There are many guides out there that are indicating that there is this marvelous “secret” to success. There is not. This “secret” they are speaking about is just a sham to get you intrigued enough to purchase their product or service. Success is not a secret… it’s actually fairly simple really.

I figure there are 7 distinct factors to finding success in your own life. They are:

1. Have Faith and Be Positive

The most important thing that you can do on your search for success, is build a optimistic frame of mind and have faith that you will get to where you wish to go. Frequently, people are unable to consider an event or circumstance turning out the way they want it to. They only see a negative end-result. You cannot think along these lines. Not if you’d like to do well. At times, even when it appears as if circumstances can’t turn out good, you have to find ways that it can. That’s faith. That’s possessing a good mentality. Use your imagination if you need to!

Some youngsters are discouraged from a young age as a consequence of very poor direction. Once others age, they’re introduced to this world that lets us know that we won’t be able to accomplish this, or we’re not up to scratch for that and, in return, our opportunity to be artistic and expect to have positive things disappears. Nevertheless it can be brought back! All you need to do is have formidable faith and use your imagination!

2. Be Enthusiastic

Previously, I have found it does not matter what occupation I’ve had, I have always been able to find something I didn’t like about it. A part of that problem was my lack of enthusiasm for the work I did. Luckily, I’ve found the strength of enthusiastic habits.

You’ve got to be enthusiastic if you want to find success. People with enthusiasm are always happy to offer more and work harder. But why? Well, it’s simple… they do not focus on those little negative issues that the majority of people find in their careers.

Those negatives are super easy to find should you look for them and they can easily consume you to the point of failure, if you focus enough on them. Similarly, enthusiastic people see the positive things and therefore are pleased to be so lucky to perform such rewarding work. This is exactly opposite of finding the negatives in a job. Any time you find the good and concentrate on it, good things will happen. It is the law of the Universe. What you look for, and everything you make it a staple to target, you can expect to receive.

3. Have Courage To Take Chances

When you see what you have been looking for, get it! When a creative idea comes to you, examine it! That’s how you get your creative thinking back. You’ve got to take risks.

Most people do not even recognize that they have an imagination or creative ability, because when those creative thoughts or ingenious ideas pop in their head, they scold themselves because of it. “They are certainly not realistic,” they may say. However, those are the most authentic ideas you can possibly have and by not exploring them, you neglect your golden opportunity.

4. Go Above & Beyond

You have got to think big. You have to dream big. You have got to do more and be more.

Go that step further. Rise a little higher. Work just a little harder. Laugh just a little louder. Don’t just put in an attempt. Give it everything you’ve got.

5. Work To Serve Others

This doesn’t mean go out and wait hand and foot on someone. This means, that whatever you do, take action with the goal of aiding others. You could possibly invent something that improves the lives of others. You could begin a small business that provides a high-quality service at an easily affordable price. Whatever you decide to do, don’t work for money. Work to improve the lives of the people around you.

Whether you are a farmer, a business person, a school teacher, a coach, a politician, a truck driver, a lumberjack, or whatever you are, when you aim to serve others with your work, you will definitely find more success. Basically, do not work for your income. Work to make a difference.

6. Be Persistent

In order to find success, you have to do something that most people never do. You have to persist until the end. No quitting, no backing down. You’re in it to win it, or you are not in it at all. That’s the perspective you have to take with you.

Sure, you are going to get knocked down and yes, obstacles are going to obstruct your path. Many people will also tell you that your path is unachievable. That’s fine… because you’re going to get back up, you’re going to ignore what they say and you are going to go up that mountain anyways. That is how you persevere, and that is how you find success.

7. Give Thanks

There’s not a person on this world who has best command over their life. Our life is our gift and we must be thankful that we have it. So, give many thanks for every good thing in your life. Your family, your home, your job, your friends… thank God for them. If you cannot help but find negatives, thank God for the lessons they have provided you with and thank God for the ability to overcome them.

Leading a successful and fulfilling life is an important thing for all people to do. For more information on finding success, please follow the link to continue reading.. This article, Seven Step Provess to Achieving Success is available for free reprint.

The Auto University Defined

I don’t know if Zig Ziglar was the first to coin the phrase “Auto University”, but he’s definitely one of the strongest proponents of it. In fact, he claims, “It’s the most important university in America.” I agree with him.

Naturally, the Auto University’s classroom is your car. If you have a CD, tape, or MP3 player, then you have all of the equipment you need to enroll in Auto University. Auto University will teach you some of the most important skills you need to be successful at your job.

Should you enroll in Auto University?

The truth is that most of us spend our time mindlessly listening to our favorite music stations with their countless useless commercials. My favorite music station has a truly trivial trivia question at the top of every hour. Questions like, “How much cheese does the average American consume in a year?”

If you want more than a mediocre life, you should be listening to a continual stream of successful audio programs.

So if you want to join the highest ranks of your profession, start your own collection of motivational and skills-oriented CDs or tapes.

When Should You Listen to These Programs?

Every time you have to drive somewhere, even if it’s only 5 minutes, you should be listening to some kind of inspirational audio program. If you have a daily commute, there’ll be plenty of time to listen.

IBM just released a study that shows that “45% of all drivers surveyed report traffic congestion increases their stress levels”. You could lose some of that stress by concentrating on learning something that will have a positive impact on your life.

If you’re a sales professional, you should be listening in between each and every sales call. Can you imagine how much more successful you would be if after every call you listened to a tape about the skill you needed to improve? If you’re having trouble closing, listen to a sales training program on closing.

Top salespeople often apply skills they learned in the cars in between appointments. If it helps you close more deals, that would be worth the price of admission, don’t you think? You’ll want to listen to the programs often enough that they become second nature. Until you can complete the sentences.

Where to Start?

There are a lot of good audio programs out there, but I would start with the world’s leading trainers. You will know that you are getting the best. These trainers include Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, Denis Waitley, Earl Nightingale, Tony Robbins, Jay Abraham, Jim Rohn, and Napoleon Hill.

But above all else, find audio programs that will help you grow. If there ever comes a point in your life when you become stagnant, return to Auto University.

To finish, I quote Jim Rohn. He says, “Formal education will earn you a living. Self-education will gain you a fortune. You decide how much fortune by how much self-education you get.” Start your self-education today at Auto University.

This article is based on another fantastic Brian Tracy Podcast: “21 Great Ways To Double Your Productivity – Number 5.”

Everything you do throughout the day fits into one of four categories:

1. Urgent and Important Tasks

You have to complete these tasks immediately. These are in your face. These are things like phone calls and meetings. You can’t put them off without causing serious problems.

If you’re like a lot of people, you spend a lot of time working on these types of tasks. Some folks call this “putting out fires.”

2. Important but NOT Urgent Tasks

According to Brian Tracy, completing these tasks will have the greatest possible long-term benefits in your life.

The tasks in this category include personal renewal, physical fitness and exercise, updating your skills, and spending time with your family.

Don’t put these tasks off for another day. If you want to change your life for the better, work on these now.

Believe me, if you don’t do them now, they’ll become urgent sooner or later. These are things like a term paper at work; or a report for your boss.

3. Urgent BUT NOT Important Tasks

These are things like personal phone calls, shooting the breeze with coworkers, etc.

Brian Tracy says that these tasks will have negative effects on your success. Don’t delude yourself into thinking this type of work is important work.

In fact, these kinds of tasks are great time- and career-wasters. Stay away from tasks in this area.

But even these aren’t the biggest time-wasters. The biggest time-wasters are:

4. Neither Urgent Nor Important

Don’t spend any time on these tasks. They’ll produce no results for you. At work, don’t read the newspaper, don’t surf the internet, and don’t call home to chit-chat. You’ll be wasting your company’s money and your time.

To summarize…

Always work first on your Most Urgent and Important Tasks. Next complete the Important But Not Urgent Tasks. And most vital to increasing your productivity is to refuse to work on non-important tasks.

Finally, always ask yourself “What are the lasting consequences of completing this task?”

When you answer this question, you’ll know what to work on.

Jim Rohn, one of the country’s leading experts on success and personal development, stated that the one reason why people don’t succeed is NEGLECT.

Does that mean that the secret of success then is the opposite of neglect? The thesaurus states the antonym of neglect is to care for or to look after. But this does clear things up too much. Perhaps looking to Jim Rohn’s wisdom will help us understand.

Jim Rohn was a millionaire by the age of 31. He attributes his success to his ability to look after or care for the success characteristics others neglected.

While his friends neglected to listen to successful people, Jim Rohn looked after this asked of his life.

While his friends neglected to set goals, Jim Rohn carefully cultivated his goals.

While his friends neglected to read books to improve their thinking, Jim Rohn took care of his mind and his positive thinking by filling his mind with the motivational words of the book he carefully chose.

Rohn points out opportunities exist all around us. There’s plenty of money in the world. There are plenty of changes at education. There are plenty of jobs out there. There are an infinite number of different types of careers to try.

Why don’t we succeed? We neglect.

We neglect to try new things. We neglect to seek mentors. We neglect to ignore the naysayers. We neglect to work. We neglect to set goals. We neglect to keep a positive attitude in the face of adversity.

The problem with neglect is that it affects us, well, negatively. We suffer. Not usually in a physical way, but maybe, if you neglect to exercise and eat right.

Neglect actually affects us on a spiritual and mental level. We lose confidence in ourselves. Our attitudes turn negative. We let down the people we love most. We doubt we can succeed. We doubt our talents. We lose ourselves.

The way to counter neglect is to take care of your dreams by acting on them. Doing something that moves you in the direction of dreams. Do not neglect the things that will move you toward your goals.

When you do something, anything, you will rid yourself of neglect.

According to Zig Ziglar, sales at it’s simplest is a communication process. So in order to be successful at sales, you need to have a process.

First, you must recognize that it is a process with a beginning and an end. Find out where your customer is at in the process and meet him and her there. You’ll then be able to more easily guide him or her through the rest of the process through to closing.

Should You Use a Sales Process?

Zig Ziglar swears that if you want to be successful in the sales profession, you need a process. This is the best way for you to know what your client is thinking.

Your Sales Process Should Be Logical and Client-Oriented

If you follow your logical sales process, the closing will be the logical conclusion and in no way will be forced.

Your sales process will help you identify if your prospect is receiving the message that you think you are delivering. Often times, the customer hears something different than what you actually say.

Your potential customer uses both words and intent to communicate. Do you understand both the words and the intent? If you don’t, you’re at risk of losing the sale.

Zig Ziglar’s Selling Principles

1. Selling is a process, not an event.

This means there is a beginning, a middle and an end. Do you know where your customer is in the process? Do you know where you are in the process? If the answers to these questions don’t match, then you won’t sell.

If you’re not at the same place with your client, you’ll be frustrated. But worse, your client will be frustrated. Chances are that a frustrated client will not be a buying client.

To find out where your customer is at, you need to listen to words and intent. It’s the only way. You won’t get to your customer by talking over her needs.

2. You make more money solving problems (needs, issues, concerns) than you do selling product.

Find your prospect’s problems, and then solve the problems with your product.

3. People do things for their reasons, not yours.

Look for those reasons. Cater your sales process to those reasons.

4. Learn more about your prospect than about your product.

You don’t need to be best friends, but you need to know them as people. You need to know their buying trigger, their interests, where they’re at in the sales process, and their buying points.

Do you have a process for your sales? If you don’t you’ll need to start implementing one immediately. Zig Ziglar promises that you will see your sales soar once you put a sales process into place, identify where your prospect is at in that process, meet your client where he’s at, and lead your client to the conclusion.

Jim Rohn has a very powerful philosophy that he calls the ant philosophy. He says that ants have a four-part philosophy.

1. Ants never quit.

Ants are not encumbered about how they’re going to do something. They just do it. They have a singular focus. Gather food. That’s it. And they don’t quit until they’ve got it.

What about when you disrupt their ant line? The ants will search and search until they relocate the scent.
Don’t ever quit. If you lose your way, keep looking until you pick up the scent again

2. Ants think winter all summer.

You know…There’s a pervasive philosophy in society that goes something like this, “Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.” Perhaps you’ve heard this philosophy before. You might even subscribe to this philosophy. You might want to look at the ants’ philosophy.

The ants think more on the lines of “gather, gather, gather for tomorrow we die.” They know the winter is coming. They prepare while everything is going well, while the weather is beautiful. We winter comes it is too late.

3. Ants think summer all winter.

Ants are thinking, “This too shall pass.” They know that eventually the summer will come again. Winter never lasts forever.

The same is true in our lives. Our lows will pass. We’ll feel the warm on our faces again. The plenty will come again. Even the Ice Age eventually ended.

4. During the summer, ants gather all they possibly can. Rohn calls this the all-they-possibly-can philosophy.

The seasons follow predictable patterns. Fall follows summer. Winter follows Fall. Spring falls Winter. Summer follows Spring. We know what’s coming next. It’s never a surprise.

But we never know the exact day that a particular season will start on. We never know when the snow will start falling. The time to prepare is now.

So remember the ant philosophy…

1. Don’t ever, ever quit.
2. Think winter all summer.
3. Think summer all winter.
4. Gather all-you-possibly-can.

By following the advice in the article, you will be well on your way to doubling your productivity. Brian Tracy has been training business leaders for many years. His advice will take you to the top of your field.

But you will only gain an advantage from this article if you apply Brian Tracy’s techniques. As you read, think of ways that you can begin applying the Law of Forced Efficiency immediately in your life and business.

The Law of Forced Efficiency is this:

“There’s never enough time to do everything, but there’s always enough time to do the most important things.”

Your ability to be successful in your life will depend in large portion on your ability to identify the most important task to perform right now. And then to get to work doing that task, and only that task, until it is complete.

In order to help you find that most important task, use these Four Great Questions:

1. Always before starting anything, ask: Right now, what is the most important thing I could be working on?

2. Why are you being paid? What did you get hired to do? Are you doing that one thing that will most determine your success?

3. What are the things only you can do that make a significant difference to your organization?

4. What can you work on right now, in this moment, that will make the greatest impact?

You must answer these questions honestly and clearly. As you ask yourself these questions and work on the answers all day, you will soon double your productivity.

Remember to get input from your boss. He has the best understanding and insight into what he thinks you can contribute most to right now.

How to Proceed:

1. Figure out what you need to do today.

2. For everything you need to do, ask yourself the Four Great Questions:

3. Start work on your most important task, right away, and don’t stop until it is 100% complete.

If you asked Brian Tracy, I’m sure that he would say that his success is due in no small measure to his ability to know which is the most important task he should be working on right now and then working on it. Try and learn as much from Brian Tracy as you can.

Zig Ziglar’s son didn’t like to play golf. But he played with his dad anyway.

Like most people who don’t like something when they first start out, Zig Ziglar’s son didn’t like playing golf, at first. This was of course until he ended up with his first chance at Birdie.

This was his first chance at a Birdie. Zig lined him up and his son knocked it in. Naturally, his son was jubilant. Next it was Zig Ziglar’s turn. It was also on the green with a shot at birdie.

If he missed the shot, his son would know that he missed on purpose and it would be a hollow victory. So Zig Ziglar putted the ball right in.

Zig made the shot and asked his son, if he was able to pull for him, even though it meant that he wouldn’t beat him at the hole. Of course he pulled for him, his son told him.

Zig Ziglar’s son demonstrated pure love for his father. He pulled for him because it would be for his father’s benefit to sink the putt.

Zig Ziglar developed the acronym H.E.A.R.T.:

Honesty
Empathy
Attitude
Reserves – Mental, physical and spiritual
Toughness – love is the toughest.

As a salesperson, your job is to persuade. Don’t be a slimy salesperson, trying to persuade prospects to buy what they don’t need. Instead, learn to have the client’s best interest at heart.

Once your heart is right, you learn to pull for the prospect to buy for their benefit and not for yours.

Zig Ziglar says this is the pure love you should use in your selling.

Zig Ziglar once said, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care about them.”

Learn to want your prospects to buy because you know they win with your product. Communicate with your feelings and beliefs.

The minute you start pulling for them to buy for their benefit, you become more professional, more effective, more loving and you sell more. And you’ll be able to sell them again and again and again. Before long, they’ll send you to their friends and relatives

When your client is the big winner, so are you. Learn to pull for him. Learning this kind of love will put you on the path to becoming the person you want to become. Good luck.

Brian Tracy has written an article forSales Training Programs entitled Gap Analysis.

In the article Brian Tracy says that you, as the salesperson, are basically like a detective trying to uncover clues about how your product can solve a problem for the client.

He identifies 3 key techniques to learn:

1. Use questions as sales tools.

2. Clarify the need.

3. Building Buying Desire.

But he says in order to put these ideas into action you need to do two things immediately:

1. Ask good questions to uncover the real need.

2. Continually show the client the size of the gap of where she would be without your product.

Apply Brian Tracy’s skills into your Sales Training Programs and you’ll immediately begin to see your sales numbers improve.

In Brian Tracy’s Podcast entitled “21 Great Ways To Double Your Productivity – Number 11″, Brian speaks about “Practicing Single-Handling Key Tasks.”

This technique is so powerful that Dale Carnegie, one of the richest men of his time, credited his success to this one secret. If that’s true, then it would be important to master this approach.

Additionally, Brian Tracy says you can boost your personal efficiency by 50% with just this one technique. That’s just on the first day! He may be on to something here.

What is Single-Handling Key Tasks?

The essence of this success secret is to work on your most important task until it is 100% complete. According to Brian Tracy, there are three easy steps:

1. Make a list of all of the items you need to get done.

2. Select the most important item (highest use of your time) on your list.

3. Immediately begin working on this most important task and stick with it until it is complete.

Two Keys of Success

Take note of Brian Tracy’s Two Keys:

1. Focus

2. Concentration

The Benefits of Single-Handling Key Tasks

Brian Tracy says that single-mindedly working on your task, without diversion or distraction, will contribute more
to your success than any other habit you will ever develop. Wow!

He further says that you increase the amount of time needed to spend on a task by 5 times when you lay it aside to complete later. Ouch! Unfortunately, most of us don’t work to completion with our tasks. We often get distracted.

Instead, use Single-Handling Key Tasks and watch your efficiency increase by up to 80%! No wonder Brian Tracy declares this as one of time management’s greatest secrets.

The best thing is that this is a habit you can learn by repetition and practice. Keep doing it until you get it down. Perfect practice makes perfect.

There are two major benefits:

1. You’ll rise to the top of your chosen field, quickly.

2. You’ll get an endorphin rush by completing your major tasks. This rush will give you a feeling of well-being, happiness, and your self-esteem will increase.

Start putting Brian Tracy’s success secret, Single-Handling Key Tasks, to work for you right away and watch your productivity explode!