In the 1920′s and 30′s,  a young journalist  called Napoleon Hill, interviewed 500 of the most successful people in America. He found that people who create success have many things in common. These are some of them as described in his best-selling book, “Think and Grow Rich”

1. Decide what you want. Desire is the starting point of all achievement. Desire is a crazy mad emotion that you absolutely have to satisfy, not a rational reasoned argument for doing something.

2. Believe that you can get what you want. Self doubt will prevent you from taking action. No-one is born with a sense of what they can’t do. Limiting beliefs are learned and they can and must be unlearned. It is usually easier to overcome other people’s judgements than our own.

3. You don’t have to do it all yourself. As Mother Teresa famously told Bob Geldof, “I can’t do what you do and you can’t do what I do but together we can change the world.” Surround yourself with people who can do what you can’t and who respect you for what you can do. Start or join a  MasterMind Group with like minded people.

4. Make practical use your imagination. Work out how to turn your dreams into reality. Everything, everything, starts out as an idea. Ideas are the beginning point of all achievement but they need to be harnessed into practical action.

5. Create a plan, organise your ideas and take continuous action. Most people put more effort into planning a holiday than planning their life. Successful people don’t just react to things that happen to them, they question whether something will take them closer to their goal before acting on it or rejecting it.

6. Avoid procrastination and make decisions. The ability to make decisions comes back to understanding exactly what it is that you want, to the burning desire and definite purpose that underpins all achievement. Successful people in all walks of life decide quickly and firmly and the world has a habit of making room for the person who knows where they are going and why.

7. Persist. Things will go wrong, people will let you down. If your desire is strong enough you will find a way through all difficulties to achieve your desire. Don’t keep doing the same things and expecting different results. Find different ways to achieve your goals. Paulo Coelho was committed to a mental asylum by his parents three times and subjected to electro-convulsive therapy because they thought he must be mad to want to become a writer instead of a lawyer. He persisted and his book, The Alchemist, sold over 40 million copies.

8. Aquire power and learn how to use it. The ability to lead others in a spirit of harmony to achieve a definite objective is a major source of success but successful people say that personal power and self mastery are most important.

9. Understand that sex is the most powerful of human desires. When this desire is harnessed into a creative process it can be the source of genius. It can also be a huge temptation and has destroyed many great people.  Successful people say that they are able to transmute its power into a creative force that helps them to produce and action ideas that in many instances makes their fortunes.

10. Learn to use the power of the subconscious mind. Everything we have ever experienced is kept in the vast storehouse of our sub-conscious. It can work for or against us but when we learn how to harness this power it makes us unstoppable. What we think of the world and ourselves makes us not only who we are but who we can be.

11. Develop and learn to trust the ‘sixth sense’. Intuition can help us to avoid dangers and grasp opportunities. Intuition is part of our nature and many successful people admit that intuition is a big part of their success including Donald Trump, Oprah, Richard Branson and even Bill Gates. Einstein and Edison described their creative process as having original ideas that didn’t come from the rational foundation of the mind. Jonas Salk, the inventor of the polio vaccine, says, ‘The intuitive mind tells the logical mind where to look next.’

12. Deal with fear, the major obstacle to achievement. Almost every feeling of fear we experience is as the result of an IMAGINED situation, not a real one. In almost every case, the imagined situation that we most fear never happens. When a situation that we had feared actually materialised, most of us deal with it without any real consequences. The only thing holding most people back is their own imagination!

Is it ever too late to do the things you once dreamed of doing?

Mary Wesley, best-selling author, took up writing at 70

Charles Darwin’s first book wasn’t published until he was in his 50’s

Colonel Sanders was in this 60’s when he franchised Kentucky Fried Chicken

Ray Kroc was in his 50’s when he launched McDonalds

Agatha Christie was 62 when she wrote The Mousetrap

Julia Child was 50 before she took up cooking professionally

Benjamin Franklin was 78 when he invented bifocals.

Life expectancy has doubled in the last 100 years. There is no longer an official retirement age. If you go to college at 40 and qualify at 45 you could still have half your life left to work at what you love. It’s never too late to become an achiever instead of a dreamer!

"No Hands" by Adam Hawkins http://anodizeproductions.com

Should you set big fat hairy audacious goals or stick to the reasonable, more easily achieved variety?

Many interviews with highly successful people reveal that they set themselves huge goals, fired by a burning desire to achieve something specific and that these goals determine their direction and purpose in life and colour all their decisions and actions.

They also freely admit that when they set these goals it’s usually without any clear idea of how to achieve them.

What they do have however,  is an unwavering belief that they CAN.

What happens is that when a goal excites you enough, you start to live every day in a way that makes it possible to achieve it and obstacles don’t seem so daunting. Setting reasonable goals rarely leads to that sense of excitement so there isn’t the same incentive to overcome obstacles and the goals  just becomes another “so what?”

All great achievements begin with an idea, a want, a longing, a desire.

While she was still Posh Spice, Victoria Adams said she wanted to be “more famous than Persil”. As Mrs Victoria Beckham she got her desire but many of our wants and longings never get past the wishing and dreaming stage.

If you’ve ever had your dream laughed at, if you’ve been told to ‘get real’, keep your feet on the floor, your shoulder to the wheel and your nose to the grindstone (ouch!) you’ve probably let go of that dream and it may now be just a vague longing.

How would you feel if you re-ignited that flame? What’s stopping you from blowing on the coals of your burning desire and setting off on an adventure of achievement?

My guess is, that interfering with your thinking, your determination and your belief is a very small word called FEAR.  It may be fear of failure, fear of success or simply a series of “what if’s?”

Fear is a tricky emotion. Most of the people who have achieved big fat hairy audacious goals say that the magnitude of what they were trying to achieve scared them – but they did it anyway.

If you knew that you could not possibly fail, what would you attempt?

On June 16th in Cambridge, Andy Gibney will be leading an interactive session on “How to set and achieve audacious goals and create a sense of purpose. Details here >>

If you can’t be there, join in the debate by telling us your views here – it would be great to know what you think – especially if you have a big fat hairy audacious goal!

Why making decisions is crucial to success

The procrastination I’m talking about is not about putting things off but rather about not making decisions. Until a decision is taken no action is possible and it the lack of action that causes most failures. Procrastination is a complex psychological behavior that affects everyone to some degree or another. While it can be a minor irritation for some people it a source of considerable stress and anxiety for others.

Procrastination is sometimes confused with time management but this is not really the issue.

An analysis of over 25,000 people who had experienced some kind of failure revealed that the inability to make decisions was near the top of the list of reasons. (Napoleon Hill ‘Think and Grow Rich’)

Henry Ford was renowned for attributing his success to his ability to make decisions quickly and stick to them, often despite fierce opposition from his advisors.

Are you easily swayed by others?

If you find you are easily swayed by the opinions of others and constantly change your mind because you are afraid of what others might say or think about you, procrastination will cripple you and stop you from making a decision and more importantly, from taking action. The ability to make decisions comes back to understanding exactly what it is that you want, to the burning desire and definite purpose that underpins all achievement.

Leaders in all walks of life decide quickly and firmly and the world has a habit of making room for the person who knows where they are going and why.

Have you worked out how you make decisions?

Do you work from logic, from gut instinct or do you take advice from others? Recent studies have shown that decision making can be affected by our prejudices, our past experience and even our surroundings.

However, the reason that most people put off making a decision is the fear of getting it WRONG.

Procrastination leads to inaction. Inaction leads to failure. Failure leads to loss of confidence which make it hard to make decisions. The only way out of this loop is to have courage, make a decision in the full knowledge that whatever happens you will deal with it and remember that most fears are about things that never happen.

Steps to Success

(Inspired by Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich”)

1. Decide what you want. Desire is the starting point of all achievement.
2. Believe that you can get what you want. Self doubt will prevent you from taking action.
3. You don’t have to do it all yourself. Surround yourself with people who know what you don’t know and who can do what you can’t do.
4. Make practical use your imagination. Work out how to turn your dreams into reality.
5. Create a plan, organise your ideas and take continuous action.
6. Avoid procrastination and make decisions. Use information and knowledge from others but let the decisions be your own.
7. Persist. Things will go wrong, people will let you down. If your desire is strong enough you will find a way through all difficulties to achieve your desire.
8. Aquire power and learn how to use it. The ability to lead others in a spirit of harmony to achieve a definite objective is a major source of success.
9. Understand that sex is the most powerful of human desires. When this desire is harnessed into a creative process it can be the source of genius.
10. Learn to use the power of the subconscious mind which can work for or against you but which can be controlled.
11. Develop and learn to trust the ‘sixth sense’. Intuition can help us to avoid dangers and grasp opportunities.
12. Deal with fear, the major obstacle to achievement.

Join us at our next event for more Inspirational Ideas

http://theinspiredgroup.com/inspired-events/

If desire is the starting point of all achievement, 
the  first obstacle that many people face is
acknowledging that they have a burning desire or a 
Definite Major Purpose in life.

There are lots of reasons for this: the most common is that as soon as you have the thought about what you want , another part of you will simultaneously be telling you that it is impossible or that it is a selfish goal or an unworthy one.

For as long as you do battle with yourself you will find it hard to decide on a Definite Major Purpose and will never really believe that you can have what you want.

What are your beliefs about getting what you want? Can you be honest with yourself? Do you really believe you can have what you want or do you believe that you shouldn’t want it?

If you COULD have whatever you wanted, without hard work, suffering, sacrifice or consequences, what would it be?

Simon Scott's Burning Desire

The first lesson in Napoleon Hill’s 13 proven steps to riches is that  Desire is the starting point of all achievement. He also said this:

You must have a definite major purpose – do you want money, fame, power, contentment, personality, peace of mind, happiness or something else?

You must know what you want, what you will give to get it and a definite plan and time by which you will get it.

All earned riches have their beginning in an idea.

Opportunity often comes in a different form to the one we might have been expecting.

When one is truly ready for a thing it puts in an appearance.

Disappointments and difficulties do not turn aside true desire.

Writing at the end of The Great Depression in 1937,  
Napoleon Hill stated (my paraphrasing) “Never has there
been so great an opportunity for practical dreamers as
now exists. The economic collapse has reduced all men,
substantially, to the same level. A new race is about to be
run. The real leaders of the world have always been men
who harnessed and put into practical use the intangible, unseen forces of unborn opportunity.. Every great leader, from the dawn of civilization was a dreamer – a practical dreamer with a definite purpose and a burning desire to turn dreams into reality. Tolerance and an open mind are practical necessities of the dreamer of today, there is a vast business, financial and industrial world to be remoulded and redirected along new and better lines.

Every human being who reaches the age of understanding of the PURPOSE OF MONEY, (i.e. as a means of exchange) wishes for it. The method by which this DESIRE is translated into its financial equivalent consists of six definite, practical steps:

1. Fix in your mind the exact amount of money you desire. It is not sufficient to say ‘plenty’ – you must be definite.
2. Determine exactly what you intend to give in return for the money you desire. (There is no such thing as something for nothing)
3. Establish a definite idea of when you intend to posses the money you desire.
4. Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire, and, whether you are ready or not, begin at once to put this plan into action.
5. Write a clear, concise statement which says: The amount of money you intend to aquire, the time limit for its acquisition, what you intend to give in return and the plan by which you will aquire it.
6. Read this statement out ALOUD twice daily, just before going to bed and on getting up. As you read, see and feel and believe yourself already in possession of the money.