Three keys to success in life (That will change your 2020)

Everyone wants to be “successful.” Sure the goals change depending on who is talking but most people want to get the brass ring and keep it. From the outside, it may look like there are some who have extra talent or motivation but in the end, what you really need are the strategies, the keys to success.

Here are three ways to make it easier to achieve what you want, three keys to success.

Plan to use your whys.

When you are in the moment of stress, you can’t remember all your reasons. Your partner is driving you batty. You feel like you will never find someone to love. Your boss isn’t listening to you. You just want a day to indulge yourself. You have the desire to skip a workout and eat an entire French Silk pie by yourself. You want to finally say everything you are really thinking.

In these split seconds, you can only see the danger, the ways you are going to get hurt. You don’t want to feel the pain anymore and you will do anything to get away from it. This is why you run, yell louder or simply shut down.

Remember why you chose the path.

When you are blind from the pain, it will be dang near impossible to remember why you chose this path in the first place. At least not immediately. That’s why it’s important to choose they WHY’s you want to remember before you get to the point of self-protection.

• You want to retire early.
• You want your children to see you fight for your relationship and win.
• You want to be as strong as possible when you are older.
• You want to experience what it’s like to be debt free.

Choosing your WHY’s ahead of time will help you see beyond the fiery red. The stress moments can’t last. They die out when you douse them with your WHY’s.

When the anger, frustration, sadness dies down, instead of total carnage you’ll have weathered the storm.

Plan for derailment.

There is this critical space in before momentum begins. It takes a lot of force to get something to move when it’s at a dead stop, many times more than it takes to keep something going. To keep it from derailment. When you are at the beginning, you are a slow moving object. You aren’t bought into the process. You still argue with yourself about whether or not to get out of bed and run or get an extra hour of sleep. You aren’t totally bought into the idea forgiveness will make you feel better. You aren’t convinced that paying a small amount on your credit card bill will actually make a difference.

Of course it’s better to workout and forgive and lower your debt but the space between your thought and the action might require some some force.

And that force is planning.

You can make it easier on yourself.

You know yourself. You can pinpoint the exact moment when the decision is made. Instead of blaming yourself, hiding your secret, procrastinating your change, you can plan for the moment. You can make it easier.

• You lay out your shoes and clothes right by your bed. Heck maybe you sleep in your workout clothes.
• You plan a date night every Wednesday because you know you feel distant from your partner when you don’t spend enough time together.
• You set up an automatic withdrawal that goes into a savings account.
• You set up a regular counseling appointment to increase your tools for communication.

Failure is part of the success process, to derail several times as you attempt to change your life for the better. Don’t accept that misstep as a sign you lack willpower, that you are damaged in some way. Instead, plan to make it easier on yourself and soon you will be in motion and unstoppable.

Plan the celebration.

This one is personal to me. My youngest daughter Faith is a runner and experienced some early success a few years ago. We all had high hopes her times would continue to drop as she got older but instead, she hit a mental slump when she couldn’t achieve the times she once had.

At first we found a lot of excuses, situations that didn’t go her way, even her physical development, as sometimes young runners get slower as their bodies grow and mature. Faith finished each race under the specter of her former success. No matter her place, no matter how hard she ran, she wasn’t running as fast as she once did.

It took some time for us to see it, but the potential Faith showed as a young runner was killing her running. Her races were binary, with one outcome for success (getting a personal best) or failure (not getting a personal best). With this framework, there were a lot of sad moments and only one chance to celebrate.

Needless to say, it was both exhausting and saddening.

Celebration isn’t fake.

One interesting thing is, she didn’t want to be patronized. She didn’t want to be told she had done her best when she knew she could do better. It was a mental block that kept her from what she wanted, not a physical limitation.

It wasn’t until I was at a meet with a former coach, talking about how to help my daughter when a moment of clarity changed everything. He said, “she needs to start where she is, and improve form there.”

Yes! We needed to accept Faith’s present and celebrate every improvement from that point.

At first Faith didn’t understand it. She felt like we had given up on her, to accept slower times. But eventually she caught on. If something good happened, an improvement from the previous race, we noticed it and celebrated it. No positive change was too small.

If she passed someone at the end of the race.

If she improved in her placement.

If she ran a portion of the race successfully.

If she improved her times.

Celebrating improvements paved the way for more improvements. Comparing to former success only highlighted what she was not.  Noticing what is going well created energy for more forward motion. Every time we noticed the positive, she grew stronger, more optimistic and eventually, faster. She’s never going to be a middle school girl again and we don’t want her to be. We want her to be the strongest, most powerful young woman she can become.  

Long term success requires planning.

You might achieve success today. It’s a lightening bolt of powerful energy to experience what is possible in this moment. But long term success, the kind that sticks around for years, growing in momentum and strength, requires planning.

You have to make it easy on yourself.

Keep your why’s ready.

Gather support for your weakest moments.

And celebrate. Celebrate every single step forward.