Become Inspired

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

Inspiration may be obtained through many sources. 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 educate and motivate 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 may mean being around the people who can make your success happen. Donald Trump did just this. He associated with those people, whom he wanted to emulate and who could assist his success.

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 make the process to success easier and faster? Put photos of this individual all over 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.

Exercises

Using the library and the Internet, research to locate materials that will help you achieve your success. If you need more information and details (for instance, you would like to take a particular type of course in your area), research whatever resources necessary (for example: telephoning your local colleges for information on available classes). Incorporate these materials into your plan of action (i.e., reading material, taking classes, and so on). Then, be vigilant about placing as much priority on these plan items, as you would any other step to success.

Are the people who surround you holding you back? Evaluate your relationships against your chosen success. Are there any associations that are detrimental to achieving your goal? Make a list of possible problem individuals; then, turn it over to the universe during meditation. Ask for guidance on what you should do. You may be told that the individual is contributing to your success in a more important manner than what you see. There are many possible solutions to a situation, other than discontinuing the relationship. Be sure to keep notes in your journal.

If you don’t already have one, find a hero, who is successful in your chosen goal area. Then, do all the things suggested in the earlier paragraph, entitled “Need for Heroes”. Keep notes in your journal.