SIX LIFE SECRETS
by
Bill Cottringer


Anyone who achieves genuine success knows there are six life secrets that have to be discovered and applied to produce that success. The bad news is that all these six life secrets work together to hide each other from discovery; the good news is that if you persist and have patience—the secrets will gradually be revealed to you.

LIFE SECRET ONE: Success depends on finding your unique mission in life and applying your special talent to carry out that mission.

This secret is hidden by your resistance to the ultimate reality that you are just an actor in a play directed by God. Until you surrender to the role you have been assigned, you are just loitering. Finding your unique purpose, has to do with discovering what you do best naturally and enjoy most. This package is wrapped in what is called "intrinsic motivation."

Intrinsic motivation is doing something with passion and commitment simply because it feels good to do and not for any external reason. You discover the power of intrinsic motivation by tapping into the most natural process of your life—to learn, grow and improve your potential and become the successful person you were meant to be.

When intrinsically motivated, you are doing the right things, the right way, for all the right reasons. You think smart, communicate effectively, develop your creativity, become more likable and achieve balance. You learn, grow and improve because it feels right. The natural consequence is success.

LIFE SECRET TWO: It is smart thinking that leads to success and everyone is capable of smart thinking--with a little effort.

Smart thinking is any mental process you use to get results in closing the gap between where you are and where you want to be. Smart thinking can be asking good questions, verifying assumptions, looking for evidence to disprove popular beliefs, or digging below the surface to identify real problems from just symptoms. Or it can be following your hunches, re-arranging your approach to people, learning something important from a failure, or asking for feedback about how you are being perceived.

Fortunately smart thinking isn’t based on an IQ of 150 or a Ph.D. from Harvard. It is just a matter of discovering what you do best and using that talent to help you get to where you want to be. The smartest things you can know are: (1) where you want to be (2)how far from there you are, and (3)the easiest and quickest ways you can get there. You can often get all this information simply by asking the right questions to the right people at the right time.


LIFE SECRET THREE: The Tower of Babble is a formidable barrier to success.

Effective communication is speaking and writing with simplicity, clarity and economy to have the best impact. Such communication starts with the assumption of likely miscommunication without significant effort to prevent that from happening. In other words, it is not smart thinking to assume other people’s brains are interpreting what their ears are hearing from exactly what your mouth is trying to say that your brain means. Read that again. There are too many opportunities for failure.

The best communication starts with aggressive two-eared listening to really understand what the other person means. Other helpful communication tips are knowing who you are talking to, thinking about what you want to say and figuring out how to best say it, clarifying potential misunderstanding, and actively seeking feedback about how clear and effective you are being. Good communication is hard work.

LIFE SECRET FOUR: Success is encouraged by ordinary creativity, which is available to everyone.

We were all born with a plentiful store of natural creativity that somehow got lost by our unrealistic definition of it and fear of judgment. Ordinary creativity can be as simple as you want it to be. It can involve reworking ordinary things in new and unusual ways, adding new ideas on top of other ones, and reconciling opposites to make bigger wholes that have infinite applications.

A good example of exploring ordinary creativity is to observe nature, uncover a natural operating principle that governs what you are observing and then figuring out to apply that wisdom to improve a work process or personal relationship. The more principles and truths you discover, the more creative solutions you have for an endless variety of problems. Success is solving problems.

LIFE SECRET FIVE: Increasing your likability will increase your success.

There is a ton of research that shows there is a strong relationship between a person’s likability and his or her success in influencing other people in a positive way. The more likable you can become, the more successful you will be in the most important area of life—dealing with people. It makes good sense to use any method you can to increase your likability.

There are certain personal characteristics that are most likely to result in your being perceived as either likable or unlikable. If you want to be seen as likable be honest, show a positive, up-beat attitude, appear attractive, display a sense of humor and listen to people attentively. And if you want to avoid being seen as unlikable don’t be rude, arrogant, dishonest, insensitive, or unable to control your other negative behavior.


LIFE SECRET SIX: Sometimes you have to explore both extremes of something before you realize the wisdom of the middle position.

There is a milestone that lets you know you are making progress in discovering these other secrets on your road to success—you start noticing the need for more balance in the important areas of your life. The more you understand the value of balance, the more effort you put forth to get to this powerful middle position by applying what you have learned from discovering these other secrets.

You begin to talk less and listen more, express both your thoughts and feelings, look for ways to work and play equally, learn more and use what you already know better, take care of yourself but also give to others unselfishly, and mix quality and quantity of effort to achieve your goals. You also strive to pay attention to both your rational brain and intuitive voice, notice both similarities and differences between people, and reconcile many opposites you separated earlier on in life by restoring order to chaos.

Are you making progress at discovering these six important life secrets? What is keeping you from being successful in closing the gap between where you are and where you can be in your journey to personal excellence?


Bill Cottringer is a Success Coach, College Teacher and Writer from Collinsville, IL. He is author of You Can Have Your Cheese & Eat It Too, a book that helps readers understand and apply these core competencies. He can be reached at ckurtdoc.charter.net