Giving Yourself the Opportunity to Succeed
Are you on the road to your best life and enjoying your own share of success or are you still waiting for someone to clear the path for you? If you are still struggling and allowing others to control your time and success, then you are bound to unhappiness and failure. Of course, you would disagree with me, saying that you are busy day after day, doing your job. You will comment that you are exhausted and tired from your day. You will say you had a busy day. If someone asks you why your answers sound like: so many emails, everyone had something for me to remedy, the phone never stopped.
Yes, you are right. Every day you are doing things for other people who are enjoying the ample share of your labour. Each day you start without an objective, you are releasing control of your day to others. From one task to another someone else will decide for you. Those days are easy to identify. This unfortunate scenario will unfold in front of your eyes without any knowledge that it is happening to you until it’s too late and your day is done.
But it is not too late to regain your power over your life and destiny. Now is the perfect time to give yourself permission to shine on your own and succeed. Give yourself a break and an opportunity for success. Don’t release the control of your day and life to others. Stop creating the illusion of accomplishment to convince yourself that you are on the right track without even knowing what it is.
Here’s how to create a golden opportunity for yourself:
Goal-setting
You need dynamic goals to push yourself forward. Goals can be your great motivators. You need to set powerful intentions to succeed in life and map out what you want in the next 12 months, 5 years, 10 years, and beyond. Without concrete goals, you will go nowhere. You will always be like driftwood, floating on the river of life and waiting for people to nudge you in some directions.
Without having any goal that you can measure your efforts toward, how can you call your day successful when you don’t even know what the desired outcome is? Whether your goals are work-related or personal, it is important to write them down and review at the end of the day or week, or month.
It is also crucial to remember that goals can change, depending on the circumstances in your life. When change happens, do not let go of your important or long-term goals, but be ready to modify your short-term goals. You can also create mini-goals to make your big goals more achievable.
Making Plans
With your goals in place, your next step is to make plans on how to achieve them. Plan for nothing and you will get nothing. Anticipating or hoping for any outcome without any effort to map it out, is a waste of your precious time.
When you make plans, you are not only mapping out your work schedules, but also your personal tasks that require your utmost attention. You become more motivated to complete your daily tasks and be more productive. Every moment becomes precious because you know that you are not only finishing the tasks, but you are moving toward your goals day after day.
Instead of waiting until the end of the day and qualify whatever happened as a fulfilled day, that is just you perpetuating the illusion of accomplishment and success. Attributing success to a busy day is cheating yourself out of the time you have available to do anything your heart desires.
Planning helps you balance your time and save your energy. It lets you view your entire day or your week clearly, allotting time for work, rest, play, and other vital activities that bring you fulfillment or joy. If you are working on your new hobby or hustling during weekends, you set aside time to pursue them without stealing your time for rest and other activities.
One of the greatest results of planning your day will be the overwhelming feeling of accomplishment. That feeling you get at the end of the day when you look back at everything you have done and how much closer to your goals you are. Do this each day and you will start to ask yourself why I haven’t started earlier. It will become a habit and you won’t believe how much momentum it will create in your life.
The important benefits that manifest when you start your day with a clear plan are:
- You learn to say no
- You control your time
- Reduced stress, because you are deciding on the outcome
- Discover you have so much free time on your hands
Adopting a positive mindset
I cannot stress this fact enough, a positive mindset is about having faith in your own skills and capabilities. You go beyond your comfort zone and begin trusting yourself that you can do what others can. At this juncture, you need to replace your negative self-beliefs with positive ones. Stop making self-defeating, negative statements that limit your power over yourself. Instead of saying “I can’t,” use “I can” or “I choose to.” Reversing your negative talk automatically triggers your positivity, attracting more opportunities, and expanding possibilities.
The script will be very different when you approach the day with a positive mindset. Doing the simple act of planning your day out to the desired outcome will create a whole different narrative. One that you control.
Don’t hang on to your past. Stop blaming yourself for past failures in your life because they will not help you on your renewed journey to success. You don’t need them to dampen your enthusiasm. Live in the present and visualize your future.
Changing your perspective about yourself, success, or opportunities will transform your life magically. You will begin to see things and situations realistically and objectively, not taking everything personally. You become more honest and kinder to yourself, counting on yourself to achieve your own goals. You know that nobody can do it for you, the exact way you want it. So, you start reclaiming control over you and stop relying on others. You also hold yourself accountable when you fail or experience setbacks, but continue your journey to success.
Visualizing the big picture
Give yourself an opportunity to create success, by creating a plan, a road map and having a clear vision of the result.
“When you can imagine it, you can achieve it.” -William Arthur Ward
Our mind is a powerful. It attracts the results you want when your mind and heart are aligned toward them.
By having a clear vision of what you want, you are empowering yourself. It fires up your drive and enthusiasm, making it easier to establish or plan the course of action to bring you to your goals. It is also vital to create a deadline for each one of your goals. Deadlines will prompt you to work harder to achieve them. As I mentioned earlier, your goals might change but keeping your focus on the big picture in the future will help you shift and adapt to the new circumstances in life.
Giving Yourself Permission to Succeed
Living a life that you control is the most awesome gift you can give yourself and the people you love. You are important, period. YOU live life on your OWN terms.
- Allow yourself to be you. Build your own dreams. Follow your heart’s desire. Stop typecasting and comparing yourself with other people. Understand that everyone has his timeline, you are never too late or too early when you want to achieve your goals. Do not apologize for being yourself. You are already enough.
- Allow yourself to pivot. Do not be ashamed or afraid to change course to thrive and adapt to the changing times. Everything evolves in due time, so be prepared to scale up your skills and move toward your goals. Do not wait for others to open the door of opportunities for you, step up, and do it for yourself. Reinvent yourself or your product, or your services. There are lots of possibilities when you pivot.
- Allow others to support you. There will be times when you will fail or make a false step. Do not be afraid to seek or welcome help when you need it. People who have experienced great loss and overcome failures and wonderful allies. They can help you bounce back from setbacks, so leverage their support. Surround yourself with positive people who are successful in their own fields.
Success does not happen overnight. It requires a desire to change your life and create a brighter path toward the future. It needs consistent action, energy, time, and focus. No one can make them come true but you. Reclaim your power over yourself and map out your visions and dreams.
