THE SUCCESS DIET
By Bill Cottringer

It is time to shrink our expanding minds with all the clues, secrets and strategies for achieving success today, which continues to explode forth from bookstores, training videos and on-line newsletters and web sites. We have more than enough information telling us what we need to do to be successful, but hardly anything on the how part of getting it.

Before we can get to the nitty gritty of the ‘how-to’ part of success we have to stop, turn around and learn a few things. Mainly, we have to get a better understanding of all the important realities of the complicated concept of “success.” Here are a few things we should be able to agree upon to get this better understanding and ready ourselves for learning how to be more successful:

1. Success is circular—it is the collective presence of things we want and pursue by doing what we do to get them. It is the result of what we do to get “it”—the thinking, feeling and acting we engage in to get what we think we want or need.

2. The best place to start is to get a better definition of “it.” We can do this by asking “why” we want something until there is no more answers. This can take as many as five layers to peel back to get to the real “it.” And this is strictly a private matter. Your “it” is the treasure which the treasure map piece you have, can help you find. (One worthwhile clue here is to share your piece with others to get a bigger and better view!).

2. “It” has many definitions and forms running the full spectrum of experiences in life including fame, wealth, health, love, power, beauty, spiritual enlightenment, goal achievement, contentment, pleasure, satisfaction, sense of making a difference, serving others selflessly, peace of mind, setting sports records, etc. In the end, you have to define “success” for yourself by yourself.

3. Success can be either externally motivated (to achieve fame, fortune, power and recognition) or internally driven (to seek truth, wisdom, peace of mind or altruism). Intrinsic motivation seems to be a more powerful and lasting force.

4. Thinking, feeling and acting are an integral part of developing a success formula and must be understood before the tails stops wagging the dog. But they are all tangled up in a pretzel, where it is hard to see where one stops and the other starts or which causes which.

5 Thinking in particular has a lot to do with how “successful” anyone is, i.e. the more optimistic you are in expecting positive results from what you think and then do, the better the chances of being successful. However, much of our thinking is unconscious, so changing “unsuccessful” thinking to “successful” thinking is certainly not as easy as often portrayed.

6. To access thinking the best door is to pay attention to how you are feeling. If you simply divide all the feelings you have into two categories—either good/positive or bad/negative, you can begin to see what kind of feeling is attached to what kind of thinking and what kind of acting and what the results are from all that.

7. Alignment is very important in success. This means success results more often than not come from thinking and acting that are lined up—doing the right things, for the right reasons, and in the right way.

8. Time and patience are probably the two biggest variables related to the perceived degree of success we and others see and acknowledge. As the saying goes, sudden overnight success usually happens gradually over ten years.

9. There are always constant simple yes-no, this or that choices each moment that result in success or failure. We have a pre-conscience to measure the likely results ahead, but many of us seem to be resistive to following it, until it is too late. When that doesn’t work we have a post-conscience option. We can slow down and notice the connection of the collective choices we have made and all the results they gave us. And when we stop comparing our measurement of this connection against others, it will become even clearer.

10. Genuine success seems to be more related to a gradual, unselfish sharing of your evolving success with others who haven’t been as fortunate, rather than a selfish accomplishment against all odds for selfish consumption. Maybe it is the sharing of success that adds its delicious flavor and taste.

Now maybe you won’t have to ask “how” to be successful. You will have incorporated this prescription in your thinking by putting your own signature on it. Then you can try it out and share the results with others.

Bill Cottringer is President of Puget Sound Security in Bellevue, WA. He is author of several personal development and success books including “Getting It,” “Passwords To The Prosperity Zone,” You Can Have Your Cheese & Eat It Too,” The Bow-Wow Secrets,” and “Do What Matters Most.” Bill can be reached for comment or questions at (425) 454-5011 or bcottringer.pssp.net