Break Through to Success

I know that movies rarely offer the most profound moments, which are life changing or that offer advice to help you improve your life. There is however one movie moment, which stands out for me, from the movie City Slickers, where the character played by Billy Crystal, explains the secret of life to the other cast members. He explains that the secret of life is one thing and when asked what that one thing is, he explains “That’s what you have to figure out”

The message I want you to take away from this, is simple, if you want to positively change your life, then stop pursuing a myriad of different goals and objectives and instead find your one 10 X or big hairy audacious goal, which will stretch you sufficiently, so that it gives you butterflies in your stomach, when you think about it, yet is not so outrageous that the thought of achieving it overwhelms you. This 10 X goal, when achieved, will so dramatically change your life that you will finally enjoy the meaning and fulfilment you desire.

Discovering your 10 X Goal
This is the most challenging part in the process, but not one that should be avoided, because it is tough. The way to do this is to once again allow yourself to turn the volume, on your all-knowing inner voice up and to listen. You have an inner knowing, an inner self, which knows before you think. This inner self knows what is important to you, learn to trust yourself once again and allow yourself to believe.

Action Idea: Start broad and uncover the top ten things you want to achieve, gradually narrow this down to your big 5, then to your possible 3 and finally uncover that one 10 or big hairy audacious goal, which when achieved will completely change your life.

Examples of 10 X Goals: Some of my previous 10 X goals were to build a financial wall around my family that nobody could break, to complete my PHD within 2 years and finally my new 10 X goal is to write a New York Times best seller, which will remain on the best seller list for 12 months.

What is your 10 X goal, which when achieved will positively change your life and invite meaning and fulfilment into your experience. Trust yourself, discover yours and then focus your efforts on making it happen.

Achieving your 10 X Goal
I know you will find this really hard to believe, but achieving your 10 X goal is actually the easy part. All you need to do is:

Know why achieving it is important to you.
Create a picture of possibility or a prize in the future in your minds eye, which scares you a little, but one you believe that you can achieve.
Finally build a plan, which you convert into action lists
Commit daily to take actions off each action list and carry them out.
Identify the key daily behaviour, which will support you to achieve your 10 X goal.
Turn that new behaviour into an integral part of your success habit set.
Measure your performance regularly.
Improve where necessary.
Be consistent every day and wait for the results to roll in.
Example: My new 10 X goal is to write a New York Times Best Seller. The new behaviour I have introduced is a daily discipline of researching, and writing for four hours each day.

What new behaviour, if carried out daily, will help you to achieve your 10 X goal?

Turning your behaviour into a Success Habit
As you know habits are things you do before you think i.e. brushing your teeth, pressing the accelerator just enough, as you release the clutch to gently start your car moving etc. The only way to turn your new behaviour into your new success habit set is to; use your willpower daily to force you to carry out the new routine daily, until it becomes ingrained. Research shows that it will take about 60 days of concerted effort and commitment to ingrain any new habit.

Try to perform the new behaviour in a predictable sequence daily, which removes any conscious thinking from the equation. This helps the new behaviour to become a thoughtless, unconscious act.

Example: Developing my new habit to research and write my book for four hours every day, did not just start with me expecting to impose this new behaviour on myself. I already get up at 03H30 every day, so all I needed to do was shift my morning routine to support my new desired behaviour.

I have created a simple morning ritual or routine, which sees me get straight of bed, switch on my PC, meditate for 20 minutes while my Pc boots up, when I walk to my PC, I open my checklist, which contains the specific information I need to gather, before I can start writing. I then do that research and move straight into writing the piece I need to write that day.

To make this work and to ensure that I perform the new behaviour daily, I have removed as many obstacles as possible. I have removed all the obstacles, which could distract or stop me from carrying out my new success routine, this has helped me to perform the new behaviour without even thinking, every day.

Action Idea: Explore your new success habit or new behaviour and discover ways to make performing your new behaviour as effortless as possible. The easier it is to perform the new behaviour and the less conscious thought required, the easier and faster, you will adopt the new success habit.

Whatever gets measured gets done
One of the greatest challenges we face, when trying to develop our new success habit set or perform our daily actions necessary to achieve our goals, is that, “As easy as it is to carry out the activities you need to perform daily to achieve your 10 X goal, so easy is it not to carry them out. Yes creating new success habits to support you is a great start, but developing these habits takes time, so how do you ensure that you remain on track? Well the simple answer here is to ensure that you measure and track your performance daily.

If you are not already tracking your performance, then this may be a great starting point for developing your first new success habit. As you track your performance and the application of your new behaviour, you create awareness about performing the new behaviour and as time passes, you will eventually break through the automatic habit barrier and the new routine will become an entrenched success habit.