The Keys to Unlocking Success: Part 6 Learning from Life
Posted by Ben Lumley on Jan 24, 2010 in Overcoming Challenges, Success, Thinking Differently | 18 comments
photo credit: visual.dichotomy
So here we are. The final installment in the series.
Today I want to finish up The Keys to Unlocking Success by talking about something that’s very dear to my heart and, to me, may be the thing that makes or breaks your success.
Lots of people start off by setting themselves a focus. They’re passionate about that focus and subsequently take responsibility to go out there and realise it. They become the most positive person you’ve ever met as well as the most determined.
But they still ultimately fail. Why?
Banging your head against a brick wall.
When people try and achieve success in something they race off into the distance and think that if they stick to their way of thinking that they will eventually reach their goal.
They’ll come up against a problem and won’t be able to solve it so they’ll back off and try another way. After a while they come up against a similiar problem to before. They’ll try to solve it in the same way and again will end up with the same result.
They’ll get to a point where they can’t move anywhere for problems that they can’t solve and will ultimately, not seeing a way through, give up.
They did everything right. They had focus. They were passionate and positive. They had buckets of determination and took personal responsibility for everything they did. So what went wrong?
They forgot that one of the biggest players in success is the ability to learn as you go. I’m not talking about learning the skills needed to perform the task necessarily but more being able learning from what they experience.
If you come up against a problem and you can’t solve it, why try and solve a similar problem in a similar way if you know that it isn’t going to work?
You need to learn from what you experience and what you achieve as you go. You’ll be able to solve problems much more easily in the future if you learn from the past.
Here are some great ways to foster a learning mentality when trying to achieve success in your life.
1. Immerse yourself in your passion
You need to find out everything you can about what you want to be successful in. Want to learn a new language? Go and get all of the self help materials you can find and spend all your spare time going through them.
Not a fan of reading? Find some videos or audio online then and immerse yourself that way. The more you learn the more excited you’ll be to learn more.
2. Learn from success
This one is relatively easy for most of us. We love to relive the moments of success and little victories. We play them over and over in our minds, remembering every little detail. By doing this we can easily replicate similar successes in the future.
If you can systematically break down your successes then you’ll give yourself the ability to achieve more success in the future by replicating some of the previous actions and decisions which made you successful.
3. Learn from failure
Where as people can easily learn from success, what a lot of us do is struggle to learn from the times when we fail. We would rather push them to the back of minds and not have to deal with them because that’s generally easier and less painful.
Don’t!
Learn from what’s gone wrong, so you can change it in the future. Ask yourself things like.
- What happened?
- What did I not do that could have made a difference?
- Did anyone else’s input cause the problem? (Be careful with this one – don’t just blame others)
- What resources / attitudes did I not have?
- What stands out as creating the shortfall?
When you can ask yourself these questions and honestly answer them, you’ll be able to put into practice some really powerful things that will help you be more successful in the future.
4. Learn from others
What’s everyone else doing? Are they getting it right or just making a hash of it? What can you learn from their experiences?
There are some amazing people out there who are doing just what you want to do. Find them, learn from them, go out there and do your thing to achieve success.
Go and realise your dream.
Everyone is different. Everyone has a different idea of what they want to be successful in as well as what success means to them.
For some people, success is about being happy with where you are. For others it’s about achieving greatness. Whatever your idea is, your success lies within your reach, you just have to realise it.
You already have passion deep down inside of you. Find it and let it out, then you’ll find that positivitity, personal responsibility, focus and determination will all fall into place.
I really hope you’ve enjoyed this series on The Keys to Unlocking Success. Your comments and feedback have been worth all of the time that i have put in. Thank you.
I’ve wrapped the whole series up into an ebook that you can download for free, without the need the leave me an email address. So keep it safe and pass it on to your friends and family. And hey; if you have any tales to tell of how it’s helped you to achieve success, then drop me an email.
‘Til next time.
Download the Keys to Unlocking Success, here
Similar Posts:
- The Keys to Unlocking Success: Part 4 Being Positive
- The Keys to Unlocking Success: Part 1 – Focus
- The Keys to Unlocking Success: Part 3 Taking Responsibility
- The Keys to Unlocking Success: Part 2 – Passion
- The Keys to Unlocking Success: Part 5 Determination
Ben Lumley writes about Success and Personal Achievement at 6aliens.com. He is a Personal Achievement Coach and Motivational Speaker.
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Great conclusion Ben, and probably the most important part. Nailed it!
Thanks Heather. Really pleased you like it
Hi Ben,
A lovely ending to your series and probably one of the toughest nuts to crack, at least for me, learning…
I think it always helps to remember that we are often dependent on others for our successes in life and that it's about how we navigate our relationships with them. Putting ourselves consistently out there is hard, particularly if we think we're not doing so well, but so long as we can stay in relationship with others, I think we give ourselves a chance of surviving in the long term.
I have pulled back from many things that, in my own eyes, I've failed at. It has only been in recent times that I've learned that when things bomb to look at both the good and the bad together. So, before I even critique myself, I try to ask “what is/was great about this?” “what really makes/made me happy about this?” “what am I really grateful for in this?”. Then I ask, “what was not right” OR “what is not yet right about this”. I find that trying to take a positive outlook gives me the energy to confront and learn from the stuff that wasn't so hot.
Ben, it's been a pleasure joining the conversation on this series of blogs and thanks for that. I'm looking forward to whatever it is you do next here! (Oh, and I'm just about to download the series too!!) Have a lovely Sunday.
Hey Christine
Yeah you're right, it's easy to pull back from perceived failures so it's really great that you've started to reflect upon what you've done and taking a positive outlook moving forward.
It's been a pleasure to write this series. I was thinking about putting it all in one short post but really glad I chose to expand upon each area.
Got lots of exciting things coming up – some guest posts too which is exciting.
Thanks for you're on going support Christine
Ben, awesome final chapter brother.
Yeah have just got to get out there and do it. No whining, no complaining and certainly no excuses. It's out there fo rthe taking, just have to go and get it.
Thanks buddy. Hope you liked it.
Success is out there, all you have to do is grab it.
Thank for the support man.
Good points. I think another key is not being afraid to fail and not viewing a failure as a stop.
If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got.
Thanks Ralph. I think not viewing failure as a stop is part of the learning process. It seems to be programmed into us that failure is 100% negative and that it means the end of a process. We need to relearn that from the ashes of defeat you can learn a great deal to help you move on in the future.
Exactly Steve. Exactly!
Ben,
Just downloaded the Ebook man.
I like what you've said here. I especially like the fact that you mentioned finding others who are doing what you're doing and do that. People might mistake this for following the crowd but you don't have to actually follow anyone. Learn from the people who you consider to be the pros and follow in their path also creating your own creative structure and see what happens.
Great last article… Will definitely spread the word.
Re-Tweeting now!
Hey Eric
Yeah there's a whole big difference between following the crowd and learning from the crowd.
Glad you liked it – thanks for sharing
Hey bud excellent post, I have been up for quite a while so my brain is not functioning or else I would of wrote much more than this so I will just retweet, keep up the great work!!
Thanks for dropping in Ryan. And thanks for the RT.
Looking forward to you coming back soon
My motto is the fastest way to succeed is to fail! When we fail we become move further and further to success.
Hey Jonathan, thanks for commenting
Love your motto – so many successful people in life fail a lot. The difference is they learn and keep going.
Hi Ben,
Great read and a really big inspiration for me. I have serious doubts about my future recently. And your posts have been greatly helpful.
I always like the way we talk about things. I see there is much of negativity floating around – in families, in homes, offices and everywhere (I’m guilty of it too, at times when I lose patience).
I liked the way you stressed on the language we use. I read it out to my son… all your posts. So nice he wasn’t on TV and doing something. He listened to everything I read and agreed with it
I always like humour and laughing off at meeting unexpected stumbling blocks is a great thing. I call those who laugh at themselves are the greatest people!
I will stick to your blog for fodder regularly, and thanks for the good blog!!
Solomon
Thanks Solomon
Looking for to seeing you back here soon