When you take charge and command your willpower to deliver results you do not achieve those desired results.
[forced discipline of willpower does not bring success]
When your brain knows and understands it is in your long-term best interest to do something, more often than not you will not do that thing.
[intelligence doesn't motivate]
When you feel fear and stress, you will tend to either avoid action or take the wrong action.
[fear is, at best, a temporary motivator...and it often sends you in the wrong direction]
When you desire something intensely, more often than not you do not obtain it.
[desire on its own doesn't bring results]
So, what does work?
How does a person obtain goals?
How does a person succeed?
Successful people provide the answers. A study of successful people delivers the answers.
Here's what studying successful people confirms...
Successful people, people who are known for their ability to magnetize the support of others and achieve desired goals possess 3 things:
- Intelligence
- Self-control
- Drive
#1 - Successful people know Intelligence is a life-long process. It is a life-long process about people, about process, and about situations. Successful people are life-long learners. The day they stop learning is the day they stop being successful. Successful people place a high priority on self-knowledge and self-improvement. They apply their Intelligence toward self-development particularly in the areas of Self-control and Drive. In addition, successful people focus on their Talents until they become strengths. Successful people specialize and they stretch in the direction of their personal strengths. They vent their strengths. Successful people do not fear the intelligence possessed by other people: they seek out the best people and particularly people who possess strengths they do not possess. They are skilled at putting other people's strengths to use, ensuring their weakest areas are offset by others' strengths.
#2 - Successful people learn how to set aside immediate gratification and focus energy toward long-term goals. They have a Vivid Vision of the future and they place a high value on learning what actions will take them toward their goals and determining how to excel at the performance of those actions. They self-monitor. They learn how to avoid distractions. They tend to view 'failures' as temporary obstacles and learning experiences. Related to failures and obstacles, successful people possess the self-control to direct negative feelings toward positive changes - changes for the better. In other words, failures spark improved focus and greater commitment and failures energize. Successful people use self-control to build positive attitude and winning character by stopping Bad Habits, starting New Things, and creating Good Habits.
#3 - Successful people are born with powerful internal drives...and they figure out how to keep those drives alive regardless of the pressure applied against them in the form of criticism from other people. They develop thick skin. The clearer their Vivid Vision the thicker their skin. Successful people have a burning internal drive to take action, build things, accomplish results, and to influence other people. At one point in their lives - perhaps when they are young, perhaps when they are in their 30's or 40's, perhaps as late as when they arrive at old age - this drive becomes focused on a single vision, which defines their goal. It is at that time that energy of their Drive, Intelligence, and Self-control blends to generate success.
When Drive, Intelligence, and Self-control blend and Focus with intensity on a clear Vision and Goal...only then does success have no choice but to arrive.
The good news is all of these things are available to most people.
All of these things are available to you.
Seek them out, package them, & put them to use.