BecomeAPatron

How to succeed – brief summary

Last night I saw a forum post by someone with a less than positive attitude and it prompted me to post some basic advice about positivity. Of course I’m sure that most of you have heard this sort of advice before in many forms including huge long books. But the core of it is actually very simple and it works. Sometimes though we just need a reminder to kick us up the arse (that’s ass for the Americans) – so hopefully this post will tip the balance for some of you and get you going.

The Summary

Cultivating a positive attitude is essential for success – everyone who’s made a ton of money and/or had great success in their field knows that…Basically make a goal, think positive, then take action. If any one of those are missing then you are on a road to nowhere.

And that’s it! Here’s a bit more detail:

Visualising a Goal

We know that visualising a goal and then making a plan are essential otherwise you have nothing to aim for and no clue about how to get there. However, sometimes you can have a goal and only a vague plan, and it’s possible to work out what to do along the way. This is called the Ready Fire Aim approach and the advantage of it is that you get started whilst you are still excited about the idea without getting bogged down with a massive plan. It is still important to have a first step though, so that you can get started with something!

Positive thinking

You’ve also got to believe you can do it and quash any negative thoughts about your abilities as soon as they occur – train yourself to only think positively. We have good days and bad days. Sometimes we have setbacks that may make us think negative thoughts about ourselves or our project. This massively affects our performance and interaction with other people who may be crucial to the success of the project. So it’s important to kill those negative thoughts as soon as they occur before they grow into monsters. Sometimes you just need to put on some motivational music, or go for a walk, or see your family, or play a game (this really helps me because when I play a good game it makes me want to get on with my own game and make it better!). When you are having a good day ride the positivity – big yourself up and really push your project forward.

Taking Action

After coming up with a goal and making a plan you need to do something straight away that takes you a step towards the goal. Some days you may not feel like taking the next step, but you must force yourself to – once you get started you always feel better and often feel more motivated to continue and complete more tasks. An idea without action is totally worthless, it’s just a dream. Action turns dreams into reality. So if you’ve got to take some action today, go and do it now, don’t put it off!

Failure

So what if you do those three things and you still fail? Well that’s OK because you’ll have practiced making a goal, thinking positive and taking action. You’ll also have learned something from your failure. Then you can make a new goal and try again. Also I’ve heard some people say that it’s good to find out that you’ve failed soon so that you can try another approach quickly. If you take hardly any action or have a wishy washy goal then you might not fail for a long time and this means that you’ll have missed lots of chances to try other possibly more successful approaches.

6 Responses to “How to succeed – brief summary”

  1. Antair Games » Blog Archive » Weekly Update Says:

    […] enjoyed Grey Alien Games’s How to Succeed, it’s a good inspirational […]

  2. Michiel Erasmus Says:

    Jake,

    your posts are of extremely high value, concrete, food for thought. After reading this post i decided to write up something about myself.. hopefully other people could learn from my experiences?

    Go here –> http://www.gdb1.nl/podcast/informatie_analyse_voor_n00bs/?p=21

  3. Grey Alien Games Says:

    Hi Michiel, thanks for your post! I read yours too and wish you the best of luck in your continuing journey in personal development! The biggest step is the first one – realising you need to change. Then it’s a case of analysing in detail what needs to change and then finding out how to do it (e.g. research, what resources you need, things you need to practice etc). One thing to remember. Don’t take on too much at once. Make incremental changes and get them done properly. Too much could overwhelm you and make you loose confidence in the change process. Also, when changing and growing, it’s normal to have really bad days because your old self is trying to drag you back to a level it’s more comfortable with. So these bad days are actually GOOD because they are an indication that some change is occurring!

  4. Informatie analyse voor n00bs » Goal setting, working with a plan Says:

    […] read HOW TO SUCCEED at […]

  5. Jason Harrison Says:

    Some of the other things that can help with a positive attitude are analysing
    – SWOT: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. Focus on your strengths, avoid your weaknesses (delegate, ask for help), take advantage of opportunities, and either avoid or prepare for threats. You can read more about SWOT online.
    – What is failure? Is failure a learning opportunity or wasted effort? Engineering is based on failure. Science is based on failure. Business is based on success (ie, don’t talk about the failures and they will go away).
    – What are your goals? Are they Specific, Timely (deadline), Achievable, and Recognizable. (aka STAR goals). What is your reward for achieving your goal?
    – What are your distractions? Are your distractions keeping you from achieving your goals?

    -Jason

  6. Grey Alien Games Says:

    Good advice thanks Jason.

    We heard about SWOT the other night. I’ve done it before for me (although it was a while ago so things have changed) and for the company I was managing at the time.

    STAR is good too 🙂

    This article was just a brief summary, I could talk for ages on this topic. I need to write some more positive thinking articles soon anyway. My list of material to blog about is huge and is growing every day faster than I can write it!