Do I Have to Be Perfect to Be Successful?

 By Ellen Farquharson 

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Sometimes people wonder if they have to be perfect in order to be successful. Many of us carry with us a secret insecure side of us with painful scars from our past experiences. We 'fake it until we make it', so to speak, and just hope that nobody notices or ever sees us for who we really are.

The question is, who are you really? Are you your strengths and dreams; or are you your weaknesses and scars? I believe we are an extension of God energy, and only when we forget that fact, do we internalize negative experiences and make them part of us. Those are NOT who we are. Those are just things that happen in our around us. Things that we don't like, that do not make us feel happy. That is actually a good thing.

WHY? Because they show us vividly what we do not want. Only when we identify what does not feel good and what we do not want, can we begin for focus more strongly on what we DO want. In other words, you can't taste the sweet unless you've tasted the sour. What if we interpreted negative experiences (whether we feel they are our fault or not), as KEY indicators of what we do not want. Negative experiences are almost like a yellow traffic light saying slow down, pay attention, and don't keep moving in this direction. TURN to the left or right, but do not keep going forward in this direction.

I love the idea that our hurtful or painful experiences are here specifically to teach us, through our FEELINGS, about what we do not want. Only through feeling the negative can we say, NO, I don't like this or want this. I'm going to move in a different direction. I chose a new direction that feels good to me that leads me to a wonderful place full of health, wealth, and beautiful relationships. My past pain is not going to be my future, just because it feels familiar to me. That is NOT me.

That is something liberating. Talk about making lemonade out of lemons! Were you abandoned, neglected, or abused in your childhood? Did you like it? NO! Flashing yellow light! Now you know you will be double focused on being a devoted, loving, present parent that teaches your child a new way of living. Your children will grow up happy, secure, with their needs met. If you never say "NO, that wasn't right. I don't like that," then you will most likely repeat the painful pattern. Being a loving parent is your destiny. That's who you are!
Did you grow up without much money or stability? Good!Now you take very seriously the importance of working, of developing your skills, and living in abundance. Nothing will stop you or deter you from achieving your goals because you have been at the bottom and did not like it. So you are committed to being at the top! Living in abundance is your destiny. Thats' who you are!

Did you believe you had to be perfect to be successful? Did you learn through experience to get approval from others through your performance or attempted perfection? Were you afraid to let others down or lose their love and approval if you made a mistake? That hurts. And it is a prison of achievement with an insatiable monster eating up every accomplishment you dish up before you can even catch your breath and celebrate. Believe it or not, that's good too! Now you know that you can accomplish great things which drove you to success. But you now realize it takes the joy out of the accomplishment if you do it for someone else. It doesn't feel good when you say "tada," and wait for someone else to say great job. That's not you. That's the child in you.

Your destiny is to achieve your goals because you want to experience the joy of accomplishing them. Your destiny is to pursue your dreams so that your own adult life experience can be better with those results in it. Your destiny is to love, laugh, achieve, believe, and live each day for the joy of experiencing whatever it is that you want... just because you want it. If no one ever acknowledges anything you are doing, that's OK as long as you are feeling joy in the journey of it. It could be joy in the work or joy in the money you earn from it and what you can purchase afterwards. It doesn't matter.

Whatever and wherever your joy is, that's your destiny. That's who you are. And only you can define yourself by that and not let your negative 'guiding' experiences define you. They are just the yellow traffic lights telling you to move in another direction. Your life is the only place you get to be you, so enjoy it! And let the rest go.

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Staying Motivated For Long Term Success

 By Brett Thrailkill 

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How many times have you let pessimistic people stop you from pursuing your dreams? Do you start doubting yourself, and your abilities to make things happen? That negative friend that means well, but always shooting holes in your goals should be avoided. Training yourself to recognize it immediately, making a decision to stay on course, and pursuing your goals with all your might, is what we're after here.

If you continue to let pessimistic people drain every ounce out of your body, you will have only one person to blame: You. Pointing your finger at your spouse, child, job, or anyone (or anything) else is not allowed, nor will it help. The most motivated people in the world keep themselves on a higher level by reading, viewing, and practicing motivational acts. Reading a great book on staying focused and attaining all you want in life is terrific, but you have to keep reading it--and others just like it. Motivation has to become a part of your everyday life. Eat, breath, and live it!

Read about people like Nick Vujici. Born without limbs due to an extremely rare medical condition, he doesn't let that stop him from writing books, speaking to thousands, and even learning to surf. The old saying, "If I can do it, you can do it," certainly comes to mind. A truly remarkable individual, Mr. Vujici made a decision long ago not to let negative people stop him from being successful in life. He stays motivated no matter what!

Michael Jordan is another fine example of someone who would stay motivated at all cost. Did you know that this basketball icon was cut from his high school hoops team? Mr. Jordan decided at that moment, that he would do whatever it took to be successful. I doubt he pointed his finger, and placed blame at everyone except for the only one that could change his predicament: Michael Jordan.

What about yours truly, how do I stay consistently motivated? I think back to a failed business, and how the lack of money made me feel. I had no confidence to speak of. But I decided if things were going to turn around for me, it would take hard work and a giant dose of positivity. I made a list of reasons why I shouldn't quit, and the lives that would be improved if I got back on track. "Start a new business that will be ten times bigger and better than my old one," I told myself. If anyone got in my way, I quickly reminded myself why I was working so hard, and why it was an absolute must to remain motivated. I am now well on the way to achieving that goal.

In summary, your success or failure in life hinges on you, and your ability to keep yourself on track and motivated. Don't allow the negative rhetoric we come into contact each day to dictate how we live our lives. Break this habit today, keep yourself motivated on a regular basis, and watch your dreams take shape!

Motivational Day is the premier site for personal development. Stop by at Motivational People or Motivational Day.

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What Makes You Special?

By A Horton  

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If you want to invite success, meaning and fulfilment into your life, is to play to your core competencies. You can and never will be great at anything, which is not in your area of strength. Break the notion that you should work on your weaknesses. Your weaknesses are just that, parts of you, which are limiting and restricting you. They do not deserve the time of day. Do not waste any valuable energy or resources working on them. Rather get people with strengths in those areas where you have weaknesses, to support you. Put all you energy and effort into working on improving your strengths. If you want to deliver your best, you need to improve the areas, where you have core competencies, do what you love, love what you do and always look for ways to deliver more value, than you expect as payment or commission.

Uncovering your Strengths
The schooling system is not designed to reveal people's strengths to them at all. In fact quite the contrary is true. If you are excelling in Math, but your language mark is low. Instead of advising you to focus your efforts on improving your math mark even more, by focusing your time and energy there, you are instead encouraged to work on your weaknesses and try to improve your language mark. This sets the tone, for the rest of their life, where people believe that they should waste resources, working on areas of themselves, which are weak, at the expense of their core competencies. This wastes an incredible amount of resources and time, which is spent trying to fix the un-fixable, instead of growing in the areas, where you will easily excel.

The challenge when uncovering your unique talents, strengths or skills, is that they seldom, if ever show up as high grades or in your performance reviews. Your core competencies show up in the activities you simply cannot wait to perform every day. The sad reality is that these activities are often just used to perform hobbies or personal interests and not used in the profession you are employed. This means that a large majority of people are employed in professions, which do not fully utilise their natural gifts, which means that people are not performing optimally and are simply employed in careers in which they merely show-up, put in the hours and then go home to pursue and do the things they love and enjoy.

Don't accept average
One of the things, which really stands out for me, with super achievers, is that they all love what they do. You can never excel at anything, unless you truly love it and enjoy doing it.
Action Idea:

• Discover you core competencies and then find a way to earn a living using them.
• Find a vocation, which is aligned with your core competencies and is the most rewarding and interesting and then use your strengths to excel at it.
• Don't get trapped in a familiar place, where you are unhappy, doing something you hate. Have the courage to make a few career and job changes, to test and discover your core competencies, discover new talents, until you find what you love.
• Use you vocation as an integral part of your life; do not idle in a job you hate. Use your vocation to live, to love, be mega happy, to gain knowledge and to be of service to others.

You have unique Talents
I believe that you are born with a certain set of natural talents, core competencies and personality traits. Behaviour patterns, routines and habits are all learned over time, due to social and environmental modelling. The earlier in life you are able to uncover your natural talents, discover ways to improve them and then find ways to use them to earn a living, the happier and more successful you will be.
You can uncover your hidden treasures
It is never too late to conduct an audit of your life and discover your strengths or core competencies.
Use the ideas listed below to help you to do this.

• Take a test online to help you identify your strengths. The Ball foundation has an excellent online test, which is really user friendly and easy to use. The test will help you uncover 19 different competencies or innate strengths, which you possess.


• Explore your memories as a child. Find some quiet time and sit and think about all the things you loved to do as a child. Forget about your report card, think about all the extra-curricular activities or hobbies, you loved to do. These memories will help reveal your hidden talents. Think about all the things you loved doing after school, on weekends, whilst on vacation. They will reveal a plethora of information about your strengths and core competencies.


• Explore you current hobbies and interests. I know it is difficult for some people to remember what made them feel really good as a child. If you have found it difficult to discover anything useful, when exploring your childhood memories, then the next thing to do is to explore your current hobbies or interests. What really turns you on the most after working hours and on weekends? What do you think about all the time and just can't wait to do after work? If money was no object, how would you pass the time?


• You can also invest into a Winslow personality test. This can also be done online. The cost of this test is high, but the comprehensive report you will get after completing the test, is well worth the investment. The results I got when I did this test were incredibly accurate and really helped me.

Do you Really want Success?
If you have a deep rooted desire burning in your belly, driving you to be excellent, then you can expect to break out of the life you are trapped in right now. Research has shown that one of the most crucial predictors of super achievement is ones desire for excellence. All the most successful people both I and other researchers have studied, have found that super achievers, attained their greatness, because of a burning inner desire to use their talents or core competencies to the max. All great achievers are inspired by the torch, which burns from within, driving them to express the very best they have to offer

Andrew is one of the most sought after Motivational Speakers and Sales Training experts in South Africa. You can trust him to deliver a motivational message that will re-energise your team and help them to ignite the fire of inspiration in their bellies once again. Should you want to inspire or re-energise your team, visit my website for details on one of the best Motivational Speakers around.

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