Success!

Success isn’t the first word that springs to mind when you find yourself, as I did, unemployed. Even more so when the job you’ve held down for the past three years happens to be managing your own business!

It’s a long and convoluted story, probably best left untold, but the fact is these things happen. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t had life throw them an unforeseen curve ball in the past few years. Then again, don’t know anyone who has succumbed, or gone under, as a result. More often than not the eventual outcome is positive. It seems that on the road to success, failure, unfortunately, is a common occurrence, and when it does occur you have no choice but to deal with it.

How you deal with it determines how quickly you get back on the road to success.

Sure, when confronted with a failure, especially a major one, the shock, the unintended consequences, the anger, fear and negativity can be overwhelming. In my circumstance I found it particularly hard playing “happy dad” with my kids while dealing with all this, then again I also found it a strong motivator to get over it.

…and you have to get over it!

So what exactly is success anyway, and how do you achieve it?

I believe we’ve been conditioned, through Hollywood, the Media and Advertising to think of success as a noun, a label, signifying who, or what, you are, indicated more by what you have than what you do. You could be forgiven for thinking that success is some magical nirvana you stumble upon, out of sheer luck, after which life is all Champagne, Ferraris, Super Models and Mansions. Something we spend half our lives chasing, like the carrot in front of our noses, the irony being that carrot is always just out of reach.

Success is not who, or what you are, it’s something you do, an event. It’s a verb, therefore attainable on a daily basis…unless of course you think it’s something synonymous with the trappings of wealth (more likely the trap of debt) in which case it’s going to be a lot harder. Stack up a higher balance of success events vs. failure events and you are, by definition, a successful person.

I was inspired to get back in the success mindset, after confronting failure, by Chet Holm?s book “The Ultimate Sales Machine” where he discusses setting a maximum of six goals a day and approaching them with “pigheaded discipline”. It’s very much what I’ve been doing since to get refocused, and what I’ll be writing about more on this site.

In the meantime here’s my thoughts on getting refocused on success.

Work out how much time you have to play with.

It’s natural to go through a full range of emotions during, and immediately after a crisis like losing your job. It’s been said that the extent to which you are financially independent can be calculated by how long you can survive without an income. Work out exactly how long that is and give yourself some of that time to simply get back in touch with yourself. In my case it’s three months to get it together, first thing I did was go Surfing.

Put the failure into perspective.

Putting things into perspective means you can identify what exactly you need to do to get back on track. What was lost, what are the real implications? When I did this, after the dust settled a little, I realised I had lost two things, my income, and a dream. There was no other significant impact. That means two problems to solve, otherwise business, or life, as usual.

Re-establish the Dream

In my experience the alternative to living a life of purpose, intent, and vision, is to be depressed. That’s not an option. My dream is a business I can run from anywhere with a laptop and an internet connection. It’s already re-established.

Take action

I’ve found that dealing with moving on from my previous business, rather than being the scary thing I once imagined, is in fact a very creative place, with new possibilities, an opportunity to re-educate myself, brush up on my technology skills, and be in more control of my destiny.

Don?t look back

I haven’t