6 Ways to Take the First Step of Your Journey to Success Getting started is the hardest and most important part of getting from where you are to your loftiest goals.
By Sherrie Campbell Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
To become the type of success you are setting out to be you have to start at the beginning, just like in the alphabet you start with the letter "A." Success is not an event, it is a process. To finish any great endeavor you must first start. This may not be the start of a new business but could simply be the start of a new idea, a new path or a new way. To be a standout success is to take each new beginning and follow it through to the end.
The success journey is the process of working through each step to arrive at the next one, with each step motivating and inspiring you to press on without fail. "Z" may look far away from the vantage point of "A" but once you master "A" you will see "Z" gleaming out on the horizon. The beginning of any process is the most creative. Let's start with "A."
1. Awareness.
Always be striving for more, always be building and expanding your career and yourself as a person, not just as a success. The more you grow yourself, the more you grow the totality of your life. Hold an image of where you are in any given area of your life, right now. Now envision where you want to be: happier, richer, more successful, fit, healthier, in love.
To get from where you are to where you want to be, become acutely aware of the choices you make each day that lead you away from your desired goals. Become conscious of every single choice you make today, so you can begin to make choices that fall in line with the direction of your dreams for tomorrow.
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2. Action.
To win you have to begin. Map out the circumstances you need to get ahead in your life m. If you cannot find them, make them. Take initiative. If you don't see the door to your success, build the door yourself by taking actions in the direct pursuit of your goals. When you are passionate about what you want nothing will stand in the way of you getting it.
List the action steps you need to take to get to where you want to go, to do what you want to do. Make these goals as tangible as possible. One successful goal achieved will build your motivation to achieve the next goal in front of you, and so on. Will these steps all be the right ones? Maybe and maybe not. But you won't know for sure until you start moving forward. Once you start putting yourself into motion all steps taken are a gift because each right or wrong step will provide you knowledge and direction.
3. Accountable.
Few things prompt a person to follow through like accountability. You have to create ways to make yourself accountable and to push through any habits of laziness or doubtful thinking. One of the ways you can do this is to share your goals with others who can help motivate you to stay on task. When you tell others about what you intend to do, it puts a more intense pressure on you to keep working at it. Another option is to get a business coach who can request evidence of your weekly progress. Pairing up with someone acts as a living deadline to keep you moving.
Track every action that pertains to an area where you want to see progress, whether it relates to finances, health, career, or relationships. Whether you are working with someone or going at it independently write everything down, every day without fail with no excuses or exceptions. Tracking your progress and missteps is the path to building success. The process forces you to be conscious of your decisions.
4. Attraction.
Once you have become aware of the steps you must take to do what you want to do, and are taking action, and are being accountable you will begin to produce the behavior you desire. You are moving towards realizing your desires and objectives. This type of movement results in producing a very powerful side effect. You start attracting like-minded people into your life and into business ventures and ideas. The Law of Magnetism says, "who you are is who you attract."
If you want to be around growing people become a growing person. If you're committed, you attract others who are committed. If you're growing, you attract others who are growing. This puts you in a position to begin building a network of like-minded people who help each other succeed. Your greatest growth will always come as a result of finding people ahead of you who can show you the way forward.
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5. Accomplishment.
Get committed. Be willing to pay for your personal growth, financially and otherwise. Be consistent. Keep your every thought, word and deed focused on accomplishment. Be creative. Visualize your desired outcomes at all times. Involve yourself in multiple forms of personal development to feel a sense of accomplishment in every tangible area of your life. Study the people in business you admire. Read their books, attend seminars, hire a business coach, see a therapist and employ a personal trainer. Try and meet with those whom you admire in person, if possible. These people and the knowledge they have are gifts to your personal growth.
Spend time each day in preparation for these meetings and interactions. Reflect upon the interactions you have with all of these people you've sought to be a part of your personal development team and be thankful for every opportunity created for your learning. There is nothing more telling to the levels of success you can achieve then possessing a teachable spirit.
6. Authority.
When you do what you want to do it will be more difficult than you ever imagined. You have to be the authority over your own emotions to make success happen. You may have had no idea how much time it would take for you to be effective. You may not have expected to have as many demands placed upon you or your life as there have been, or you may not have realized how long you would have to keep paying the price for your success. You may not have fully comprehend how much your energy level would go down as a result of your commitment.
Great successes have the deep belief that the payoff of their success will make the times of great sacrifice well worth it. When you do what you want to do it will be better than you ever imagined. The compounding return of investing in your personal growth will be astronomical. You will be blown away by how much fun you have doing what you want to do and succeeding at it. Once you are in the fun place of experiencing your success, own it and revel in it. You deserve it... then start a new journey with a new beginning starting with the letter "A" that you can nurture all the way to "Z." You grow each time you go through this process. You grow in the ideas you hold of yourself, your life and your continued success. Success… doesn't really have an end.
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