SIMPLE SUCCESS SYSTEM ©
by
Bill Cottringer

Life is set up to help you become successful. In fact you are meant to be successful. Believe it or not, you actually have to work harder trying to be unsuccessful. Being successful is often a matter of getting more by doing less.

In a sense, success is when you learn to do one thing well. When you try to do too many things, you end up doing them poorly and are unsuccessful. When you are unsuccessful you have to explain that and then go back and try something different. When you are successful, you just enjoy it and keep doing the same thing. Are you the fox in Aesop's fable that knows many things, or the hedgehog that knows one big thing?

I have discovered a simple success system that I would like to share with you. My challenge is for you to apply this simple formula starting right now. Here it is:

1. Dream Big
2. Be Clever.
3. Work Smart.

DREAM BIG.

Life seems to be driven more by thoughts than physical realities. The dreams you are now having are likely to bring about the realities you experience later. You are only limited by the smallness of your dreams. Don't limit yourself needlessly. As you will find out, life is difficult enough without you making it more so. Do the things you should do and avoid doing the things you shouldn't do. Dreaming big is something you should be doing a lot of, starting right now.

Believe

The only belief I have ever been able to verify with certainty in my whole life is the belief that if I believe I can do something, I will be able to do it. Of course this belief in your self comes from a higher power and you can never lose sight of that fact. With this belief comes a great opportunity. With it you can become a hero. Without it you will be a villain, victim or bystander. Don't you want to be a hero? What belief is holding you back?

All you have to do is translate your dreams into concrete goals and be determined to accomplish them, no matter what. You might have to make serious sacrifices and difficult exchanges, but believe me when I say the payoff is always worth it. A famous NFL football coach once said, "When you throw the ball in the air, there are only three things that can happen and two of them are bad." To that I add, "Yes but, it is the leaping one-handed catches with double coverage in the end zone with a few seconds left that make the game exciting."

Dare to Create New Realities

We all have our own notion of what is real and possible. If you have to react to what happens to you, and are not happy with what you get, you may have to consider creating a new reality- one that allows you to act before things happen to you so that the right things happen. An earlier philosopher, Epictetus, said, "It is not the things in life that bother us, but rather the opinions we have about those things." Start creating new realities by having the right opinion.

What is so hard about deciding to be more proactive? Light your own fire instead of waiting in vain for spontaneous combustion. Life is mainly what you make it to be. It was Einstein, the difficult and forgetful child, who got us all thinking with his words, "you can't solve a problem by using the same kind of language that created it." Create a new language if you have to.

Get the Biggest View

What you see depends upon what you are looking at and what you are looking at depends upon where you are standing. Success is tied to the place with the biggest view. This is where you can see in all directions and know which path will get you to where you are going fastest and easiest.

If you don't like what you see change locations and find the other 180 degrees you have been missing. The biggest picture is 360 degrees. What is inside you and outside you, in front of you and behind you, obscure and obvious? What do you know and what don't you know? Find out! As Yogi Berra used to say, "You can see a lot by observing."

Discover the Power of Choice

Some day you will discover the awesome power you have in each and every new moment to make choices that will help you to be successful. The trick is to slow down and notice the connection between the choices you are making and the consequences you are getting. The simple law of Karma dictates that what goes around comes around. In other words, when you make the right choices you get the results you want and when you make the wrong choices, you get outcomes you don't want. Become response-able.

Unfortunately, it takes some of us, me included, a long time to wake up to this connection and this power we have. Better late than never I guess. I have a piece of marble my best friend Bob gave to me. It says, "The only problem with life is in the choice."

BE CLEVER.

The competition is keener than you can ever imagine and success demands that you figure out how to be extremely clever. You have to figure out a way to do something ordinary in a newer and more unusual way than others just talk about doing.

Being clever involves following your intuition and remembering how to be creative. Intuition is listening to the whispers in you ear and feeling the tugs on your heartstrings, and creativity is just seeing ordinary things in newer and more unusual way and translating that vision clearly to others.

Ask Good Questions

It was Anthony Jay who said, "The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very clever mind to spot wrong questions," Looking for the right answers is not as important as asking the right questions. Creativity is more a matter of asking basic questions than finding clever answers. Here are a few good questions you should be asking yourself. What is the best I am capable of? How will I keep myself from living my dreams? For what reason or for whom will I be doing all this?

Some other good questions are: Who am I? Where am I going? How do I get there?
We all have clues for each other as to the answers to these questions but we have to ask the questions first. It was the feared, but successful leader Attila the Hun who said, "when you keep asking the wrong questions, you keep hearing the wrong answers."

Be Likable

The common denominator behind success is not brain power, good looks, money or luck- it is a simple thing called likability. We are all born very likable and learn how to become unlikable during the process of growing up. If you want to be successful, remember and re-practice your original likability.

Likability is merely being friendly, polite, humorous, positive, honest, energetic, humble and empathetic. Unlikability is intolerance, negativity, hostility, rudeness, uptightness, dishonesty and egotism. Likability is free and yet at the same time, it is a priceless asset. If you can't smile you are like a person with a million dollars in the bank without a checkbook. Ben Franklin put it another way, "You can catch more flies with a teaspoon of sugar than you can with a gallon of vinegar."

Discover Your Mission

We are each given a unique mission or purpose to carry out in exchange for the opportunity to live this life. Figure out what your unique mission is and develop the special talents you have been given to be successful in carrying out this mission. Sometimes it may take a long time to find out this information. The quickest way I know is to stop and look at what you seem to do best and enjoy doing the most. That is your answer. Sometimes the obscure takes a while to see and the obvious, even longer.

Don't focus on your weaknesses. Develop your main talent to its fullest so you can be an expert at carrying out your mission better than anyone else. Follow George Lichtenberg's good advice, "If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards."

Communicate Better Than Others

Rarely will your mind correctly interpret what your ears hear someone else's mouth say that they actually meant. Trust the famous Boston Celtic's coach Red Aurback when he said, "It is not what you tell them that is important. It's what they hear." Today the norm is miscommunication. Nothing can be said so simply that it cannot be misunderstood.

Begin to tear down the Tower of Babble that we all helped create. Do this by listening twice and talking once, writing as you speak, using words carefully and economically, playing with word psychology to increase impact and knowing your audience to make a better connection. Above all, don't assume understanding and always clarify misunderstanding. My own communication quote is "Good communication is a proper mixture of what to say, and how to say it to whom, where, why, and when."

WORK SMART.

There are no free lunches in life and the simple truth is you have to work hard to succeed, or better yet, you have to work smart.

Think With a Big IQ

You don't have to have an IQ of 150 or an Ivy League Ph.D. to be smart. All you have to do are a few simple things. These are letting your mouth ask questions your brain wants to automatically provide quick answers to and looking below the surface at all the important relationships going on that you don't know about.

The quickest way to get smart is to realize how little you actually know about all there is to know and then start learning. At some point, you have to understand that all you think you know may not necessarily be so. There are many ways to fill your brain with incorrect information. Watch out, space is a premium!

Practice "P" Points

"P" Points are psychological power points. These are the little things you can do strategically to get the biggest results. Common commercial examples are newspaper headlines, media advertising jingles and political sound bytes. Common examples are good listening, being likable and verifying assumptions.

All this other advice I am trying to give you comes under the heading of "P" Points. "P" Points are the only valid shortcuts in life. Look for them carefully. They help you run faster and shorten the distance to where you are running, both at the same time. This is the simple art of being smart in getting more by doing less.

Abandon Your Comfort Zone

Success requires you to reach and grow. You can't find success in your comfort zone. Get out of that comfort zone by resetting your thermostat, re-arranging your furniture, getting out of formation, following a road less traveled and eating dessert first. Let go and jump in. As the self-help guru Stephen Covey says, "Make promises and then keep them."

The more you reach and step outside your safe comfort zone, the bigger that comfort zone becomes. Learning how to adapt to one change helps make the next one easier. The smartest approach is to anticipate changes before they are imposed on you. That never feels good. Trust more in life to help you get where you need to be to be able to do what you need to do to close the gap between where you are and where you want to be.

Don't Fear Failure

Oddly, we seem to have to fail first before we can learn to succeed. We learn more from our failures than our successes. This is because our failures make us feel uncomfortable and we are motivated to avoid that feeling. Don't be afraid to fail. Actually failure is a great opportunity to start over again, this time armed with all the right information to succeed.

Two of the greatest successes in our history- Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln were failure addicts, so to speak. Their resumes wouldn't even get them job interviews. But we both know the ending to those two biographies. Don't fear failure- each failure you experience has an important clue hidden in it that will help you to succeed the next time. Each failure I experienced as a law enforcement officer, mental health psychologist, prison administrator, college teacher, security manager and business consultant helped me to become a better person, employee, leader, trainer and writer.

Never Quit

Quitting is an easy habit to acquire but a difficult one to shed. Quitting works so well you can't stop quitting. But know this: Success is often just around the next corner that you are most inclined giving up getting to. Often success is just a matter of finishing the last five minutes of what you have been working on for years. Why waste all that effort by giving up at the last minute? You have to do more than just try, too. As the One Minute Manager, Ken Blanchard says, "Trying is just a noisy way of not doing something." Yoda's response in Star Wars is "Do or don't.

Don't allow yourself to quit. Persevere. I played football here at your field weighing a mighty 85 pounds. I wanted to quit but I didn't. No, I didn't become a great football player but Yes, I did become a successful person. This was despite what some teachers predicted. But maybe they were just challenging me to become what I was meant to become- successful. By the way, I was a very ordinary person and a very average student. But I dreamed big, became clever and worked smart to become successful.

Dream Big, Be Clever and Work Smart and you will succeed. Congratulations and happy success to you all! When you succeed share your success secrets with others. That is what I have just tried to do with you.


William Cottringer is a business and sports success coach, college teacher and writer from St. Louis, MO. He is also author of You Can have Your Cheese & Eat It Too, along with three other books and over 50 articles. He can be reached at (314) 531-2000 or ckurtdoc.charter.net His web site is: http://webpages.charter.net/ckurtdoc/Publish.html