Throughout my life, I’ve seen people succeed who weren’t the smartest people, didn’t have the best, or sometimes any, education or much money to start, didn’t offer a product or service of particularly high quality or that was cheaper or better from what was already available, and sometimes they overcharged for it by a great amount.
So what did they have going for them that made them so successful?
Persistence.
How persistent are you?
Here are some tips that have helped me to keep up my persistence over the years:
Self-motivation:
I regularly listen to audio recordings of successful coaches, speakers and experts that have attained the same business goals that I’ve set for myself.
It¹s not often new info that I’m picking up from listening. I already know the strategies of what they’ve done, and I have my own versions of those in place and in process.
But it’s the reinforcement of hearing real people tell their own success stories that has a very powerful effect on me. And sometimes listening to the others say it in a little different perspective can help me to think of new, exciting twists that I can implement and take action on.
The same goes for articles, blog posts and other social media snippets that I come across.
Time management:
I use several different time management techniques to keep me on task and on track. I use an Outlook reminder set for each morning as a daily to-do list and a rough outline of things to get done later in the week.
I also like to highlight three to five “Must Do’s” on that list for each day. By getting those done, I keep my momentum up and my business moving forward.
There are daily items on the list that don’t get done and get rolled over to the next day. Those will either get accomplished when the time is right, or get deleted after being rolled over enough times that I realize they aren¹t really an important piece of the puzzle after all.
For this to work, I have given myself permission to delete old action items, and I realize it’s not the end of the world and these are not high priority.
After a while, they eventually become liabilities in costing me energy used to ignore them, and so they have to be purged.
And I’m ok with that.
Sleep:
I also keep a pen and paper next to my bed to use at night to add any extra items to my to-do list that I think of for the next day, so those won’t be rattling around in my head when I’m trying to sleep so I can relax and get a good night sleep.
Trying to not to forget something at night will definitely keep you from falling asleep. And when you finally do fall asleep, the chances are you won’t remember it in the morning anyway.
Stay with what you enjoy:
I try to keep my activities around the things that keep me energized, engaged and productive.
Sometimes that means listening to an MP3 while on a long drive that has some great business ideas.
Or making sure I take time out of my week for a relaxing bike ride, a visit to the gym, or go to the pool so that I have time to clear my head.
I like to go to a park almost every morning to do qigong exercises that help to focus and bring into balance my mind, body and energy. If you’re not familiar with qigong, it’s kind of like tai chi but it’s specifically for wellness rather than martial arts. I highly recommend it.
I usually end up with great business ideas and fixes to life problems when I am doing one of these activities and not putting pressure on myself by trying to specifically come up with something.
When I am really busy, usually the shower is where the good, short ideas get created. Again, it’s because when you let your mind relax, inspiration and ideas can flow easily. No pen handy then, but I do my best.
Motivation from others:
Most of us need some encouraging feedback and positive reinforcement from the outside.
So set up systems and relationships that give that to you.
I get this when I work with my own coach and work with my clients.
It also helps to get a compliment on an article or from someone that attended one of my online events or workshops and was helped by it.
Done is better than perfect:
Barrowed from one of my coaches, Christian Mickelsen, I couldn’t agree with this more. I’m a person that is prone to getting bogged down by perfectionism, so I understand it well.
One of my inspirations for this article was a blurb I read a while back about Thomas Edison needing 10,000 attempts to get the filament right in his light bulb invention.
And, had he given up at number 9,999, we would still be in the dark.
“Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.”
Thomas Edison
I decided I wanted to use that story as a great intro for this article. So I started some research to get the facts of it straight.
I thought it would be easy maybe 15 minutes to find the info on the Internet.
That was not the case.
I found several conflicting variations of the story, which in itself turned out to be much longer and involved than I anticipated.
One of the biggest takeaways from that experience?
You also should know when it’s time to let something go and just move on. 🙂
To your success,
Jason
