Step 1: Welcome Success

If you’ve found this article, but have not yet read the introduction ‘10 Steps to Success‘, I highly encourage you to do so before continuing. This is part of a series of articles that read in order will give you valuable insight as to how to become successful with anything you envision.

Assessing your State of Being

In order to succeed one must be in a state which welcomes success. This may seem obvious and one may shoo away the concept and say - ‘Yes of course I am welcoming success - why wouldn’t I?’ - if you feel this way, take a moment to look a little closer. Before moving to the second step assess your current state of being. Are you really truly and genuinely welcoming success in your life. Do you know what it looks like to truly welcome success in your life?

Its far too common to set goals, take action, and drive oneself forward to a conception of success all the while to completely lose focus and direction during the journey. Many people are moving, not forward, not backward, just moving towards the next thing that life offers - whatever that may be. They wonder why even though they are moving that they are not happier, why they are not fulfilled, and why all that action did not bring about the intended result. The real question is not why it happened this way, but if they were set up to truly succeed in the first place!

What does it mean to Welcome Success?

Welcoming success involves clearing yourself such that you are truly willing and able to accept success in your life. To do this you must be able to look at where you are uncomfortable to look, you must be willing to confront the questions you do not want to confront, and you must be willing to shift from a mentality which is egocentric to one which opens itself to the inputs that others and our universe (or the god-mind) provides.

Being successful is not always comfortable. You might think that it sure sounds comfortable, but consider what comfort is. I am quite comfortable sitting in front of the television watching a comedy while being successful at absolutely nothing (well, maybe I am being successful at relaxing if that were my goal). In order to be successful you must embrace that some of the things you may need to do (and quite often its the most important things one needs to do towards attaining success), will be absolutely uncomfortable. Are you willing to embrace this discomfort, see it as an opportunity to learn, and to move forward?

In confronting areas that you are uncomfortable with you will undoubtedly stir up questions you’d prefer not to answer. For example, when I was confronted with the question of whether or not I could earn 10x my current income, it really threw me into a paradigm of doubt. To be successful I needed to face the conversation that was coming up for me, make a clean decision that this was something I really wanted to do, and to be willing to accept that I can give up my doubts and worries for a more interesting result that this could truly be mine. Notice, the process does not involve analyzing why these thoughts came up.

The analysis of why thoughts came up or why I was not successful in the past leads one down a destructive path of self abuse. Its absolutely OK to ask what you can learn from a situation such that a better decision can be made in the future (which may be a form of the question why), however welcoming success means that you spend as little energy as possible dancing with the questions that can not be answered and spending as much energy as possible towards achieving your goals.

To welcome success you are ready to accept that the self doubt, worry, and why’s may come up (simply put - we are human beings), and you are willing to shift these as soon as you recognize them to a more empowering state of being. A state which asks questions like ‘How can I…..’ solve the problem that I have been faced with. We use the same amount of energy as asking the why’s - however these kinds of questions produce results.

Letting Go of the Ego

What is the right way to achieve your goals? Is it the way you must have it come to fruition? Are you closed to ideas and comments? Are you a lone ranger that must do it yourself? Welcoming success means welcoming opportunity. When we are closed to the idea that we can allow the universe to unfold in a way that we didn’t anticipate, and we hold the concept that ‘its my way or the highway’, we set ourselves up for a difficult journey. Support, the sixth step to success, can only be received if you are willing to receive it. It comes in many forms and when we embrace an open mind set we see opportunities arise that would otherwise not be apparent. We give ourselves the chance to find success in a vision that is not exactly as we thought it would look like - and we are OK with that! Imagine if the founders of IBM were so strict on their vision to create computers that they never branched out into consulting - this would have meant disaster. Letting go of the ego is a necessary step to welcoming success and optimizing your potential outcome.

Success is Now

The state of someone prepared to welcome success is one that is generally calm and collected. We become calm because we know deep inside that success will come and that truly all is well. Things are not just well when we achieve our goal, but also in the moments we are living our life right here and now. We are being successful by embarking upon our journey with an open and positive attitude that permits possibility in our lives. Others see success in our attitude. It feeds on itself.

When you are able to demonstrate this in the moment, you have mastered the art of welcoming success and you are prepared to follow the remainder of the 10 steps to success.

Be Well

Written by Doug Nau, The Wellness Coach, i-grow.net