Top Six Strategies for Becoming Uncommonly Successful

By Stacey Mayo, MCC

Here are 6 of 26 proven strategies gleaned from interviews with highly successful people who have overcome obstacles to accomplish such feats at climbing Mt. Everest, winning a Grammy, becoming a multi-millionaire, becoming an established author and humorist, a professional pitcher in the Major Leagues, an internet entrepreneur who earns millions and more. Regardless of your career or industry, when applied, these success principles can shorten your learning curve and be a catalyst for your success.

Create Wealth in Alignment with Your Passions

It is important to focus on what you are passionate about first and then find a way to make money at it. Get in touch with your heart first, otherwise, the left side of your brain will rule out perfectly good ideas without having explored them.

“Money allows us the freedom to pursue the things that are important to us. Money is not an end it itself.”
– Stacy Allison, first American woman to successfully climb Mt. Everest

Honor Numero Uno: Design Your Life Around Your Priorities

Many people try to fit their dreams into their life and complain there are not enough hours in the day to make it happen. If you want your dream to become a reality, make it a priority. Otherwise, it will never be more than a pipedream.

Visualize Every Step of Your Dream and Watch the Magic Unfold

The muscle movement that helps us physically take action in our lives begins in the mind. That is why all great golfers, tennis players, basketball players, etc. visualize themselves making a shot beforehand.  An experiment conducted by Alan Richardson, an Australian psychologist, found 23% performance improvement among subjects who visualized every day for 20 days. In his paper published in Research Quarterly, Richardson wrote that the most effective visualization occurs when the visualizer feels and sees what he is doing.

“I really visualized it, too, even as a child watching those programs. I could visualize myself walking up the stage, up the stairs. For me, visualizing those dreams happening was pertinent to making that happen, because I could see it. I pictured it in my head”  
– Mary Youngblood, welfare mom turned Grammy Award Winner

Easy Does It: Inspired Action Always Trumps Forced Action

Inspired action is joyful action that is in alignment with your dream. It is action you want to take and the idea of it brings a smile to your face. When you take inspired action, you are aligned with what you are doing and things flow naturally.

Contrast this to action that you are forcing yourself to take regardless of whether you feel like doing it. Maybe you are in a bad mood or have a headache but decide you have to take this action and keep trudging forward. The likelihood is that if you take action from this place it will take you twice as long to accomplish your task or goal or there will be obstacles that come up along the way. It's like swimming against strong currents.

Laser in On One Idea, Business or Income Stream at a Time

One of the mistakes people make is diversifying too quickly. This is true whether you are trying to build multiple streams of income or are just working on several different ideas at one time. The key is getting the first stream or idea up and running, producing good revenue, and having systems in place so it will keep running without you before going on to the next unrelated stream.

 “Several things going on at one time are a distraction to cash.”
– Loral Langemeier, single mom, financial literacy coach and millionaire

Disarm That Sneaky Inner Saboteur

Even when we know what we need to do, we often don't do it out of fear of experiencing the emotions and other things that may come up as a result.

Fear of failure and fear of success are the two biggest internal fears that people often face. Most other fears such as fear of rejection fall underneath one of these major categories. As human beings, we will go to great lengths to avoid our fears. That is why so many ideas never get beyond being a great idea, or projects are started and never finished. It is easy to find reasons, excuses, other diversions or projects, create chaos, and sometimes to even create emergencies to avoid these negative feelings or outcomes.

One of the most important things you can do is allow it to be okay to have these feelings. Then step back and notice what it is you do to get in your own way. When you have identified what you do, you can make a conscious decision to do it differently.

These spiritual and practical principles were excerpted from the book, “I Can't Believe I Get Paid To Do This!”  Remarkable People Reveal 26 Proven Strategies for Making Your Dreams a Reality by Stacey Mayo. Stacey is the director of The Center for Balanced Living. She can be reached at 770-643-0886.