Read “The Secret” yet? Know anybody who has? It seems everybody these days has bought into the formula for visualizing your way to success, loosely based on Napoleon Hill’s work: Think and Grow Rich.
Have you taken a good look, though, at the people who don’t just pay this idea lip service, but practice it every day? Is it me, or are they almost universally broke. And the people you know who are really successful; while they may say “The Secret” is a good thing, I suspect we both know what the answer would be if we asked them how much time they spend every day visualizing a better life for themselves.
From this quick, informal survey, it’s pretty easy to come to the conclusion that “The Secret” is just the latest in a long series of magic beans that have been sold to a general public looking for a quick fix.
Anybody who passed high school physics knows that while there are a lot of universal laws in the universe, ‘ attraction’ just ain’t one of ‘em. On top of that, the attempts to link what is basically New Age mysticism to Quantum Mechanics would be laughable if they weren’t so insulting.
So if there’s no ‘Secret’, then how does one become successful? How about ‘The Obvious’. There’s a handful of things that almost every really successful person you know does regularly, and none of them have anything to do with visualizing:
1. They Take Healthy Responsibility. If something goes wrong, they admit responsibility quickly, move to fix the problem, learn from the mistake, and move on. End of story. They don’t assign blame, dodge the facts, and perhaps most importantly, they don’t self-flagellate about it for decades. Apologize, repair, learn, move on.
2. They have a Bias for Action. Given the choice between nailing down all the details to the nth degree, and ‘giving it a go’, these people almost always fall on the side of action. Truly successful business people can be on their 9th or 10th prototype by the time a more cautious one has rolled out their ‘perfect’ but untested version.
3. They Treat People Really Well. They are dedicated to improving the lives of those around them. They pay people what they are worth, give them the space to do their job, and respect their work life balance. As a result, the people who work for them put in WAY more than they are paid to do, and go not the extra mile, but two or three or four, while the stingy micromanager can’t figure out why his employees bolt for the exits at 4:59:59.
4. They Learn and Grow Constantly – They are always reading, taking courses, looking things up, and adding to their storehouse of personal knowledge. They are grounded enough to know they don’t know everything, and are open to learning whatever they can from pretty much everyone they come in contact with.
That’s my magic four. I was going to add “always positive” to the list, but then realized that it didn’t necessarily apply. Truly successful people are very rarely ‘negative to the point of despair’, but they have no problem laying things on the line. It’s the difference between an employer who insists everything is rosy, right up until the day of the mass right-sizing, vs. the employer who sits down with his team, tells them just how bad it is, and then empowers them to come up with a plan for getting out of the mess. I don’t think that counts as being negative, but it is certainly more realistic than the rose coloured glasses many self-help gurus suggest you go around wearing.
Any additions? I’m sure they are – feel free to leave them in the comments.
