The simple steps to great success

by Gerrit Duvenage
(Kempton Park, South Africa)

Some people don’t like listening to motivational speakers. Personally I think it’s because those are the people that likes to do all the talking, and listening is hard for them. But I’m not here to judge, you might have different reasons. What I can tell you is this, it’s much easier to listen and take advice from someone who has “made” it. It’s much easier for most of us to take advice from someone who has a million in the bank, rather than take advice from someone that’s struggling financially. And this is not even a stigma, and we don’t necessarily judge, it’s really how it’s supposed to be. If you wanted to quit smoking, would you rather listen to someone who has been trying to quit for 10 years, or would you take advice from someone who has not been smoking for 10 years?

The other thing is that, and this is scary. When we do listen, 90% of what is said is wasted, because almost just as quickly as it’s said, it’s forgotten and even if we do remember we hardly ever act on it. I know, because I went with a group of 10 friends to listen to a great seminar full of vibrancy and some great speakers, and the other 9 friends, are still in jobs that they hate and living exactly as they were before.

So why is it that we don’t achieve the life we want, when all the information that we could ever need is handed to us on a silver platter. Any one of us can open YouTube and find at least a thousand great messaged on how to achieve our goals and live our dreams. Yet, tomorrow we go back to doing something that we hate, away from the people that we love just to make a buck.

The answer is simple really.

So we are a generation of thinkers, we think we know what we want and we think we know how to solve everyone else’s problems. We think up great new inventions, and make amazing plans. Personally I have been thinking about writing something like this for the past 10 years. I really excel in thinking. Doing however, is a different ball game. And really, it’s as simple as getting started and following through.

I have a problem with commitment. I have to finish this article before I go to sleep tonight. If I don’t I would have moved on to ten other things by tomorrow, and in five weeks, I will look back on this and wonder why I never finished it. The other problem I have, is once I write the final words on this page, I will submit it and not look at it again for weeks. Only then will I spot the spelling and grammar problems, when it’s too late and has been seen by many.

See, what I did there? I admitted to my problems, which now is no longer a problem because I now know exactly what to do differently. If I don’t learn from it, and keep doing what I always did, not only will I never finish anything, I will also deprive myself from getting your response and opinions about this.
Will this article be a number one hit? Probably not, but I will never know until it’s complete. Thus, my success is really dependant on me. That goes for everything in life. 99% of the time, giving up is the easiest way out of anything.
I am using this article (and me writing it) as an example but it’s really the core of all successes and failures. Commitment is one of the keys to success in anything you do.

Commitment is really an extreme concept. I was listening to a story by a motivational speaker, and he said that one of is “unorthodox” methods of making people understand commitment is to dunk them under water for a while. He allows them to struggle a bit and when they come up and take a deep breath, the first question he asks, is when did you give up on air? At what stage did you decide that air is not that important after all, and I’ll just stay down here until I used up what is left in me. Most people are pretty shocked, and answer that at no point did they think that, all they could think about was getting air. That, is commitment, wanting it as much as air. With that kind of commitment, nothing can stop you, you will go all the way and you will succeed or you might fail, but I guarantee you will have a conclusive outcome.

What? Did I just say, that after all that commitment you might still fail? Sure I did. Failure is part of life, and almost as guaranteed as succeeding for people who really try. And it’s a good thing too. You will learn way more from failing, than your will ever learn from succeeding. You don’t have to keep failing, but when you do, embrace it, love the journey then dust yourself off, gather your thoughts and try something else.

You will laugh at the next piece of advice, but try it before you discard it. Another part of commitment, is closing your Facebook page and switching off your cell phone while focusing on the task at hand. Yes, you might miss a call from an important client, but your service and the person on the other end of that line (you) will be so excellent at what you do, that you will be worth waiting for. Voicemail, Facebook notifications, twitter follows, it will all be there when you check in on it.

You owe yourself that time away from it, where you can focus on one goal, without all the distractions of everything else.

It gets better. When I spend time with my kids, they get 100% from me. I live for them, but when I spend time on being committed to something else, they just have to wait their turn. And I have really happy kids because of that, because they never feel like they are not the most important people in my life when I am with them, so allowing me to be focused on something else is really not a problem for them.
We all want to be successful in something or another, for some it’s financial and for others…. Well they don’t really know what they want or how to get it. Someone will tell you, family is the most important thing in your life, others will say that time is and love is more important than anything and that’s probably why they are spending so much time away from their family and doing things they hate for eight to ten hours a day.

I am even willing to make a statement that you cannot server God the way you should when your broke. And don’t get me wrong, I really don’t like money that much and if I had to choose between my family and money, I will choose my family any day. But it’s just that much easier to spend good quality time with your kids if you don’t have to slave away in some crummy office for eight hours a day. It’s nice to go have a nice meal with family, but only if you are not way behind on all your bills. It’s great to have more time for yourself too, but only if you are fed and not starving because you don’t have an income.

So yes, we value family and time and God way more than we value money, but money makes it a little easier to be what and where you want to be. Being a giving person, helping someone in need is one of the most rewarding emotions felt by humans. Not being able to do God’s work, not being able to help someone where you know help is needed, is depriving you of that wonderful emotion.
So why are 9 out of my ten friends that went to the same seminar I did, still living on a month to month income basis, why do 90% of us still doing what we hate, and not spending time with their families because of it? Because they missed two very important aspects. They neglected to take action, and they forgot that it’s not going to be easy, they will need to be committed.

Your steps to success is as follow. And if you listen to a thousand motivational speeches from the best and most successful people in the world, the core message is the same for all of them.

1. Have a plan (write it down, save it as a background on all your devices) and once pen touched paper, and you have written down your plan

2. It becomes air. You will have to want it as much as you want air. You will have to commit to it, focus on it. It has to become your new law, your bible for success. You may never give up ever. And finally

3. Be prepared and willing to fail, and more importantly try again. Try a thousand times if you have to but never give up.

As a final thought. If anyone else, has ever done it then you can. And If no one else has ever done it, that’s even better. If anyone has been where you are, even one person could make a success than so can you. And here is the good news. People who are much worst of than what you are, have done it. They have pulled out of the misery, and made a life worth talking about. Blind people have done it, people will illnesses has done it, people who was frowned upon and cast out as the scum of this earth, are living your dream. And so can you!!!!

And finally, please always remember that money does not buy you happiness, money gets you the time and the means to be happy.
Thank you for reading, would love to hear from you.