When we witness someone else’s success, whether it’s in business, sport, relationships, career or whatever, there’s a tendency to see that great success as an end in itself.
When we see the mountaineer at the top of the high mountain, we don’t think so much about the fact that getting there involved taking a long series of steps one after the other. What impresses us most deeply is seeing the successful person at the pinnacle of their achievement, and seeing that success and only that success tends to make many people think that for them doing the same thing would be unattainable.
They see only the end result, the success itself, and not all of the training and effort that those successful people had to undertake in order to achieve that success.
They see only the glittering prize of ultimate success and feel themselves to be unable to do something similar. It’s this lack of self belief that drains motivational energy and prevents people from fulfilling their goals.
Success can look daunting to someone experiencing self doubt or lack of direction in life and make them feel that they’re not capable of doing it for themselves, and so then they lose the motivation to actually try.
However they’re simply overlooking the fact that every successful person had to start somewhere, that every journey to success begins with one small step, that for example every successful weight loss plan begins with losing the first pound, and not with losing twenty pounds overnight.
Here are some pointers to help you put this into perspective.
Prioritize Your Aims And Desires
Take some time out to think about what your most important goal or desire in life is, about what change or improvement in your life is most pressing and important for you.
Give yourself a few days or so to mull this over in your mind so that you’re ultimately able to clarify in your mind what it is that you really want, and not just what you may immediately “think” that you want. Take the time to delve down deep into yourself and arrive at an understanding of what’s really important to you.
Take The First Small Step And Keep The End In Mind
When you know what you want to do, understand that you can’t reasonably expect to achieve total success either immediately or without some effort.
Form a mental plan or map in your mind of the steps – or at least the first few steps – that you will need to take to ultimately get where you want to be. Then think about what you need to do in order to fulfill those first few steps, then begin to take the necessary action, while all the while keeping at the back of your mind a vision of yourself achieving your ultimate goal.
When you adopt this step-by-step, starting at the beginning attitude towards fulfilling your goal, you’re no longer comparing yourself to someone else who has been seen to achieve total success.
You begin to appreciate that they, just like you, had to start somewhere, and that with knowledge of what you really want combined with a willingness to apply dedication and persistence in a gradual pursuit of it, you begin to experience a growing and strengthening realization that as you fulfill one step after the other you are becoming as capable and successful as those who you once thought you could never emulate.
It’s through this gradually growing sense of self belief that you find the motivation that you need to carry you through to ultimate success.
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Kenneth McRae is an author who has written eBooks and many articles on subjects such as psychology, hypnosis, gaining self confidence. He believes that people ultimately hold within themselves the solution to just about any personal problem or difficulty that they may encounter.
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