Wishing you were successful is one thing but wanting it bad enough to do something about it is entirely another. All success begins with a desire to do something better, bigger, and greater than you are currently doing now. The only kind of desire that leads to success is a strong burning desire that literally wakes you up in the morning and keeps you working way past the point that other people quit.

Most people have desires in life and start out with intentions of making it a reality. But when success does not come quickly and easily to them, they replace it with another desire, one that seems easier to achieve.

‘The failures in the world are people who quit just moments before success knocked on the door’

Success is not easy, but it is guaranteed when you commit to it 110% and never stop striving for it until you achieve it. Following are the steps to creating the kind of desire that will make you successful in IT.

If your goals have faded a little, if you are not as committed as you once were or if you never set your goals properly in the first place then you must do these exercises.

Strong Desire

A strong desire is complete in minute detail. You should know exactly what success means to you and even how you will spend your $100K+ salary when you achieve it. Follow these 6 simple steps to creating a definite desire.

1. Define the amount of money you want to earn. Put a dollar figure on it.

2. Define the exact date, right down to the day, when you will achieve this salary.

3. Define exactly what you are willing to do in order to earn that amount of money.

4. Create a detailed plan to get there. Do a gap analysis between where you stand now and where you want to be, and create a plan for closing the gap.

5. Write a commitment statement. It has to include all the details you have written above and it must start with “I commit…”.

6. Read your commitment statement out loud twice every day. Do not skip this step (regardless of how silly you feel). This is the most important step of all. If you skip it you will eventually forget about your goal.

Cut Off All Avenues Of Retreat

Never give yourself the opportunity to back out of your dreams. If you allow for even the slightest chance that you will fail, then as soon as the playing field becomes tough you will take the easy way out every single time.

Committing to a single outcome and giving yourself no way out of it is scary, and it is a great way to motivate yourself to succeed. Think about it. Have you ever been fired from a job or made redundant? You probably had no choice in the matter and it was most likely a scary situation for you. But that situation also forced you to take positive action, you had no choice, you were motivated and you succeeded in finding another position because of that motivation.

Most people aren’t easily motivated to achieve goals over the long term. They get hyped up for a short while but gradually fall back into their comfort zone and stop achieving. A sure fire way to keep yourself motivated over the long term is to cut off all avenues of retreat, so that you are forced to pursue your desire.

Making It Real

Have you ever set a goal only to have it fade over time and become forgotten altogether? It happened because you didn’t put in the energy to keeping that goal alive. A goal needs to be nurtured, fed and revised every day to be effective. Without this constant attention it dies.

Reading your goal aloud every day is effective, but also visualising it makes it even more powerful. Why? Talking about something is not as real to your mind as visualising it. When you visualise a situation you add in details, pay attention to everything around you and create it as if it were a movie. Visualising actually creates an emotional response and emotion has a powerful memory enhancing effect.

If you really want to pack some punch into your goal you should take 10 minutes every morning before you get up to imagine…

  Yourself getting out of bed and getting dressed for the day.
  Instead of your usual work clothes, you get dressed in a $1,000.00 business suit. Notice the fine tailoring and feel the texture of the expensive cloth. See how good you look in it.
  Now get into your dream car and drive to work. Feel the comfort of the leather seats and the exhilaration of its sporty performance as you accelerate along the freeway.
  When you arrive at your workplace, enter the office that you want to have. Greet your colleagues as you enter, notice how bright and alert you sound, see them smile back at you in return.

  Imagine yourself doing the work that you always wanted to do. What projects are you working on? Notice the creative ways that you solve issues.
  Experience yourself doing that job as an expert, feel motivated and happy. Notice how others respect you in the workplace and ask for your advice. Smile at your boss as he/she comes into your office to congratulate you on a job well done on your last project.

It only takes 10 minutes a day to create this mental movie. Do this everyday for 21 days and notice how much more confident you are, how much better your on the job performance is and how much more you enjoy your current job!

Build Unstoppable Confidence

How you see yourself, or your self- image is more important than you might think. Your mind will only accept ideas that are consistent with your current self-image. So if you want to increase your level of confidence you must change your self-image.

Luckily, this is quite easy. Your mind cannot tell the difference between real experiences and imagined ones, it gives both the same amount of importance. So changing your self image is just a matter of creating better experiences for yourself. You can do this with real experiences or imagined ones.

The previous exercise will have a powerful effect on your self-image. You will gradually begin to identify yourself with success, being appreciated, talented and well paid, which will make you more confident. To really get your confidence skyrocketing though, there are a few more simple things you can do:
  Stop judging yourself – every time you judge yourself for making a mistake you are adding emotion to that experience and strengthening it is power over you. If you make a mistake that’s OK as long as you do not dwell on it. Forget your mistakes and replay your successes over and over again.
  Stop measuring yourself against other people’s standards. Your talents and abilities are unique to you. You are not supposed to be the same as someone else, you are supposed to be the best version of you that you can be.
  Ensure you take enough time to relax by making sure you spend at least 30 minutes everyday relaxing. Not in front of the TV, but in a peaceful location where there is no noise to distract you. Just allow yourself to forget about all your worries and unwind. Relaxing is an important part of letting go of negative beliefs about yourself. The more stress and worries you hold onto at the end of each day, the more limiting your self-image becomes.

By C. Hunt