Self Improvement and Self Development

Along with determination and belief is being enthusiastic about your goal. Everything that happens along the way is another joyous milestone, taking you one more step closer to success. Enthusiasm adds to your positive perspective and affirms your personal motivation in the outcome.

Enthusiasm comes from inspiration. Inspiration comes from knowledge and enrichment of the mind, while ignorance fosters and intensifies fear. Inspiration also helps you to further define and detail your plan of action. There are many channels for inspiration. The most obvious is education, whether it is motivational material to keep you on your path or gaining more specific knowledge to achieve your success. Education may be reading books, magazines, and journals, taking workshops and classes, listening to tapes/CDs, and watching videos that provides motivation tips in the area of your goal. You become what you study, so expose your mind to anything and everything that adds to the achievement of your success.

Also, include educational and motivational materials that will help you after your success is achieved. Currently, you are in “the process”. Once you’ve achieved your goal, you need to already have the knowledge and motivation to use the success in a positive manner and keep it moving forward.

The people that surround you influence your path, your attitude, your determination, your belief, your inspiration, and the outcome of your success. You should surround yourself with people who share your positive vision and desire to achieve your goal. Otherwise, you may be eliminating your success through the power of association. Associations could mean being around the people who can help you become successful. Donald Trump did just this. He associated with those people, whom he wanted to emulate and who could assist his success. Now, you may not after that type of success; however, associations still impact your goals. Here’s an example.

Darren used to be an alcoholic. After he hit bottom, he went into rehab and cleaned up his life. He joined Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and tried to convince his wife to join Al-Anon, an arm of AA that helps spouses of alcoholics to eliminate all of their “old habits” they developed over the years to cope with the alcoholism (however, they also trigger a recovering alcoholic’s past habits, as well). She refused any type of counseling and, at every opportunity, would “push Darren’s buttons”. Having difficulty retaining his sobriety under his wife’s subconscious attempts to return to her comfort zone (though it was detrimental to her well-being, since Darren was physically abusive when drunk), Darren eventually divorced his wife. He’s now been sober and happily remarried to a supporting spouse for many years.

One of the most supporting and inspirational tools to achieve success is to have a hero. Oprah Winfrey, talk show host, once told Barbara Walters, renowned interviewer and newscaster, that, if it were not for Ms. Walters, she wouldn’t be where she is today. This is a wonderful example of using a hero to achieve. The great thing about emulating heroes is that they can be living, dead or even fictitious.

Finding a hero (or heroine) to emulate gives you many achievement advantages. That person is already the success you seek. Learn all you can about them. If possible, take them to lunch and interview them. Find out what they purposefully did to achieve. What could they have done differently to speed up the process to success? Have photos of this person all around your living space and on your desk at work. Keep a list of the person’s traits that you wish to emulate, and incorporate them and anything that helped your hero to achieve into your plan of action.

Look around you. There are many sources of inspiration for you to draw upon. The more inspired you get, the more likely you will strive to achieve your life goals.