young man. The money came from his relatives and neighbors, because of their faith in him. He paid back every dollar of it, although he was years in doing so. 

Long afterward, Mr. Darby recouped his loss many times over, when he made the discovery that DESIRE can be transmuted into gold. The discovery came after he went into the business of selling life insurance. 

Remembering that he lost a huge fortune, because he STOPPED three feet from gold, Darby profited by the experience in his chosen work, by the simple method of saying to himself, "I stopped three feet from gold, but I will never stop because men say 'no' when I ask them to buy insurance." 

Darby is one of a small group of fewer than fifty men who sell more than a million dollars in life insurance annually. He owes his "stickability" to the lesson he learned from his "quitability" in the gold mining business. 

Before success comes in any man's life, he is sure to meet with much temporary defeat, and, perhaps, some failure. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and most logical thing to do is to QUIT. That is exactly what the majority of men do. 

More than five hundred of the most successful men this country has ever known, told the author their greatest success came just one step beyond the point at which defeat had overtaken them. Failure is a trickster with a keen sense of irony and cunning. 

It takes great delight in tripping one when success is almost within reach."

I can almost guarantee that this has happened to you too.  Not once.  Not twice.  But many times!  You will probably never know, of course, unless like Darby you learn the truth from someone who picked up the baton when you dropped it.  What is more, I can pretty much guarantee that it will happen to you again.  And again.  And again.  Unless you do something about it and learn to keep going so you can reach your goal.

Hopefully this little extract from "Think and Grow Rich" has reminded you of the need to get your own copy if you don't already have one.  Here is the link for you:

Or if you are in the UK:

Setting Yourself Up for Success

If you are anything like the majority of people you either didn't set yourself any New Year's Resolutions, knowing you wouldn't keep them if you did, or you have already broken most or all the ones you did set.

It doesn't have to be this way!  It is perfectly possible to create Resolutions that you DO keep.  And you don't have to restrict yourself to doing so just on New Year's Day.

The first thing you must do when setting goals (for that is really what Resolutions are) is to prepare yourself for success in advance.  By following this advice you will actually enjoy the process of setting goals and achieving them.

One of the first things you should do when setting a new goal is to not make it an "all or nothing" goal.  Instead of having only the options of "success" or "failure" create your goal so that it is setting you up to succeed.  One way to do this is by creating smaller goals along the way.  As you reach each one you will feel good about it and be motivated to continue. And having reached that "mini goal" you can congratulate yourself that you HAVE kept a resolution!

Track your progress towards your goals. By tracking your progress you can celebrate your successes. You can also identify your weak areas and spend more time working on them.  To track your goals you can use something as simple as a basic spreadsheet and then record your progress. Some people prefer to track weekly while other prefer to use a daily tracking system. 

Set yourself a monthly, weekly or daily target that you can achieve. This could be something such as reducing the number of cigarettes you smoke or not having that beer after work each night.  As you meet each small goal you are again setting yourself up for continued success, rather than simply having a goal of "I will stop smoking" or "I will stop drinking". 

For goals that have numbers (often business related goals) set minimum numbers as targets as opposed to maximum numbers.  By all means have those higher targets as an aspiration, but be ready to congratulate yourself just for achieving the minimum.  Congratulate yourself and feel good about yourself - that will lead to even greater success.

Setting appropriate goals will help you set up for success. Don't set a goal for something that you already do on a regular basis. A new goal should be based around something that you are not good at (or at least haven't tried yet), or one that could be classified as a bad habit.

Always be ready to ask for help in achieving your goals. At work if you are not good at something see if there is help available. Or is it possible to get this task delegated to someone else? Look for options when it comes to setting goals, especially for those tasks that you really don't like doing. 

Plan out a method for reaching your goal before you even start working on it. The majority of people who just decide on a goal will fail without having a good plan of action in place first.  

Even if you are not sure of all the steps just start outlining your first one or two steps. As you begin your journey you may identify other steps that are required for you to be successful. Simply add these into your plan of action. 

One good way to create a plan of action is to look at your goal in reverse. Think about how you might have arrived there and write down the steps. It is often easier to think in reverse when it comes to goal planning! 

A great example of this is having a goal of owning your first home. The last thing you do is sign the deal and pay for the house. So consider how you raise the money for your home, how you choose your location and so on. As you create your list backwards you have just completed a plan of actionable steps. 

If you plan on creating new goals then recording your goals will help you with your next goal. You will have a plan in place that you can follow to a certain extent. More importantly though, your recording of your first plan will highlight any problem areas you had. You will be more aware of them this time around and will know how to deal with them.

Follow these steps and there is no reason at all why you should not be very successful this year!

If you would like even more help in setting and reaching your goals, try my program "Resolution Revolution", which you can access here:

"Resolution Revolution"

How to be successful

"Lord, I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!" Mark 9:24

The other day one of my subscribers told me he had been trying to become successful but that it wasn't working, and he wanted to know what he should do about it.  Does this have a familiar ring?  This is probably something that, if we are truly honest, we have all suffered at one time or another.  So how do you ensure you can be successful?

Everything comes down, in the end, to state of mind.  Yes, circumstances can help or hinder.  Sometimes the circumstances in which we may find ourselves can be dire and it can seem impossible to succeed.  We look around and see nobody else in our circle is succeeding either.  It has to be the fault of our environment!  But although those circumstances may be placing apparently insurmountable obstacles in front of us, the real key is what is inside, not what is outside.  We see the obstacles and immediately something inside says "it's impossible - I will never succeed!"  And you know what?  As long as you allow that inner demon to go unchallenged it will be right.  This is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

That is the basic underlying principle of most success systems.  Change the voices within.  Change them properly, not just superficially.  Change them permanently, not just for a day or two while you are trying out a new system.  Focus them on achieving your goal and achieve it you will.

How can you change those voices?  How can you eliminate the defeatist, miserable voice that has been with you since early childhood telling you "it won't work", "you can't do it", "you aren't good enough"?  How can you turn it around so your inner, non-stop chatter is full of "that's great!", "you're getting there!", "you have what it takes!" instead?

The first step is to look at your resources and be realistic.  Many other Law of Attraction gurus may disagree with me here and tell you that whatever it is you want to achieve you CAN achieve it if you only focus on it, visualize your success properly, and truly believe it.

Well, yes, they are right.  It IS possible to achieve anything if you are able to do those three things:

1. have a clear, smart goal
2. visualize achieving it whilst basking in the positive emotions this creates
3. believe with every grain of your being that on another plane you have already achieved it and your only task now is to bring that already successful achievement down into this plane.

Read that paragraph again, as you will find it is the master key to success.  But look again at the very last essential component.  Believe.  If you do not have that solid, unshakeable belief then all the rest is just window dressing.  If your goal is unrealistic your subconscious will know this (even though many gurus will try to tell you otherwise) and it will resist your every attempt to believe.

Paradoxically, being realistic does not mean limiting yourself to far less than you really want to achieve.  I would view realism here as a recognition of the fourth dimension that currently constrains us all - time.

The enormously successful inventor, business magnate and philanthropist, Bill Gates, once said "most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years."  So do not set yourself a short term goal that you know in your heart of hearts you are unlikely to achieve in the time you have given yourself.  By all means set that seemingly unachievable desire as your long term goal, but then focus on what you can do NOW which is one step towards it and which does not seem completely impossible.

Once you are certain you have chosen that short term goal wisely, visualize how you will feel when you have achieved it.  Let that feeling permeate your whole being.  See how wonderful that feeling is!  Know that you HAVE achieved it, and bask in the feeling that generates within you.  Start noting down the differences it makes.  You HAVE achieved it, and now your role is simply to recognize this whilst at the same time taking the steps necessary to make it a reality in this plane as well as the plane above where it is already a reality.

If you tackle your dreams and goals in this way, drawing on the immense power of belief but not at the same time putting obstacles in the way of that belief (obstacles such as being completely unrealistic!) you WILL succeed.

Once you have taken this vital first step, look around for the tools that will help you reach your goal faster.  There are many such tools out there.  Some are great, some mediocre, and some don't really work at all.  Let me help you by sifting out the mediocre and useless.  Join me, if you haven't done so already, by going to www.beallican.com where you will get 4 e-books to help you on your way and will receive regular information from me on systems to help you achieve what you desire, many of which are completely free.