Success Stories—Reliving The Past Helps You Build The Future

By:Michael Clark

One of the exercises that I have many clients do is list out all the successes they’ve had in life. I ask them to start with early childhood and list everything they can remember being successful at. One of my clients recently gave the assignment to his girlfriend. She asked me afterwards what the point was. She hadn’t found it very useful.

What I told her is that that I’ve found that this exercise serves two important services. First, it’s a self esteem booster. Most people don’t realize how many successes they’ve had in their lives until they write them down. Some express surprise and sometimes some modesty when sharing their successes. I’d recommend this exercise just for this boost alone, but the second reason for doing this is even more valuable. Success leaves clues behind.

When I ask a client to list their successes, it’s usually because they are stuck in some area of their business. They’ve tried several strategies to get unstuck and nothing has worked. When we take some of their major successes and analyze them, we find patterns. I ask them how they accomplished major tasks. What methodology did they use?

What we typically find is that they have a natural success style. For some people this is setting a goal and creating a detailed plan to meet that goal. For others it’s just jumping in and doing whatever it takes to make it work. Others might just go with the flow and do what appears easy or exciting. One client set a small goal and met it. Then he set higher and higher goals meeting each one before he moved on to the next. It ended with four consecutive world championships.

So if you are finding yourself stuck in trying to accomplish a task in your business, stop right now and list out your successes. Start from being born—it’s not easy to get out and start breathing. Move through your entire life and write down every success you can remember. You might have things like starring in a school play, completing a century on your bicycle, getting an A in a difficult subject. Make sure you cover graduations, college degrees, advanced trainings. Don’t limit it to just work related or school related successes. Make sure you include the things you most enjoyed succeeding at.

Once you have the list, go through and pick two or three major ones and analyze them. What did you do to succeed? How did you feel? Were you afraid beforehand? If you were, how did you cope with or minimize the fear? Did you do a lot of planning? Did you jump right in? Were you alone or did you have help? Find the reasons you succeeded.

Now look for a pattern. I did this recently because I was really struggling to get my business going strongly. The exercise revealed that many of my successes came when I had a structured environment with a lot of creative activities. I realized that I needed more structure in my business. I had plenty of creative time. So I found a friend that I can do weekly check-ins with that holds me accountable for my actions. Each week I share with him my goals or homework for the next week. Then when we meet I share how well I met the goal. This is making a huge difference in the success of my business. Try mapping your past successes and watch as it makes a huge difference in your current success.

Digg del.icio.us Blink Stumble Spurl Reddit Netscape Furl

Article keywords: Successful small business, business action plan, business plan sample small, business success

Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com

Business expert Michael Clark has been helping businesses including Fortune 500 companies such as IBM and Cellular One succeed for over 20 years. Michael is an authority on getting business owners out of overwhem and getting the most out of their businesses. Get more business success ideas at biznbeyond.com

Top Personal Development Articles
1). What To Do When Your Fears And Worries Overwhelm You By : Stan Popovich What do you do when your worries and anxieties overwhelm you? Here is a brief list of techniques that a person can use to help manage their worries and anxieties. Sometimes what we fear may happen can be overly exaggerated. A lot of times, our worrying can make the problem even worse. Remember that all the worrying in the world will not change anything.
2). Stuttering And Stammering Speech Impediment By : blueboy Stammering or as it is sometimes known as stuttering is a form of speech impediment. My name is Stephen Hill and I had a stammer for eighteen years. I went to various types of speech therapy which even though was of some use, never really offered me any hope of a "cure". At the age of twenty two, after a lot of hard work I managed to overcome the stammer and I now help other people to achieve fluency.
3). The first 14 dominant laws of the subconscious mind By : Emmanuel Segui Copyright 2006 Emmanuel Segui The subconscious mind is fascinating and intriguing. Yet, it is challenging to understand how it works so you can use its full power solve our problems and enhance every aspect of your life. Here are the difficult principles of the subconscious mind made very easy so you can apply them in your life today and see results tomorrow.
4). Stop Fear Now By : Denton Krypps I'm convinced that fear is one of the worst things in life. Think about all of the negative ways that fear affects your life. Think about all of the decisions you make or do not make because of fear in your life. Or think about the risks that you do not take or the relationships you do not pursue because of fear. You would do well to take a good look at the fears in your life and to attempt to tackle them head first until they are no longer fears.
5). How To Be Assertive Without Getting ANGRY By : Rosella Aranda Sometimes our efforts to show our assertiveness cross the line. We end up coming across as rude, aggressive or downright belligerent.
6). Avoiding Your Persistent Fears Will Not Make Them Go Away By : Stan Popovich Your fears, anxieties, and other problems have the best of you and you don’t know where to turn for help. At some point you feel totally helpless as you struggle each day. What do you do? As a layman and an author of a Managing Fear book, there were times that my fears had the best of me. Through these experiences, there is one thing that I learned.
7). Success After Failure - Even Genghis Khan Lost Some Early Battles By : John Watson Both the worst and the best of the great achievers had the belief in themselves and the resilience to overcome early failures. One of these was none other than Genghis Khan. There are powerful lessons we can learn from him. In 1162 a child, called Temujin, was born in Mongolia clutching a blood clot - a sign that he was destined to be a great warrior.
8). Crisis Management: The Most Basic Of Needs By : Sandy Baker Crisis management is something that every individual needs to consider. Whether you are preparing yourself for a crisis situation or if you are responsible for a school full of children, it is necessary to be prepared. There are excellent resources to help you do this and it also helps to take a good look at your individual situation. There are many types of crisis management situations and we will discuss that here.
9). Being the Mountain By : Judy Ringer As I hiked up the path to the Peaceful Valley Chapel, I relished the quiet of my early morning solitude. After many years as a participant and assistant instructor at Thomas Crum's Journey To Center Program, this beautiful and energizing ten-minute hike had become a personal ritual. Each morning of each Journey to Center week, before our breathing and meditation session at 7, I always hike to the top of this small mountain to be inspired by the view of a much higher mountain range in the distance.
10). What Causes People To Develop A Speech Impediment? By : blueboy I am one of many people who are unfortunate enough to develop a speech impediment in childhood. This article describes why these impediments may occur and how I went about achieving fluency. For the purpose of this article, I concentrate on the speech impediment known as stuttering. There are many reasons why people may develop a stutter, it can be.

New Personal Development Articles
1). Achieve Emotional Freedom By : ian Williamson Emotional Freedom Techniques, or EFT as it is most commonly known, is probably the most popular of a group of techniques collectively referred to as Energy Psychology (EP)
2). Assertiveness vs Aggression By : Robin Chandler When feelings are bottled up assertiveness can spill over into aggression, leaving the other person feeling attacked rather than reasoned with.
3). Are You Really Making Decisions? By : Garry Zancanaro There is a massive difference between hoping and wishing for success, happiness, self improvement, or that something will change in our lives, and actively deciding to make changes to our lives.
4). Why Self Improvement Is Important - Part 1 By : Garry Zancanaro An alarming percentage of people spend most of what they earn and many also have large debts. They are often no more that a few paydays away from bankruptcy and have little, if anything, put aside for emergencies, much less for a comfortable retirement.
5). Have You Got Your Priorities Right? By : Garry Zancanaro The ability to be able to set priorities and deal with our most important tasks first is an essential skill for making progress towards our goals and achieving results.
6). Dealing With Frustration By : Garry Zancanaro We all suffer from frustration, and being able to effectively deal with frustration is a very important skill to develop. It can be a decisive factor between success and failure.
7). Creative Napping and Other Power Tools - Part 2 By : Angie Dixon Creative Goofing Off, and other power tools, in part 2 of this 3-part series.
8). Quit Smoking with Self Hypnosis By : Gail Metcalf With the help of a self hypnosis program, you can overcome your craving for cigarettes.
9). Creative Napping and Other Power Tools - Part 3 By : Angie Dixon Final article in a series of 3 on creative power tools
10). To Move Forward You Have To Be Able To Bounce Back! By : Garry Zancanaro Successful people are also disappointed and affected by setbacks, and certainly get knocked down more often than most, if only because they try more things. This may happen not once or twice, but dozens or even hundreds of times. But successful people refuse to stay down - because they are resilient and will not be denied their dreams and goals.