Your assignment is to treat success like a wild—but very appealing—little animal. Do whatever you can today to find it and give it the proper environment in which to develop. What can you do right now to invite success into your life?
Consider the way you live your life today. Is it a nurturing environment for success? What does your home look like at this very moment? Is it neat, warm, and inviting, with everything pretty much in order, or does it look like a tornado roared through a few minutes ago? Do you surround yourself with interesting, fun, optimistic people who are also looking for ways to grow? Or are most of your friends complaining, negative individuals who don’t take good care of themselves and tend to bring you down?
Look around the environment you’ve created. If you were this little animal named Success, would you drop by and stay awhile?
DAY
88
“Eighty percent of success is showing up.”
— Woody Allen
Jessica finally worked up the nerve to look for a new job. She had been with her company for five years and had a very comfortable spot in the corporation, but she yearned for new challenges. That evening, Jessica went online to look for open positions in her line of work. She sent her résumé to ten promising enterprises and then sat back and waited. Nothing happened.
Every day she put in her usual 110 percent at her less-than-desirable job, and every night she went online to look for new job postings. Three months after she started her search, her cell phone rang. It was the human resources department of an exciting new technology firm, and they wanted her to come in for an interview.
Jessica was ecstatic. She took a day off of work for the interview and plunged forward into what was probably the most humiliating hour of her life. She was woefully underqualified for the position, and the executive interviewing her made that very clear.
Jessica returned to her ho-hum job the next day and put in her usual 110 percent only to find out at the end of the day that her office would be closing, and they were all out of a job. That’s when the miracle occurred. A client of hers had been watching her performance over the past few years. When the client found out Jessica was out of a job, she immediately offered her employment at her firm. Jessica’s new job included incredible opportunities, challenges, and a hefty raise.
Your assignment today is to show up. You never know what will happen.
DAY
89
“It took me twenty years to become an overnight success.”
— Eddie Cantor
How long do you think it will take you to become a success? The quote above is funny, but it holds a hidden truth. Very few people become an overnight success. It often takes years to create the life of your dreams.
Turn to a new page in your journal today and find some colored pencils or markers or even crayons. You homework is to draw your timeline to success. Feel free to include pictures and dates on the timeline that depict milestones you intend to reach along the way.
While you create this timeline, take some time to consider what you will really need to do in order to get from point A to point B. You don’t just wake up one morning and find out you are success. It takes planning and actual effort. So what are you going to do to get there?
You may want to take a college course in your field of interest or lose five pounds or join a networking organization. Put those things on the timeline and give yourself a target date of completion. Think about the gradual routes to success, too, and depict them throughout your timeline. They may include spending more time with family, taking a walk every evening after dinner, meditating, or offering to help others through volunteerism. Create an appealing timeline today that you can refer to for inspiration tomorrow and every day.
DAY
90
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
— Thomas A. Edison
You’ve spent some time exploring success and ways in which you can attain it. Now, it is important to look at the flip side and come to terms with your observations and beliefs about failure.
Thomas Edison displayed a remarkably healthy view of failure in the quote above. When he was working on creating the electric light bulb, he dealt with thousands of roadblocks, but in the end he triumphed because he never considered failure a dead end. Instead, it was the discovery of something that didn’t work! His failures provided him with valuable information in his research. Edison was one of the most productive inventors in history. He held over 1,000 patents for his inventions, and he remains a model of success today. Did you know that he also excelled in failures?
How do you react to failure? Your assignment today is to journal about how you deal with it. When something doesn’t work, do you quit? Or does failure encourage you to work harder to find a better solution? Come up with three ways to change your present habits and deal with failure better.
Take a lesson from Thomas Edison today. If you want to achieve your biggest dreams, then you must practice turning failure into success. How can you use the knowledge you’ve gained from things that don’t work? What can you do differently the next time around? What did you learn from the experience? You never fail if you learn from your mistakes.
DAY
91
“In Life as in Football Fall Forward when you fall.”
— Arthur Guiterman
Arthur Guiterman was an American writer who was best known for his humorous poems that cut straight to the truth. In today’s quote, he offers up a valuable life lesson. When you fall—and you will fall—fall forward.
Many of us fear failure. There is no way we would subject ourselves to a heavy hitting atmosphere in life. We don’t want to get hurt, so we would rather not try to reach for some of those lofty goals that will bring us success. But what would happen if we get in the game and plan to get tackled?
Think about this for a moment. Would it take a little pressure off if you just assume you will fall down and plan for how you’re going to pick yourself back up? That might be less stressful than hoping and praying that you will get through life unscathed. The truth is, if you plan to reach success, you will experience failure. You will fall down. You have a choice, though. You have a choice to fall forward.
What exactly does it mean to fall forward? Write down your answer to that question in your journal. When something doesn’t work, find at least one lesson you can draw from the situation that will help you move forward in life. What did you learn? What can you change? What will you remember never to do again? How can you work more effectively with others to attain your goal the next time?
Your job today is to fall forward.