PARKING AT A LEVEL OF SUCCESS

        PARKING AND LACK OF PLANNING FOR WHAT’S NEXT

I’ve discovered that one of the greatest enemies to success is the lack of planning for success! Another is reaching a certain level of success and then parking. Success becomes stagnate when people park themselves and insist on staying there instead of setting new goals and continuing to grow.

People park when they sit back and rest on past laurels; the mistake being that they allow overconfidence and past successes to cloud future rewards. This situation makes people lazy and overlyconfident in their business dealings. They become board with their lives and fall victim to complacency.

Another problem with parking is that it also sets up people for a nose-dive if the tide changes, as it often does. As such, it behooves successfull people to continue setting goals that keeps them feeling alive and active. Staying active doesn’t have to mean making more money or reaching a higher level of competiveness, it means setting goals that makes your life mean something more than just making money.

A stagnant situation happens when people stop dreaming, stop reaching for goals, and stop growing in their businesses!  This is NOT a good thing! However, I’ve been around a number of success- oriented people over the past thirty years, and I’ve seen this situation happen all too frequently.

It took me a long time to figure out why people die in their businesses or why they fail in life when they seemed to be at the pinnacle of success in their businesses. In almost every instance, parking was the reason; they did not plan for what to do next once success was attained.

Unfortunately, people often spend too much time and energy on building for their future that they forget how to build a good life in the present or how to maintain good relationships. In so doing, they take people in their lives  for granted and don’t see their blessings. This can happen when people see success as a destination instead of a wonderful journey through life.

The problem with people treating success as only a destination is that, once they’ve arrived, they don’t think about what to do next. In other words, they forgot to set additional goals for what is next after reaching their specified goals. Life has a tendency to become routine, mundane, dull, and unexciting. Life seems empty when people have not planned for “What comes next.”

A woman I once knew named Anne found herself in this situation. She described herself as feeling depression. That’s when she asked herself, “Why do I feel this way? All I want to do is cry. I should be happy. I have everything that I could ever want and life is so good to me.”  

Anne’s best friend suggested that perhaps what she was experiencing was just a let-down after coming off the high she had been on during that period of time. She had been successful in her business and also had just married a wonderful man. It had been such a whirlwind leading up to the wedding that, when it was all over, she did not know what to do next. In other words, because she had been busily working hard for the event of a lifetime (which she had been praying for a long time), a big hole was left inside her when it was all over. The problem was she had nothing in place to substitute for the energy high she had been on for the past several months.

My point is that you should not only plan to succeed, but you should also plan for what happens after you reach the level of success for which you had planned. You should make plans for what comes next by setting new goals. Think about the following questions:

• What motivates you to move ahead in life and to reach for another goal?
• What worthy project would you like to be involved with next?
• What will you do with your time and energy once you have gotten to where you want to be?
• How do you see yourself in the future and decide what you want to see there?
• Who will be there with you, who will not be there, and what will you be doing or not doing?
• What kind of person will you be, spoiled or humbled?
• How will you spend your time, energy, and money?
• Will you be wasteful with those assets or continue to use them wisely and charitably?
• How much time or money will you be giving to charity, and to what organizations?

These are questions you need to answer so that you have a realistic plan in place to keep you motivated and growing each time you reach a new goal. Also, you need to be adding new lifeblood to everything you set out to accomplish. Old blood gets sluggish and thick when there’s nothing to give it boost once in a while. This means you need to bring new people and new ideas into your circle on a regular basis.

I welcome comments about this subject. Do you believe that planning for what’s next and following through with what you had planned is important?

Challenge The Status Quo

I learned that we gain a higher level of understanding when we challenge the status quo, which is the way we always do things. In the process of confronting the status quo (learning about, understanding, and changing the rut) common sense and wisdom develop within us. 

Okay! I admit that challenging the status quo did not create peace around me immediately nor provide success! At first, it did not help me develop a higher level of understanding of those things that bring success, peace, joy, and happiness to one’s lifel. In fact, in the beginning, it did just the opposite!

There were times when the people closest to me had trouble accepting the changes that were taking place inside me. They continually resisted the new attitudes that were emerging from the person I was becoming. As I learned later, this often happens when people change internally.

I quickly realized that when we take a stand for what we believe in and make defining changes in our lives, it often changes the way people respond to us. It could be upsetting for some of them because they do not want the status quo disturbed; they are happy with how things are now. This is not necessarily a bad thing when we understand this situation!

People will not always accept what we are doing or be happy about it—but it’s not their choice, it’s ours. However, it is always wrong if they become abusive toward us and try to prevent us from doing what we want (or need) to do. We must stay true to the course in this situation, set clear parameters in our dealings with them, and not shirk in keeping our commitments to ourselves.

I believe wisdom teaches us to expect a certain amount of resistance from those who know us best. Still, having faith in God and in our own ability helps us stay true to our inner selves. This faith is what drives us to succeed in reaching our potential and the measure of our creation. 

In conclusion, I know we all get stuck in ruts; it is part of life. However, let me make it clear that escaping your rut does not include running away from your responsibilities and the people who depend on you. It does not mean you do something totally off the wall or drastic either. The  point is that reckless and irresponsible actions create scars on the people around you, just like ruts caused by tires in mud leave scars in the terrain where the truck went. You must do everything you can to avoid leaving scars on people who care about you, especially when you are in a selfish and self-centered mood.

In order to make changes you need to make, you must be thoughtful and intelligent about it. Scars from mistakes leave lasting marks, and the consequences from what we do goes on for a long time. Find a friend, your spouse maybe, with whom you can talk through things before doing anything.

It would be wise to sleep on an idea for a day or so, before you make a decision; just to see if it looks the same in the daylight as it did when you were awake all night thinking about it. Can you tell that I’ve done this a few times before?

Let me know how changing the rut is working for you! I would enjoy hearing from you, and hearing about your experiences, your thoughts, your mistakes, and your successes. You can help others who read this report, if you will tell us about your experiences. 

Stuck In A Rut Or Self-made Prision?

 

Being in a rut keeps you stuck in the same place, day after day; perhaps it feels like you’re in a self-made prision that you cannot escape.

If the rut doesn’t change and status quo isn’t challenged, then nothing positive will change for you. Your life will not feel like you have purpose.

You will not be excited about your life, and you will probably feel bored doing the same thing every day; day in and day out.

Status quo has to change if you want a different outcome than you usually get. That means challenging your rut, changing some things in your life that are not as fulfilling as you want, and setting new goals. These goals need to be achievable in the short-run and in the long-run as well.

If you want to change your life and make it more of what you want, you need to be precise in what you want, think, and say. You need to convince your subconsciouse mind that you can have the life you want; otherwise nothing will change.  

The subconscious mind gathers information as data and logs it into the brain. It cannot tell the difference between true or false, fantasy or real. It just gathers the information; that’s all. You can easily reprogram your mind to be what you want in reality if you quit telling yourself things that you don’t really want. Everyday, you need to be telling yourself the things you want and take every opportunity to convince youself and others that things will change.

To an extent, the mind’s creative juices can bring into reality what you think about, if it is thought about often enough to make a permanent impression on your mind. Permanent impressions are embedded on the brain when emotions are attached to an idea, a phrase, or an image.

Success-oriented programs use positive affirmations to help imprint constructive information into your brain. They use inspiring messages that have emotions attached to it. That’s why you are told to focus on your dreams (the “WOW” or the “WHY”) when building your business or trying to achieve what you want.

Affirmations use scripts that, when said in present tense as if already attained,  represent your goals and dreams. When repeated on a daily basis, new concepts can be imprinted on your mind. When done correctly, powerful dynamics change  your life. When done wrong, it is hard, if not impossible to correct without proper intervention.

Now that you understand the power your mind has to create what you believe, you can see why it is important to control your self-talk, what you say to others, and what you allow others to say to you. What you say must be in agreement with what your affirmations say about you. If it’s in contradiction, your life will not change.

Being stuck in your rut prevents you from changing your thinking. When you stop believing things will be different, when you think your life cannot change and be what you dream of, you no longer have faith in the future. Neither will you have faith in your ability to make things better for yourself or your family.

Until you challenge status quo and recognize that you are living in a rut, your life will continue to be unsatisfying and without meaning. So what can you do to change your rut?  I suggest you start small, with changes that others will not notice in the beginning: take a different route to work, answer the phone different than usual, talk kinder to your family members and co-workers.  

Make a list of what you want and then tell yourself that you can make these dreams real. You need someone to  account to that understands your visions and goals. Someone you can bounce ideas off of. If you need someone to fill this role, I am willing to help you. I am a really good listener, supporter, and I will NOT try to push an opportunity on you or a product. I am willing to help you with NO STRINGS ATTACHED!

Send me an email at Judith@AssociatedBusinesssystems.net