Ronn’s post on Creative Ways to Develop Success Habits really hits home! Basically, it says Do what is necessary to get where you want to go and Do it consistently.

There are two parts to this: 1) do what is necessary. I have discovered the hard way, as probably many of us, that there are no shortcuts. To KNOW this and to DO this are worlds apart. I find that it is very easy for me to do what I call living from hope to hope. Sort of like living paycheck to paycheck, but instead I am living from one exceptional success to another. For example, I send out postcards to people that I know are thinking about business ownership. These postcards are designed to hit nerves and tackle things like F.E.A.R. (False Evidence Appearing Real), Too Good To Be True and Crabs in the Basket among other self-defeating ideas. Once in a blue moon, a recipient of these cards will pick up the phone and call me. I know that passive marketing is useless unless it is cemented with active marketing. All passive marketing does is break the ice when you actually connect and sometimes it doesn’t even do that. But never the less, when someone calls me instead of me having to call them, I dance a jig because I think, “Wow, I don’t have to work anymore!” This happens like hardly ever. To be exact, I think 4 times in 3 1/2 years.

If I built my business around waiting on people to call me and getting my feelings hurt because they weren’t and assuming they would call if they wanted to talk to me, I would have been out of business a long time ago. The truth is these calls are gifts. They are gifts because I didn’t have to work for them. They came to me. They were not a result of my ACTIVity. But would you believe that I can still fall into the trap of behaving as if success is somehow going to be bestowed upon me if I just wait long enough. What I am really doing is giving my power away to all those people who never pick up the phone and call me. As a person who is in the business of helping people get into business, I have a responsibility to pick up the phone and call them. When they get to me first, that is a gift. Nothing more, nothing less. And certainly nothing to run my business around. Running a business successfully means running my business around the rules, not the exceptions to the rule. The exception is that someone will call me. The rule is I have to do what is necessary to stay in business–call them first! I have to do what they are not willing to do.

This brings me to the second part of this simple but not easy formula: 2) do it consistently. I recently learned a very valuable lesson about consistency. We tend to think that consistency is a result, when actually it is a process. Consistency is daily vigilance and it is a small price to pay for peace of mind. The lesson I learned is that there is a universal law of change. Everything around us is constantly changing whether we want it or not. We are absolutely powerless over that change. It is the way of the world and its ever-evolving intention. Consistency is our only defense. By being consistent, practicing that daily vigilance, doing the activities necessary over and over day in and day out; we actually stand a chance. Otherwise, we are doomed to a life and a business of frustration. A life of trying to control the uncontrollable. A business of surviving from hope to hope. Hoping that this time it will be different. Hoping that this time you will still meet your goal even though you didn’t do the necessary activities. Hoping that this time, just this once, you will get a gift, rather than fruits from your work. Hoping that there really is a shortcut.

We act as if we are suddenly going to be struck successful even though to say that would be ludicrous. Why do we do this? Why is it that we can be told what works, we can be told what we need to do to be successful, but yet we do nothing different? We have tools like Joe’s Goals and books like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. We have people like Wayne Dyer telling us to “believe it before you see it”, instead of the traditional programming “believe it when you see it”. We have Deepak Chopra and Ekhart Tolle telling us that are mind is our biggest obstacle, yet we persist in “reasoning and logiking” our way through life.

I learned from Brian Klemmer and his Pursuit & Practice of Personal Mastery that reason and logic is a very taxing way to solve problems. Yet we persist! We go to great lengths to avoid the activities that are necessary to our success and so often those necessary activities are the ones we don’t like. It has been said that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”, but it has never been said that the road to hell is paved with intentions. I also learned from Brian Klemmer that “Intention IS Results”. Apparently, our intentions are, all to often, to be comfortable rather than successful. Otherwise, why would we create our own hell?

My theory is something familiar is always favored over something different. No matter how much “familiar” may be making us miserable, we will go to great lengths to stay there, all the while hoping it will be different. It will never be different until we are willing to do what is necessary to make it different!

Instead of food for thought, how about food for action? What is necessary for you to do in the pursuit of your success? And are you willing to do it consistently?