One of the many things I cover in my book Finding My Voice is about how often I used to read success books, hoping to find the secret sauce for getting ahead. Turns out most of what I believed then ended up being success myths.
This is the first in a series of articles that I have written on what I have learned on my pursuit for success — the hard lessons that have stood the test over the past dozen or so years.
Here I separate the success myths from the real deal.
While the formulas offered in most success books just don’t seem to work for me, these are the lessons that do. I can count on them, and I hope they offer some value to you.
Success Myth 1 – Setting goals works all the time
- In Does Goal Setting Really Work? I talk about my frustration of setting goal after goal for years on end only to see most of them turn to sawdust. I talk about where goal setting works and where it doesn’t.
Success Myth 2 – Just stay motivated; it’s easy
- My article What Really is Motivation? talks about my recent discovery of a single diagram that explained everything. In 30 seconds I could finally see why I kept getting stuck in the cycle of false starts, why I kept pulling up short all the time, and why I was failing to reach my goals.
Success Myth 3 – Plan your work and work your plan
- In Effectuation – A Very Surprising Way to Make Things Work I unpack the most vital lesson of everything I have learned in the past dozen or so years. Here, I tell how I realized that my long, long road was worth it.
Success Myth 4 – God will make this easy for me
- How Does God Factor Into Your Success? is where I touch on the critical aspect of faith in our pursuit of reaching our goals. Here I wrestle with the age-old question: Does God really care if I am successful?
Bonus – 1 Fast way to bounce back after a setback
- Reboot is where I talk about one exercise I do to keep myself in productive head-space. This skill is a must for entrepreneurs who experience setbacks on a daily basis.
What may surprise you is:
- That there are times when goal setting just isn’t going to work for you.
- Why all the tips and techniques out there are more like mental junk food that can rot your brain, and why you need to “brush” daily.
- When God thinks of you, your being an outrageous success isn’t the first thing on His mind.