Wouldn’t it be great if you could guarantee success? It would save a lot of stress, anxiety, fear, disappointment. You would be able to move forward without procrastination, without feeling stuck, without wasting your precious brain power on unhelpful thoughts and feelings.
So how is it possible? Well, most successful people focus on what they can control and maximise this above all else. It is an approach that enables you to take responsibility for your own thoughts, your own feelings and your own actions. Enabling you to take control of the result.
5 Tactics For Taking Back Control and Guaranteeing Success
As human beings it is important we put the majority of our effort into things we can control, everything else is a waste
- Create a clear vision for what you want to achieve
Clarity is key. So often we desire vague concepts such as ‘confidence’, ‘self-esteem’ or ‘motivation’. Instead, ask yourself what you really mean by that. For instance, if someone comes to me saying they want to stop procrastinating I dig really deep into what that means for them. Do they want to achieve a specific goal by a certain date? Do they want to work for five hours a day but currently only doing 3?
Getting really clear on what you want instead of clinging onto vague concepts is the first important step. It is impossible to achieve a goal if we aren’t clear what the goal actually is. This step in itself can take time, so don’t gloss over it.
- Get really clear on why you want to achieve this outcome
What is in it for you? Again, avoid vague concepts such as ‘it will make me feel good’ because if that was enough I guarantee you would be doing it already. Dig deeper with your ‘why.’ Perhaps it will give you better career options, perhaps it will mean you finish the book you started, perhaps it will give you the income you’ve been dreaming of, perhaps it will give you more time with your children. Changing behaviour is often difficult, so understanding why you want to make a change and continuing to remind yourself of that is key.
- Brainstorm everything in your control to achieve the desired goal
Forget about anyone else right now, just brainstorm everything that is in your gift. How you show up, where you focus your attention, the stories you tell yourself, the actions you take, the questions you ask, the small baby steps you choose or the massive action you deliver, this is all in your control.
Include your own thoughts and feelings in this as well as you have control over those. For instance, if you want a job you love, it is within your control to love the job you already have. You can choose to look for the evidence that you love your job. We have a lot more control over this than we realise.
- Choose something from your list and focus on it for 30 days
We get more of what we focus on. So focus on something in your control and give it time to work. For instance, if you want to land your dream job, you can’t control whether someone hires you or not but you can control your thoughts, feelings and actions around this. You can build your strategy for how you will land the job and carry it out.
Why 30 days? This gives you long enough to really explore what it means to focus on something you can control. For instance, if you want to improve your work-life balance and have a goal of leaving work at 5pm every day then 30 days gives you time to try and fail, to explore why it isn’t working and start again. It gives you enough evidence and experience to move onto step 5
- Evaluate and keep moving forward
Once your 30 days are up take a long hard look at what you did, how you felt and what you were thinking during that time and decide how you want to move forward. Continuing with the example of landing your dream job you might identify that after a couple of weeks you started to feel really negative from rejection and this impacted how you acted. You might then decide to focus on how you manage your feelings around rejection remembering that how you manage this feeling is within your control and putting your efforts into managing those feelings to enable you to take the action required becomes the sensible next step.
If you keep moving towards a clear goal, for which you know your ‘why’, by giving the majority of your focus to what you can control and keep evaluating what is working and what is holding you back, then you can guarantee yourself success.
To hear more about how I can guarantee you success get in touch!
Tracey Taylor - High Impact Life Coach 