Good Tuesday morning to you. With the few short weeks left in the year 2011, getting things right for success in our lives is definitely something we should be working on. The idea of this week is to get you to find the tools for your success and make a success out of what you have. So many in life will miss the tools that have been placed in front of them because they a lack belief in their personal success.
The idea of missed opportunities came to me as I was reading responses to an invite I sent out for an event I was speaking at. I read a post that someone made in response to the invitation. The person who wrote this was a personal friend so I’m not going to point out the exact comment that was made. I’ll just use it an illustration of how we misread things that could be the very tool that we need for our next step in success.
When was the last time you half-read something and said “Now that is not for me.” A few months ago I was invited to an event that was a benefit. It was hosted by a women’s group. When reading the invitation I said, “I’m not a woman so this group is not for me.” Well, it was being hosted by the women’s group but it was not just for women. It raised money for a great cause for children – just like the biker events I attend that raise money for kids for different events over the holiday season.
In life, I have seen people read just one line then make a choice not to attend a networking event because it looked like it was a singles event or because it looked like it was for self-employed people and they work for a bank as an executive. Since they made this choice based on just a small amount of information, they usually get mad at you when a competitor of theirs gets a contract they could have gotten if they had showed up to the same event.
So in life, make sure you realize the things you are saying “No” to. On Sunday I was opening up my Facebook page to read about a friend that Gwynne told me went down on his bike over the weekend. The first thing I saw, however, was a good statement that my friend Sandy wrote on her facebook page: “I’m only responsible for what I say, not what you understand or think you hear me say.”
So before you get upset with that friend who watched the business you were supposed to get go to another company; or when you are upset that you did not get the invite to the place where you friends decided to announce his new program that you have been waiting to take part in, make sure you are listening to all the information coming in before you decide, “Oh, that is not for me.”
I am going to leave you today with another of my stories from my trip this year. I left to ride my bike to my mom’s house in the end of April; it was a multi-state trip. After I left, my Harley Riding group started a contest where you needed a picture of you your bike and a pamphlet at the state line. You had to be the first to that state with your picture to claim the state. Well, it was started after I left for that trip. I would have been the first to get every state northeast of Texas. But I was not reading to any of the chat boards, or attending the events that would have told me that was going to take place. So, when I returned home at the end of May I watched as so many were taking the trips to get those states I had just ridden through. Yes, I picked on my friend Jonathan and I told him he should have given me a heads up. But it’s not his fault I did not succeed. He was telling people but I was not listening.
In life you are the one who is responsible for your own success. If you have failed, if you have missed the chances that you should have gotten, well it’s not someone else’s fault. Wake up and start looking around you. The keys to success are more than likely right in front of you. While you may be sitting complaining about who beat you to it, or why you didn’t get the chance, others are climbing their ladder of success.
Many of them are doing it while working two jobs as a single mother, working overtime three days a week even when they wake up feeling sick. They do it while having to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, or eating off the dollar menu at McDonalds. They are not handed success; they are taking the life they have been handed and working with it to dig out of the holes they are in. They are building their own success with the bricks that others are throwing at them. What is your tool of success that you have missed this year? Are you turning on your hearing, opening up your eyes and feeling around to find the light switch to create a brighter tomorrow? Now is the time to do that.
I’m Tim Gillette, the Rocker Life Coach. It’s time to live your dream, to love the journey you are on. Look around at the opportunities you are missing to become the RockStar in your world.
