How to Achieve Stellar Success in Work and Life to Get to Your Dreams

by Erika Slater

Man on mountain top with arms raised above head in success gesture

Happiness is not a by-product of success.
Success is a by-product of happiness.

In this article you’ll discover:

  1. Tons of common themes and character traits from successful people so you can model them and save money and time.
  2. Ways to kick-start your own personal journey to achieve better success in all aspects of your life.
  3. How hypnosis can help change negative habits and instill positive habits to overcome past failures and barriers to your success.
  4. Further reading and resources for help in understanding and achieving success in life and work.

I’ve worked with many people over the years who came to me looking to overcome a negative habit. I ask my clients one important question as it helps them get focused on why they’re doing something:

The question is “How will your life be different when you achieve your goal?

I get them to explain in detail the difference they think it’ll make to their life. People come to me with significant changes they want to make in their life, such as quitting smoking, or losing weight, or overcoming a phobia.

The reasons behind change is nearly always a bigger goal. Getting them to think about how it will make a difference in their life starts to uncover that goal and provides the motivation and direction for them when the difficult times come. And they will.

Nobody has ever achieved great success in work and life without taking knocks and setbacks along the way, and having a healthy dose of resilience and perseverance, and even grit to stay the course and achieve their dreams. (See my article about this topic and linked to in the additional resource section below.)

Whether you’re trying to achieve success in life or in business doesn’t really matter, the underlying themes are consistent. How you do anything is how you do everything.

Success doesn’t have to be, nor I’d argue should it be, at the expense of others. But of course, we are rarely told this growing up. In fact, most people feel, at least in business, success is measured in a way that directly puts you in competition with others, and in order for you to succeed they must fail.

But of course, real success is about inner success and not just about sales quotas or how many friends you have on social media, or even how many dollars are in your bank account. It can be all of these but if just one then lasting happiness is going to be a long way behind. And this gets at the heart of why I ask that question to my clients. “How will your life be different when you achieve your goal?” Because in essence the question being asked is really “What will success look like for you.”

And, this is different for each of us and what I’m going to explore with you today so you can discover “How to Achieve Better Success in Work and Life.”

If you’re ready for that journey and sitting comfortably, then let’s begin…

 

COMMON TRAITS TO BE SUCCESSFUL IN LIFE AND BUSINESS:

Sticky notes saying set goals make plans type messagesBrian Tracy is considered by many to be the guru when it comes to advice on achieving success. I’ve heard Brian speak at a few events I attended back and he’s a compelling speaker and thought provoker.

Brian is all about the journey as he feels it teaches us the qualities required for success. Here’s a thought from him about this…

You will change your life by achieving just one important goal, you create a pattern, a template for personal success in your subconscious mind. You will change your life and be automatically directed, and driven toward repeating that success in other things that you attempt.

In an article from his blog called “How To Be Successful in Life”, which you can read in its entirety at the link in the resource section, he lists four keys to success:

  1. Decide exactly what you want and where you want to go.
  2. Set a deadline and make a plan to get there.
  3. Take action on your plan; do something everyday to move toward your goal.
  4. Resolve in advance that you will persist until you succeed, that you will never, ever give up.
    Copyright Brian Tracy.

This is sage advice from somebody who has been there and done it.

Interestingly, people engage me at key step #3 when they’ve either taken action on their plan and it hasn’t worked, or they realize before starting they’re the type of person who needs help. Frankly, this is good and not in my book a weakness. Accumulating the wisdom to be successful on your own is expensive and time consuming. There are plenty of others who have gone before and you can model and get there quicker by avoiding their mistakes.

Where people fall down is usually in key step #4. Having a plan is good but then life gets in the way. You not only have to be flexible but you have to have… wait for it… resilience and perseverance, and grit to stay in the game. Sound familiar?

These qualities can be learned, but you have to have a big enough “why” you want success, and you need to think of resilience and perseverance just like a muscle and exercise them regularly. You’ll find this a recurring theme as we continue.

Katherine Hurst is well known in the “Law of Attraction” community. In a nutshell this community subscribes to the notion you attract towards yourself that which you think, and that how you act. So, if you think and act successful then this is what you’ll attract into your life.

My experience is at some point environmental factors enter into the equation and this tends to get overlooked by this community. However, this isn’t to say we can’t learn from their enthusiasm.

Anyways, Katherine Hurst has compiled a solid list of “101 Ways to Achieve Success” and I’ve provided a link to the complete list in the resource section.

I’ve pulled out just a few to quench your thirst; consider these:

  1. Don’t be afraid to take risks. You will never be 100% ready when an opportunity arises.
  2. Surround yourself with positive people.
  3. Make a plan or a blueprint for success. Imagine in your mind the steps you need to take to achieve your goal. (sound familiar?)
  4. Know your distractions. Make a list of things that keep you from staying focused and make sure to get rid of them when you are working on your goal.
  5. Get rid of limiting beliefs and false ideologies. Stay open-minded.
  6. Accept you mistakes and learn from them.
  7. Be persistent. Keep going no matter what and develop a relentless motor. (sound familiar?)
  8. Be flexible. (sound familiar? – okay I’ll shut up!)
  9. Make sure you know why you are trying to be successful. Do it for the right reasons and never forget what these reasons are. They will keep you motivated.
  10. But don’t be afraid to say NO but also don’t afraid to say YES to gain new experiences.
    Copyright Katherine Hurst

The poster child for success for many entrepreneurs remains Bill Gates. Often touted as the richest man in the world – which he’s not, and most likely never has been – but certainly beyond accumulating wealth Gates is successful and continues to be in life after Microsoft.

So here are some wisdom’s from Gates that support the other traits of successful people.

Life is not fair – get used to it!

If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Television is not real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Sure, these quotes are all around business and come from speeches given at schools and colleges. But the fact remains they all capture the spirit of accepting that to be successful in life and business you need to be prepared to do whatever it takes and not make excuses if you fail.

Because you will fall down – if you don’t experience knocks you’re not trying hard enough! But what will determine your success is your response to set backs.

I’m going to leave my last pieces of quoted wisdom in this section to Kaila Proulx. Kaila has shared a number of useful tips for success in life, and you’ll see they’re remarkably similar to those business ones you’ve already seen – surprise, surprise! These tips will keep you moving forward, and though I’ve excerpted a few here you can find them all at the link in the resource section below.

  • See the big picture, but take baby steps.

When you set smaller, more attainable goals for yourself you are more likely to stick with whatever you are trying to achieve because you can consistently see progress. The success acts as an encouragement, and a motivator, which keeps you going.

If you want a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) then this can be longer term. But you still have to take it down to smaller bite-sized steps. While originally promoted for business goals, BHAG is applicable for life goals as well. After all, living until your 100 years-old may take you a few years unless you’re age 99 now, and you’ll have a lot of in-between goals to make it there as well, like eating well, staying fit, and keeping your brain active.

  • Don’t get discouraged by small setbacks.

Obstacles along the journey are inconsequential as long as you’re moving in the direction of your goals. Consistently making positive efforts to accomplish what you’ve set out to do is all that matters. You won’t achieve your dreams overnight. However, by starting to make decisions that feed that long-term vision for your future, you’ll see them come to fruition over time.

Copyright Kaila Proulx

Of course, by now you’ve heard these common themes but reinforcement is always good. But now it’s time to make this personal and real for you.

If you’ve read down to here then I’m guessing in the past you’ve set goals for success in life and/or business only to see yourself give up on them. When trying to achieve them becomes too difficult, you just decide to give up, and try again at a later date. You “kick that can right down the road.”

Your next step today then is to decide no more “can kicking.” No more putting off success in life and business until some unspecified time in the future.

 

GETTING YOURSELF STARTED TOWARDS YOUR SUCCESS:

Stretch goal concept with words on road rising up in shape of arrowIf you’re trying to achieve ‘stellar’ success in your career, business, relationships, health (weight loss, getting fit, quitting smoking), then it’s important to get clear on what that success means to you.

This sounds like something you heard before, right?

You should be able to vividly describe to others: What will your end goal look like and feel like when you get there? How will your life be different when you achieve your goal?

If you set the bar low and decide to call that success, then that’ll be your success.

You most likely will have an easier time achieving that success as you don’t have to stretch or push your limits.

Stretching your limits will make you feel uncomfortable because you need to produce change in yourself to achieve stellar success.

On the other hand, if you set your bar for success high or even super high, it’s going to require more effort and the need to do things differently – read that as… big change!

For most, change is uncomfortable and big change is very uncomfortable, and this is why they fold on their goals and dreams too early because it takes perseverance. Interestingly, if some would just hold on and push a little further with the change required to achieve their goals, they’d have soon experienced a ‘lasting change’ in their habits and way of thinking, which would have eventually brought them the stellar success they so much wanted!

When starting out, it’s okay to take ‘baby steps’ for change.

It’s okay to not set the bar too high, but not okay to set it too low. If it’s too low you’re most likely already there, operating from a mindset of mediocrity and status quo.

Can you set the bar too high?

Well, this depends on your ability to deal with failure, that is only seeing it as a learning experience as Bill Gates and others advocate, and the schedule you put on the achievement. My advice here is to take it beyond your comfort zone so you have to grow to get there, but not to the point of feeling overwhelmed and/or demoralized as you make the journey to get to your definition of success.

As you develop your resilience and perseverance muscles through practice then you’ll naturally go further out of your comfort zone, and accept the occasional failure as part of the journey.

Setting better than attainable goals will provide you with the opportunity to stretch your mental and possibly physical muscles and make you stronger, this way going for the ultimate stellar success won’t be as high up the ladder as when you first started your quest.

As I mentioned earlier don’t feel the need to figure this all out yourself but learn from those who have gone before and use the resources I’ve listed below to get you started. While it has worked for these experts on the topic just remember that point as well. It worked for them but doesn’t mean all their advice will work for you. Adopt, and modify, to fit your style, temperament, personality, etc. Be flexible, but also be prepared to try new things. After all, you’ll not achieve massive change by doing things the way you’ve always done them.

Earlier I’d implied success is an ‘inside job’. I believe this to be true. Beliefs about yourself and perceptions of what is happening will largely determine how far you’ll go in attaining success. Where your thoughts go, your energy will flow.

Even though you’re clear and feel what it’ll be like to have stellar success, sometimes it’s important to change the thoughts you have toward it.

I want to preface my final section here with one word… habits.

Habits are the key to achieving our success. They reside in our unconscious mind. Forget the mumbo jumbo about how long it takes for them to form, but think instead about forming success habits and the best way I know of doing this quickly is using hypnosis

 

HOW CAN HYPNOSIS HELP YOU ACHIEVE STELLAR SUCCESS IN LIFE AND WORK?

Helping hand on staircaseOur habits are controlled and resident in our unconscious mind (some call it our subconscious mind). We all have positive habits. Some of these positive habits are natural to us such as breathing and keep us alive when we sleep. Others are learned, such as driving a car where eventually we don’t consciously think about changing gears, or how to steer around a corner, or when to brake.

But we also develop negative habits. Those we want to change because they stop us achieving everything we deserve. Here hypnosis can help if the desire to change is strong enough. You can obviously change habits without using hypnosis. People have quit smoking or lost weight just by their own willpower and without help from anybody or drugs or surgery.

But the fact is many more people haven’t managed to change their habits because they only really changed the symptoms, and not the underlying habit.

So, eventually they got stuck again. It can also be a rocky path relying on willpower alone. So, moat people naturally seek help.

As I said earlier, I don’t see seeking help as a weakness.

Hypnosis helps us directly access the unconscious mind – where our habits reside – without our conscious logical mind getting in the way and distracting us. It quietens and relaxes the conscious mind to open up the subconscious mind to receiving thoughts, and suggestions, to change and replace negative habits.

In some cases, the results are instantaneous and in others it takes a few sessions with a qualified hypnotist.

Professional sport teams, and athletes, have long used self-hypnosis to achieve their own stellar success. Hypnosis isn’t about “going under” and your mind being manipulated by a hypnotherapist without your active involvement. Many hypnotists these day use guided imagery and hypnotic journeys to help people achieve the major changes in their life.

Hypnosis is an excellent way for changing negative thoughts and replacing them with positive ones. Furthermore, hypnosis can help you get clearer and feel what it will be like to be successful. If you’re interested in working directly with me on this specific issue then check out my online and In-office Special Hypnosis Services here.

 

CONCLUSIONS:

We discovered there are common themes in achieving stellar success in life and work and looked at what those are and what it takes to adopt those as part of our own traits.

Upfront you need to be clear on what success will look like for you. Ask yourself, and be able to answer, my favorite question; “How will your life be different when you achieve your success?

These common themes and character traits include persistence, resilience, and sometimes just plain grit to overcome barriers and short-term failure with no blaming of others. Goals leading to stellar success means taking risks and moving out of your comfort zone.

Have big goals (BHAG if you want) to get to your definition of success, but map out small steps that’ll move you forward and you can measure.

Seek help from others who’ve made the journey already and have achieved the kind of success you want. Model what they did to help shortcut your own journey. Consider hypnosis to help you overcome negative habits quickly to get the success you want and deserve.

If you’re got to here and hypnosis sounds like something you’d like to experience to see if it can help you achieve the success you want, then, check out this self-hypnosis session to help achieve your potential here >>>

 

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES RELATED TO ACHIEVE SUCCESS:

How To Be Successful in Life – Brian Tracy >>>

How to Strengthen Your Resilience, Perseverance and Grit to Get Success in Your Life – Erika Slater CH >>>

101 Ways to Achieve Success – Katherine Hurst >>>

Mind the Gap – Moving to the Right Side of Your Potential Gap – Erika Slater CH >>>

How to Reignite Passion for Your Job or Change Careers So You Can Do Your Best Work! >>>

How To Achieve Your Dreams: The Tips You
HAVEN’T Heard – Kaila Proulx >>>

 
Erika Slater CH
Free At Last Hypnosis
Massachusetts

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Interested in making a significant change in your life and interested in learning more about what I do and how I do it? Discover my hypnotherapy services here or contact me here.

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