4 Steps to the Cycle of Success
Motivation isn’t something you have permanently. It’s something you need to keep working at – a big part of this is believing in your own ability! Creating success over and over again is as simple as following the four areas of the success cycle.
1. Belief
Your beliefs are a combination of your experiences and lessons since birth. They are a set of ideas about life that you hold true. Your beliefs affect your abilities. If you believe you’re no good at Maths, then your potential for learning in that class drops. On the other hand, if you believe you’re good at Maths, you’re likely to keep on improving. Sometimes, the difference between being good and not so good is simply a matter of what you believe.
2. Action
In life, the actions you take depend on what your beliefs are. If you believe you will pass all your exams, you might take the extra classes offered at your school to ensure this success. When you take action, sooner or later you will get a result. For example, let’s say you are looking for a job. You come to the perfect job advert. The advert is describing you, your thoughts, talents, skills and personality. You know this
is your job and the starting salary is $39,000—a great starting salary for your experience level. Your beliefs about yourself
and what you perceive the employer wants, will determine your action. Let’s say you apply. Now, you are still looking in the paper, and the next week you come across the same advert. Again, as you read it, your excitement mounts, as you know they are describing you.
The only change to the advert now is the salary is $450,000. Would you still apply? Your beliefs may surface now. “What do they want me to do?” or, “No-one is worth that much” or, “I’m not intelligent enough for that job” or, “That’s my job!” Your beliefs will determine your actions.
3. Result
The results you get are feedback from your actions. You won’t always get the results you want because there are always challenges in life. If your results are not what you expected, check your actions. If you are getting the results you want, then you are making useful actions.
4. Thought
Your thoughts are the key to achieving success. When you don’t get the results you are wanting, you can have two main types of thoughts. The thought of a victim or the thought of a victor. When things don’t work out as you would like, do you become a victim by pretending your
results don’t matter? Or do you make excuses for why you haven’t achieved your goal? Do you blame other people such as your teachers, parents or the government? “It’s the government’s fault I can’t find a job,” is a real victim thought. Alternatively, to think like a victor is to think about taking ownership for the results and being accountable and responsible for changing your beliefs and actions to get a different result.
When successful people throughout the world get something wrong, or things don’t quite work out how they expect, they take responsibility for their results and change their beliefs and actions until they reach the desired result or outcome. Only then does the cycle continue.
