The magic formula for personal success

Success leaves clues, and the more you study successful people, the more you learn. Why try to reinvent the wheel when it is already here. Collect these clues, and you will eventually possess the magic formula for your success.

Here are some things that I have picked up over the years.

Set boundaries

Where focus goes, energy flows. Channel your energy and actions towards the areas you want to improve. Otherwise, it is easy to become scattered and obtain a feeling of being all over the place. The change will not happen if you don´t give the essential areas enough energy. In chemistry, for instance, there is a need for energy for a reaction to occur. 

Tony Robbins often talks about people who should, would, and could all over themselves. The change will only happen when you turn your shoulds into musts.

If you want to do everything, usually nothing gets done. Multitasking is not the way of elevating your result to a higher level. 

When your organization focuses on a few areas of importance, the change will happen. This unified engagement is impossible if there are too many initiatives ongoing at the same time.

You need to prioritize and say no to certain things. 

Address the most important things first. If you are going to kiss the frog, do it right away because the frog isn´t getting prettier. – Brian Tracy

Be the captain of your life

The elevator to success is out of order, but the stairs are always available. -Zig Ziglar.

Everything worthwhile is up-hill, and you can´t wish for success to happen. Hard work is necessary, and if you create a daily routine, it isn´t that exhausting.

If you are building an enormous brick wall, you might not even start because you consider it to be unachievable. If you, on the other hand, lay one brick every day, the wall will eventually be ready. 

I enjoy to be out in the forest and bring home timber to the farm where I live. Each year I am amazed by how much I bring home with my tractor and crane during the winter. It is because I have been out every weekend for a couple of hours. Over time the timber stack grows to a considerable height.

Change the way you view failures

Successful people fail more often than others do. How can I say that you might ask? The reason why is because they have tried out more things than you and I have. They and learned what is working and what is not. Successful people understand that there is a learning experience in every failure. 

They also prepare themself for failure. When you expect to fail, the disappointment doesn´t bother you. You know that failure is part of growing, and therefore, you are not afraid of taking action and face new things. You have proven to yourself and others that you can handle failures. 

-Failing forward is an expression that I like together with,

  -What doesn´t kill you makes you stronger. 

When you fall, make sure to land on your back. Because if you can look up, you can get up. -Les Brown

Actual failure only happens if you stay down. People are often more afraid of failing than they are of succeeding. Some people are also scared of succeeding. Therefore, they stop taking action and make the stairs to success out of order as well as the elevator.

My father, my father-in-law, and my great grandfather past away within a time frame of 10 years. Influential people in my life that are not around anymore. That made a significant impact on me. Those events have formed me to the person I am. Looking back from where I am today, those experiences were devastating for me, but on the other hand, they also made me stronger. 

Haven´t you experienced some adversity, looking back in the rearview mirror?

What can you say about it now with some time and perspective?

Grow yourself continuously

Feed your mind with new things every day. When you grow a bamboo tree, it takes five years for it even to start growing. Nevertheless, if you water it, give it sunshine and fertilize it every day, it will produce 80 feet in just six weeks the fifth year.

I often say that you grow yourself into opportunity. That is precisely what the Chinese Bamboo tree does. It lays the foundation during the first five years, and when it is ready, it dazzles everyone. Be the bamboo tree in your life, and be prepared to dazzle the world when your opportunity comes. Be ready.

Find your legacy

Your legacy is going to be the lives you have touched. It is not the material things that you obtain. Where we are going after this life, we don´t know. But we do know that we cannot bring anything with us.

Is not money necessary, you might say. Of course, money is important, it is right up there besides oxygen, as Zig Ziglar would have said.

The money will grant you freedom, but it won´t give you happiness and fulfillment. Success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure. 

Learn how to love yourself to love others. If you go out in life looking for friends, they will be scarce. If you go out to be a friend you will find them everywhere. -Zig Ziglar