This past weekend I sat in a conference room being taught by incomparable, Jack Canfield, creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series and The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. For 2 ½ hours he taught his success principals and I can’t say that I was blown away by his system because he wasn’t teaching me anything I hadn’t heard before. However, there were a couple of demonstrations he did to illustrate the physical impact of negative thinking and visioning that had me mesmerized. The exercises are little too complex to explain in writing, so I guess you just have to go see him yourself. Nevertheless, there were some reminders that I wanted to share with you that are extremely important to highlight if you want to live a life of joy and passion.

The first thing is that you have to remember that success does not happen overnight! In fact, you will probably fail more times then you will succeed, but when you do, it’s that much sweeter. A lot of the time, it will seem like 2 steps forward and 3 steps back. Here’s what’s important, how you react to the failures and the success is key to your growth. If you allow yourself to get too caught up on either end of the spectrum you can lose sight of what you were trying to accomplish in the first place.

Secondly, building and sustaining a joyful life that is full of purpose and passion requires practice. You don’t just wake up one day and boom you are successful! There only a handful of true overnight success stories. The reality is that there is pattern or routine of things you need to do in order to increase your chances of living the life that you want. Some will vary from person to person, but there are some standard practices that you need to put in place to make things happen.

Start with defining very clearly what you want. Make it very specific and measurable. For example, by the end of June, 2015 I will lose 20 lbs. A bad example of this would be; I will lose some weight. You see the difference right? After that, this next piece is integral, you need to figure out why what you want is important to you. If you don’t do this, I guarantee that you will not be able to sustain the success practice.
Now you have to write it down and put it somewhere you can see it every day. Once you have written it down, close your eyes and create a vision of what you want. In our example above, you would envision yourself 20 lbs lighter. What’s the day like? What are you wearing? Who’s with you? Where are you? What scents are in the air? Create the vision in such detail that it feels real. I would highly recommend you practice this every morning as part of your success routine!

I strongly believe that you must have some type of spiritual practice. There is no denying that there is a spiritual universe and working with the universe will actually get you want you want. I connect with God every morning and night. This helps me to stay focused on my goals as I set my attention on the intention that God has for me.

Prioritize your day. Don’t allow superfluous tasks overtake your key priorities. Create your schedule by completing the most impactful tasks first. Let’s go back to our example above, if you want to lose 20 lbs, exercising should be one of the first 3 things you do at the start of your day. Picking up your smart phone and scrolling through your social media will not help you lose weight, but exercising sure will!

As the saying goes, Practice Makes Perfect! Keep your goals and vision in close proximity and look at them as many times as you need to in order to propel you into the live you are designed to live!

It is my honour to serve you! God Bless!