[Photo Credit: kevindooley]
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Success is a term that is so vague it’s useless. As such, it depends entirely on you to figure out what it means because, as the owner of your life, you are the only one who can decide when you have or when you haven’t been successful.
This post isn’t about how to define success, though. I’m assuming that with all the dreamlining and lifestyle design mumbo jumbo out there, you’ve probably taken a decent look at your life. You’ve likely started focusing on what you do want, not what you don’t want and you’ve probably broken down big goals into lots of more manageable small goals. You should have at least a foundational knowledge of the life you want defined in a very specific way. For example, Bill wants to open a bookstore on 2nd Street by October, he’ll create a business plan by the end of March, talk to the bank in April and request a $150,000 loan then meet with renters in May. You shouldn’t know all the details (how could you expect to know everything?), but you should know where you’re going and how soon.
But this isn’t a post for that. No, this is a post about what comes after, about what separates the people who get shit done and get what they want from those who live mediocre lives of constant complaint and victimization. This is about what it takes to be the person you want to be and do the things you want to do.
Short Term Vs. Long Term
In December I became resolute in my desire to figure out the kind of life I wanted and how I would get it. Never in all my years have I been so determined and moved forward with such purpose. There wasn’t a day I woke up not knowing exactly what I needed to get done and as I kept working and working and pushing through to get ebooks written or designs approved or blog posts posted, something started to change.
By the end of January I was no longer thinking day-to-day or week-to-week. Developing an ebook had forced me to start thinking month-to-month and year-to-year. My goals started getting more defined, but more long term. I knew that the chances of an ebook — especially my first ebook — being a runaway success right out of the gate were slim to none and that what I needed to be focused on was building a platform for selling that could grow and snowball month after month. If I saw four sales in the first month, I wanted a system that could produce eight sales in the second month and sixteen sales in the third month.
In the end, my yearly goal was to have a steady passive income. If the ebook never sold more than 16 copies each month, that would be fine. The only thing that matters year to year is that each month I can count on a steady stream of sixteen sales to help fill my bank account because I had known from the start that this one book wasn’t going to replace a full-time income. It was part of a collection of digital products that would combine to produce a full-time income.
The point is this. People who are unsuccessful tend to think about the short term. This is because people who are unsuccessful are so accustomed to having a scarcity mentality. Their outlook on money is that there isn’t enough to go around so they need to get just enough to survive and then, if possible, just enough to be comfortable. If you want to be successful you have to get out of the habit of thinking short term. Consider where you want to be five years from now, not what you’re willing to settle for in the next 30 days.
Learn to be patient because, as I’ve seen, patience is the key to any significant success. We can all hope to win the lottery or inherit a long lost relative’s millions, but that’s not likely and that’s no way to get wealthy. You have to be willing to plant seeds (ideas) and cultivate them over many months or even years to see the result you want to see. This takes consistent, long-term hustle.
Ideas vs. Things vs. People
I had never realized it until I read The 10 Distinctions Between Millionaires and the Middle Class, but it is, in fact, possible to tell someone’s financial standings by what they talk about. Whatever inhabits the minds and infiltrates the speech of a person is a good indicator of that person’s values and, thus, their financial class.
The rich tend to talk about ideas. Business ideas, creativity, philosophy. They talk about an idea for a car or for a magazine or for a record label. They even tend to relate to and remember people by the ideas they’ve contributed. The rich have the ideas that make the money and they aren’t afraid to act on them, which is why they are the rich.
The middle class tends to talk about things. They talk about the cars the rich imagined, the sports teams the rich own, the books the rich published. The middle class lives for comfort, so they don’t tend to care about risking anything for ideas… and they don’t. They just talk about the ideas of others.
The lower class tends to talk about people. Their only goal is survival so they don’t necessarily get to interact with the things the middle class interacts with. They depend on secondhand accounts. “What did such-and-such do? What happened with this or that?” The lower class can’t afford all the frivolity of the middle class.
So, in order to succeed financially and professionally, you need to start focusing on ideas. Ideas are a mix of the things you’re most passionate about with a model for making money from them. Very rich people are usually not short of ideas for businesses. It’s more likely that they are completely overwhelmed by the decision of which idea to pursue next.
Positive vs. Negative
Think in positives. This is the most important lesson to be learned and the single most significant change I’ve made. For this I feel more in control of my life and more deserving of success. It’s really hard to be successful if you think you can’t be successful or that you don’t deserve to be successful.
Instead of saying “can’t” say “can”. Start realizing that things that seem “impossible” are really just “difficult”. Unsuccessful people will let themselves be crushed by their own mediocrity. They’ll want the negativity to consume them and to just have their circumstances cave-in on them. Truly successful people aren’t so masochistic.
Learn to really believe in yourself and to believe in your ideas. Will everything always workout? No. That’s no excuse to quit, though. At the least, do a post-mortem on your failed ideas and see what worked and what didn’t work and then set yourself up for another go at it. It’s that simple! In every failure there’s a very useful opportunity for success — find it!
If you want to guarantee success, there’s two pieces of advice I can give that sums up all of this. First, choose someone successful and do the things they do. You’ll be able to adjust the system over time to better suit you, but if you do the things a successful person does you’ll lay the foundation for becoming a successful person. If you have the initiative to even do something like that, you already have the ambition of a successful person.
Second, realize that there are some things successful people do that you will never fully grasp and that these things relate to their mindset. Do the best you can to copy the thought process of a successful person. Ask them how they feel about certain circumstances or consequences and take note. If you really want to know what successful people are thinking, I very highly recommend you get a copy of The 10 Distinctions Between Millionaires and The Middle Class. It’s a short read, but that’s because it’s the most succinct and well-written definition of a successful mindset. You can read it in one sitting and then focus on the lessons of one chapter per day. Keep doing this over and over until you have the habits of a successful person.
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Hey, I'm JD. I'm a writer, web designer and contrarian entrepreneur. Wage Slave Rebel is a place where I (and others) explore alternative and ethical ways to earn a living apart from the corporate hierarchy. The goal of this site is to help people escape wage slavery and start reaping the full rewards of their skills and passions. 
Hmm – I don’t consider myself rich (yet!) but this describes me so well – “Very rich people are usually not short of ideas for businesses. It’s more likely that they are completely overwhelmed by the decision of which idea to pursue next.”
I have a stack of ideas on my desk. It’s nice to see I’m on the right track.
I can not say how important being and staying positive is. I recommend surrounding yourself with positive people. People who can see the positives in the negative situations. They are invaluable. .-= Heather Villa´s last blog ..“What should I do?” – New Series – Social Media Mindmeister =-.
When I read this part about ideas, I felt the same way. Somehow I’ve lucked into being the sort of person who easily comes up with ideas. It’s definitely a step in the right direction.
Thanks for this, awesome posts I’m cleaning out of my Evernote que from you today J. D.
I love the “Ideas Things People” distinctions you made, really powerful. I’m going to try and get my hands on the audio for the 10 distinctions book, is that how you listened to it?
Positives and Negatives is another distinction I feed on constantly. Most likely because of life circumstances I’ve learned this one thoroughly although I through “perseverance” more than “positives”. There is always, always, always another side of the coin. You may not see it that day, or the next, or until years later, but there are always benefits to failures, tragedies, and losses…having this awareness really helps you keep saying I can, instead of i can’t. Cheers .-= Robert´s last blog ..Helping Alan – Mac Tools and Tech for Freelancers =-.
Short term thinking tends to be self-cannibalizing behavior.
Another distinction between the upper classes and the lower ones is their relationship to authority. The children of the wealthy are encouraged to ask people in authority many questions and to communicate with respect but without deference.
People marked for advancement will look authority figures in the eye and communicate as equals. Those kept at the lower end will avoid eye contact, mumble, and appear as obedient as possible.
You don’t need to be born rich, of course, to learn this kind of behavior. But it’s difficult to do so without coaching, self-knowledge, and possibly therapy.
This is also the primary advantage of going through a private school. The quality of the teaching is the same or worse as that offered at public schools, but the relationships between the students and teachers are rather different, particularly at the top-end boarding schools. .-= JC Hewitt´s last blog ..Avoid White People and Save Over $15,000 a Year =-.
This is a great point. I’d never thought of it myself, but it’s very true. I’d consider myself as one of the lower end, mumbling, obedient types. Or at least I used to be. Very, very interesting point.
@Robert
I think perseverance might be a better description of “positive thinking” than “positive” itself is because you certainly don’t want to blow through failures like nothing happened. You want to push through with more ideas, learn whatever you can from the mistakes you made and try to use it as a stepping stone to something even better.
As for the book, I actually read the Kindle version on my iPhone. I’m more of a reader than a listener.
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