Kevin Hogan

International Speaker

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7 Hidden Keys to Lifelong Success

Key to Success

Success: To live the life you choose.

 

There are lots of random aspects of life. People get sick, friends die, stresses happen, people around you generate more problems than they solve. It can all feel very unfair. And it is. Life is of course, not fair, in any way. Fortunately you do have ownership over a great deal more of your life than you might guess.

Success means living the life you want, for the rest of your life.

And all real success is about thinking through time. It means preparing for today and each day beyond today for the balance of your life.

Here then is what I want you to take home today. Seven hidden keys of living life your way.

1. The Prediction Key

Being able to predict or predetermine, means you will become a successful predictor of the actions of your SELF and OTHERS.

Understanding the results of behaviors and actions of your self and others allows you to observe what few others see.

If you can predict where the pitcher is going to throw the pitch, you stand a decent chance of hitting it with the bat.

If you can predict where the other teams quarterback is going to throw the ball, you stand a decent chance of intercepting the ball.

Achievement and accomplishment stem from your ability to predict what will happen because of something else that you might set in motion.

You predict how she will respond to a specific gift you will give to give her.

You predict how to best communicate news that might be stressful or challenging to receive in some fashion.

You predict what problems are likely to face your kids so you can prepare them for coping when those problems arrive.

You develop handbooks to deal with the occurrences of every day problems that you predict are possible to happen on the job.

You develop prediction skills to estimate how people will react and respond to products, services, ideas, and most importantly you.

Success is a LIFE DIRECTION with plenty of bumps and obstacles as you move through each day.

Starting today, begin paying careful attention to what you think will happen in various life situations.

Predict how other people are likely to respond or react. Begin to hone your skills of predicting everything from how they will respond to which way they will turn in their car. Notice how life changes as you become more effective at predicting.

Prediction requires you to ascend from your emotional reactive brain and begin thinking.

Learn to predict events and the reactions of others to all kinds of different events and experiences and you virtually insure a simpler success journey!

2. The Self Control Key

Keys to Success Self Control allows you to navigate each of life’s moments regardless of the emotions involved. You must be able to achieve goals whether happy, sad, frustrated, violent, angry, excited, ecstatic, outraged, or disgusted. You have be able to communicate through and in spite of all of these emotions.

Self control happens when you have predetermined where you want to be going in life, you meet with life’s daily challenges and often disasters, yet move forward in your direction in spite of those daily challenges.

When it comes to achieving, you check your emotions at the door for most important decisions and think.

You are not your feelings or your emotions.

They don’t necessarily reflect anything happening in real time.

To treat feelings and emotions as sole direction makers in life does nothing but create crisis after crisis.

How you feel about the weather won’t change the weather. What you think about doing to cope with the weather will cause you to survive tornadoes, storms, hurricanes and allow you to be successful in dealing with that aspect of everyday life.

Be aware of your internal biases, emotions and drives and move in a planned direction and you will succeed.

Question: What can you do to insure that success?

Living the life you choose begins when you have a strong awareness of what your emotions are doing to your actions.

Secondly, success happens only if you can move when your body asks you to be inert.

Developing a thoughtful mindset, instead of reacting to each trigger and stimulus with a numb mind, will help along the way.

Part of a successful life is to create a daily life that has the potential for more good experiences than you have had in the past. This requires a great deal of thought and energy.

People who are unwilling to expend that energy will continue to be unsuccessful and unhappy.

What’s next?…

What Factors Really Lead to Success?

Keys to Success: Perseverance, DeterminationWhat factors do all successful people have in common that you want to adopt?

  • Persevere – Perseverance and determination are absolutely required for success. Failure stings. It hurts. Your emotions say, “ouch, that’s painful, I’m going to stop that.” This is true of pretty much everything that is helpful in life. Controlling your body’s response and reactions to the emotions it feels is the key to perseverance.If something doesn’t work out as planned the first time, then try and try again using different methods to achieve the result that you are looking for.Paul McCartney recently reminded an interviewer that The Beatles were nothing of an overnight success. The Beatles worked 350-360 days per year in clubs all over Europe for five years before they had a hit record. Like Elvis Presley and every other self made success, they were turned away by record labels and industry leaders before they forced the issue because of their PERSISTENCE.The Beatles worked a brutal travel schedule and eventually built enough of a fan base to launch successful records in spite of being turned away by big names like Decca.Simple math. Perform for 300 people per night times 350 nights per year and you have 100,000 people who have seen you. Repeat. Repeat. Release record. You create your OWN SUCCESS.The math is simple…the execution requires placing thought over feelings. You place your objective over being tired.Yes! To persevere means to “refuse to stop.” Continue through each “no” until you get to “yes.” It’s that simple.

     

  • Change – if you are not happy with what you have now, or who you are in life, then the only one that can make a difference to your situation or life is you. A change could mean changing your outlook on life, your outlook on yourself, your priorities or your activities, you have no one else to blame but yourself and only you have the power to change.For the vast majority of people, what goes around comes around – you only get back in life what you are willing to put into it.Putting in enough to get paid today never gives birth to success. Success means planting, fertilizing and harvesting so much that you have abundance.If you are helpful, honest, and a good person, then you will get the same back in return which can help you on your path to success, particularly in the workplace.Change, by definition requires movement. And movement is NOT inertia. Movement (action) by itself is nothing. Directed action is an improvement. Directed actions that are part of a plan with contingencies are the ultimate cause of successful change.You Did It! Change is uncomfortable because that IS what change is. Uncomfortable = Change, Change = Uncomfortable Therefore, you need to choose to be uncomfortable and let that drive your bus…Choose that knowing your discomfort is probably a very good sign that you are on the road to making something very good happen.

     

  • 4. The Mentor – You won’t succeed alone – The reason we have an Inner Circle is because all successful people rely in part on others for their success. Every person has different skills, talents and abilities which when combined, they lead to an individual’s success.Nothing is as powerful as the efforts of the star, but the star doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Every star has a mentor. Every great quarterback has a coach. Every wealthy person I’ve met has someone they rely on for feedback and suggestions to see what they cannot see about themselves.It is a fact that humans need to be accountable to succeed. We often need to “pick the brains” of other people. Success is much easier to achieve if you have sharp people who want YOU to win, on your side.The mentor sees in you, what you don’t see in yourself.The mentor sees how people respond and react to you, your ideas, your strategies in life.You’ll never have the vantage point of the mentor, so be certain to choose wisely.Pitching is the most important aspect of baseball, bar nothing. But if there is no catcher, the pitcher fails….You are the pitcher in your life….A seasoned coach allows you to bring your dreams and ideals to life.

    In fact, for those of you who have followed my writings about ‘The Secret’, research has clearly shown that if your visualization includes other people WATCHING YOU while you move toward your goals in your mind, you are much more likely to succeed in the outer world than if you were simply visualizing yourself doing something or accomplishing something.

    When I have space/time in a few weeks, I’ll detail this for you, for now, just do it.

    Make it Happen

  • Set yourself Targets, Objectives, Outcomes -Setting targets or goals for yourself can help you to succeed in just about anything you choose. These “goals” can be daily, short-term or medium-term targets with short-term being a few days and medium-term being a few years. I don’t like long-term goals. We don’t live in a long-term goal world anymore. The world is evolving much faster than it did 100 years ago.Growing up to become the President of a company that won’t exist in 30 years is simply not how the world is going to happen. Kids should have three or four areas of expertise going into college, and so should you and I.Always set realistic targets and give yourself a timetable by which to reach your target, review your targets on a regular basis to make sure they are always attainable.
  • Don’t strive for perfection – never try to be perfect, no one is perfect. Set a standard and goal and do the task or job to the very best of your ability and be happy with that, as long as you gave it your best shot that’s all you or anyone else can ask for. There are very few jobs or activities that require perfection. (I do like my airplane mechanics to be as close to perfect as they can….)Perfectionism is most often, a guaranteed disaster waiting to happen. I don’t like being around perfectionists. Perfectionism is one of the 11 Life Schemas you learn about in Lifestorms. Go find out how devastating perfectionism is and why you must eliminate it.There are a few professions where being “perfect” is largely required. But most people don’t need to be perfect to succeed.

Take this home tonight…to ponder:

  • Be The Self Sculptor – develop strategies which make you more aware of yourself and what you are capable of achieving.If you are CERTAIN of yourself and what you are capable of achieving, then you are going to ultimately be successful in whatever you do. Certainty doesn’t predictably create short term results. Know that you WILL ULTIMATELY win and you will.Being certain means you are ALWAYS persistent and that you ALWAYS persevere. Period. Then go to bed.If you don’t, then your “certainty” is worthless. Either you do it or you don’t…generally speaking Yoda was right….there is no try…
  • Focus on the outcome you want and the PROCESS of getting there – This does not mean to focus on the “positive” and what it is you want to achieve instead of the negative or what it is that you don’t want to achieve.The outcome is the end of the story which then becomes the SETTING for the next life story. The outcome is very predictable. Being aware and preparing for the obstacles is what separates winners from losers.That’s one of the three reasons people fail at just about everything.The successful person maps the journey after they know the obstacles, fallen bridges and flooded plains.Only the failure visualizes only good things and then moves forward with foolish pride.Time to Act Thinking positively means that you have charted all the fallen bridges and have detours and alternate routes planned. Ignoring the fallen bridge because it’s a negative, just means you’ll sit at the end of the highway waiting for years for someone to build your manifestation for you.So first know you WILL complete the project!Then….

     

  • Be Resilient – For several years, I wrote a bunch of articles on resilience and cut a couple of CD’s before I discovered that few people were interested in resilience…How crazy is this phenomenon?Why did people not read about resilience?It is a BIG KEY!Failures are people who see “only the positive” and they don’t believe they will fail and don’t need to be resilient.Resilience is one of the core attributes of those who succeed. The ability to bounce back after failure, death of a loved one, disasters and crises… ONLY these people succeed in the long run. 
  • Making the right decisions – Some people find it easy to make decisions while others tend to procrastinate a lot when it comes to making decisions.I am neither.I know that once you have the optimal amount of information, you must decide. For me, I’m just as uncomfortable with decision as anyone else, but because the more decisions you make, the more change will happen, ergo the more success you experience (and the more failure of course), it’s a requirement.Decisions. You don’t have to like or not like them. You simply have to become good at making them.Remember: When making decisions in life-changing situations, it can be hard for everyone, after all the choice you make will affect your life, those in your life…. and the route you choose to go might not be easily reversible or it might be impossible to change. If we stop and look back on some of the biggest moments in our life that went wrong, we find that our biggest regrets come from faulty decision-making.Perhaps we went with our gut instinct when making a decision or we let ourselves be swayed by others, there are many reasons why we make the wrong decisions in life and almost everyone will have made the wrong decision at some time in their life.The following are some tactics to help you with simple decision-making. 

7. Decision-making

Keys to Success: Hone Your Decision Making Skills What change in life have you been considering? How do you make the right choices and decisions?

You will consider your various passions and what can be profitable and best for you and then you will decide. Use the following decision-making principles until you have taken Decision Point, the award winning course in making brilliant decisions.

  1. When making a decision, it is based on probability of outcome and the value of outcomes…not what you feel or what your gut reaction is.
  2. Decisions are merely making a choice among alternatives. There are good decisions and bad decisions. How something ultimately turns out is NOT the issue. A good decision is what happens NOW, not how it turns out.
  3. A bad decision is a decision made based on feelings, instinct in unfamiliar territory, or lack of information about all the alternatives.
  4. If you’re outstanding in a field, make your decisions quickly. If you’re not, collect all the facts.
  5. Jot down notes when making a decision, write down all solutions and include all relevant information. By seeing it written down in black and white, sometimes the answer is staring you in the face.
  6. Write down all the pros and cons of the decision you make, it can help clarify your decision or help you to see any problems the decision might have.Yes! istockphoto/PashaIgnatov
  7. Write down how important each of the various pros, cons, and results are. (Is it more important to have a bigger house, or, to be in a better school district?)
  8. Make one decision at a time, never allow decisions to build up and force yourself to make them all at once.
  9. If others will be affected by your decision, then get their input on the situation. It doesn’t mean you have to do what they suggest, but you still need to let people be heard.
  10. Make a decision and act on it. Recognize that you cannot know with 100% certainty that it is the right one but once made, stick with it until it makes certain sense to shift course.

Make sense?

Master Decision Making

11. Before following a decision through, ask yourself what will go wrong as you follow through with this choice.

  1. What else? What else? How will you handle those problems?
  2. Once you have committed yourself to your decision, then go with it full out.
  3. Let go of all the “what ifs” and do not bother yourself anymore. You’ve already foreseen the pitfalls, you know some will happen. So move. Act.
  4. Visualize your decision in your head and follow it through in your mind while a large group of people you know watch you. Visualize all outcomes of the decision before actually following it through.
  5. Put faith in your ability to make a successful decision and your ability to follow it through.
  6. Review all the facts thoroughly before you make a decision, once you have reviewed them, allow yourself to time to think about them before drawing a conclusion and determining your decision from the facts.

I like to have someone debate me on important decisions. I tend to be a fast “No/Yes” when people give me information, so I need to have an extended debate about ideas. My tendency is to think, “no you are wrong, I am right.” I have learned to ferociously defend my position and rapidly change it when shown to be wrong.

Being wrong or right is not important when debating. Making the best decision IS.

  1. Unless you are an expert in the field you are making a decision about, NEVER base your decisions on what feels right.
  2. DO however, make your decisions when you know it is the right thing to do.
  3. Remember to look at the objective of the decision, the alternatives to the decision and the risks of any alternatives to the decision.

 

You now possess the foundation to the next step. The keys are in your hand. What will you do with them?

 

Decision Point: The Kevin Hogan E-Course

 

 

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