Learning to Think and Aim Big: Achieve Success Beyond Your Wildest Dreams

When you think of success, do you envision oodles of money, a mansion, and a fancy sports car?

Those items are great, but what about a deeper sense of success – a success beyond your wildest dreams?

If you’re like most readers of internet articles, websites and blogs, you’ve probably heard some success stories where ordinary folks like yourself have gone from rags to riches scenarios.

However, and more importantly, there are even better stories out there.

Like the stories of entrepreneurs and business people leaving their corporate world to go and sell ice cream somewhere in the Caribbean.

They, too, are abundantly happy and successful.

What makes up success?

Success is a personal definition – for some, it’s lots of money, and for others, it’s fulfillment and for others it’s freedom.

Some people want to live in a mansion overlooking the ocean, while others want to live in a cottage by the lake or down at the farm.

Bottom line – success is what you say it is.

Want to know something even more powerful? Success is even what you say it isn’t. You get in your own way.

Let’s start with defining your own success. Here are a few tips on how to define what success is to you and only you:

What’s your why

We all have a vision of what success looks like to us. However, taking this notion one step further, ask yourself some key questions.

What is your why is the first question. Why do you want to achieve this particular success?

Dig deep down and quietly meditate on your true calling, passion and purpose.

Everyone has one and it’s only a matter of time before you are one of millions asking yourself, “Is there something more than this?”

What is the why behind your success? Do you wish to reach thousands of people and make a difference?

Do you wish to help hundreds solve a problem you have experience with? Do you value freedom over material objects and items? Start getting in touch with your why.

What’s the most important thing to you?

Do you value financial freedom, being of service, freedom to come and go as you please, the ability to create a flexible schedule which works for you and your family?

Once you get in touch with your why, your core need and desire will become to come to light.

If you have a driving need to be your own boss or a passionate purpose to help others beyond your wildest dreams, this will come to light as well.

Once you know your why, your core desire will come to the surface.

What actions steps do you need to take, and what does it look like to make it come to life?

Once you’ve done the work to uncover your own definition of success, what your why is, and what’s the most important thing to you, it’s time to take a trip outside of your head and beyond your comfort zone into the world of action.

While it’s nice to get inside your head and get in touch with your why and your what, it’s even more important to get in touch with the how.

How will you make it happen?

Let’s take a look at several categories of life and how to succeed in each one.

The 7 Categories of Life and How to Succeed in Each

Personal

We all have so much going on in life. There’s work, career, school, home and family. The list goes on and on. It’s so easy to lose sight of what our personal goals are.

We might want to finish a degree, complete a certificate, write a book or just learn a hobby or skill.

We say we don’t have time, but the truth is we don’t make time. Have you ever noticed if there’s something you truly wanted to do, you find the time to do it?

Even if means taking a sick day and doing nothing once in a while.

Bouncing from this, here are a few tips on how to create personal goals and how to achieve them:

• Choose one goal at a time – we all have the habit of getting overzealous in our personal goals and start out wanting to lose weight, diet and exercise, clean out clutter, take a class, earn a certificate, etc. and then we spiral out of control and fail at all of the above.
• Worse than this, we stop trying because we climbed too high, too fast and fell way too short. Start with smaller goals. It’s almost like a no-fail system. It’s a win/win. Start with one goal – even the type A personalities out there can do this. By starting with one goal and one goal only, you have no place to go but up.
• If you want to learn a new sport or skill, for example, start by simply exploring what’s involved a little bit at a time. Don’t take out 15 books from the library, talk to 20 different people about it and research for hours on end on the internet.
• Talking to too many different people will only leave you vulnerable, especially when it comes to personal goals. Other people don’t want to leave their comfort zone and they want you to stay there with them as well. Spend small increments of time each day and set the timer. Spend 30 minutes one day and 15 minutes another researching your new personal goal and stop there.
• Pick one person you trust to talk to about your fears, excitement and concerns.
• Pick an action step for the week and stick to it. Get an accountability partner you will have to report to.
• Continue to reward yourself as you go along and reach these milestones.
• Slowly begin to incorporate this new goal into your life through small, actionable and measurable steps.
• Acknowledge the success you are feeling on a small scale as time goes on. Don’t rush and don’t get ahead of yourself.
• Notice you are gaining momentum on your goal. It’s not bigger than you. It’s actually happening in smaller increments.
• Begin to get excited, and it will show. Power tip – the more you get excited about what you are doing, the more inspired you will feel and the more momentum you will create.

Career

Career goals may be a little easier to achieve than personal goals. When it comes to personal goals, you get up inside your head and you think or feel too much.

It’s easier to set career goals and detach from them in a colder more logical way of thinking.

• Examine and explore which area of your career is not working.
• Ask yourself what your end goal is – do you want to retire earlier, work fewer hours, or have more power? What is your end goal?
• Once you have discovered your end goal, start creating a plan of action.
• Pick five action steps, beginning with the smallest.
• Record them on paper.
• Take one small action step per day for a set amount of time – let’s use an example of three weeks. Take one small action step per day for three weeks to get closer to the second action step. For example, you may want to show up earlier or on time for three weeks or you may want to speak up at meetings where as you never did so before.
• You may want to earn a certificate which will put you in line for more money or a promotion. You may want to take on more responsibility at work to show your new boss what you are capable of.
• Continue using this model until all five action steps are completed and you have arrived at your career goal.

Relationships

When it comes to thinking and aiming big, you want to have success in all areas of your life. Success is not related to only money and career.

Success in relationships equates to thinking and aiming big in all areas of your life.

In order to have big success in relationships, you need to think big.

So many times, or actually all times, we come into relationships and bring into them every single relationship we’ve ever had in the past from our parents to our siblings.

If you want big things in relationships, you have to put big goals into them.

• A successful relationship means being honest with who you are and also how you show up. It’s so easy to play the blame game in relationships without looking to take some responsibility of our own. It’s important to take a look at our actions, our thoughts, and our pre-conceived notions when we are relating to others.
• Relationships are not just love interests. Relationships are people we work with and people we don’t even know in line in the supermarket. How we can show up as a contribution to the other person is always a tough question to ask. However, when you ask this question, you come up with a brilliant solution. What if you were to just express your anger without blaming someone else? Do you see how this could equate to a successful solution? In business, when a boss or CEO blames their employee, their employee becomes defensive and less cooperative. It just makes sense. However, when a CEO guides and leads by example and makes reasonable requests for change and prosperity, people will follow suit. This is the true meaning of a successful relationship. This works in personal relationships as well as career and other relationships.

Money

Money has got to be one of the biggest blocks there is. Money has so much power to control us if we let it.

Here are a few action steps to take around having success in the area of finances:

• What’s your story? We all have stories around money. It’s your job to uncover your story. Do you believe you’re not good enough to make that kind of money or do you believe only greedy people have and receive money? Do you tell yourself a story that only people who are better, smarter or more worthy will have money? Define your story.
• Once you uncover your negative money story and self-sabotaging habits surrounding money, you can now write your own brand new story.
• Start practicing positive affirmations around money. I can have more money flow easily into my life and for positive reasons. I can create abundance. I already am in flow and creating abundance. I feel so excited about the abundance of money coming my way. Financial prosperity is possible in my life.
• Practice these daily, several times a day, visualize on them and meditate on them if you truly want financial abundance. It’s not a work harder/make more scenario. It’s about being in ease and in flow.

Life Purpose

We all inherently know what our life purpose is, but we manage to use several negative tools against ourselves.

• We self-sabotage. The minute we feel we are close to success, we make excuses, we run back to our comfort zone, we fear success or believe subconsciously we don’t deserve success.
• We get comfortable in our comfort zone. We make excuses instead of making changes. We back slide and then feel guilty and miserable. We allow life to get in the way.
• We are not aware of our own blocks because we live in a busy world with busy minds.

If you want to find success and pursue your life purpose, you need to:

• Get out of your head and into your heart. Sometimes we all suffer from what is known as analysis/paralysis. We think too much and we don’t drop down into our own hearts.
• Take time to be quiet and sit still. Whether you go to the beach or the boardwalk or the park, you need to schedule time in to be quiet. As odd as it may sound, scheduling time to be quiet will actually help you to get into the process of being quiet anywhere, anytime randomly.
• When you sit still and get quiet, you can actually hear a little better than you normally do when there is so much noise in your head.
• Take notes. Take time to journal your thoughts and feelings on paper. When you journal, you don’t have to worry about filters. You don’t have to worry about what people will say, respond or how they think.
• Write your private thoughts, dreams, desires and wishes for your life purpose down on paper.
• Get clear. Once you take on the practice of getting quiet and being still, you now have the opportunity to get clear. To clear your mind of the clutter. To make clear goals. Taking notes is a great way to get clear. Once you get clear, it’s time to take some of those action steps as previously mentioned.
• Make a declaration. Once you are clear, start declaring your life purpose. Make positive and happy statements about how excited you are about pursuing your life purpose. Keep it simple, don’t elaborate and allow people to ask their questions.
• You don’t have to have all the answers. When you don’t have the answers, don’t doubt yourself, just simply be open to finding the answers. Keep declaring your passion and purpose anyhow. The answers will come in time.

Prosperity

Have you ever looked at somebody and wondered to yourself how they did it? Lots of people feel the same way about others who are successful.

We tend to look at others and think they are lucky or they get all the breaks or their husband/wife/parent made it happen or they come from money.

When it comes to prosperity, it is vital to understand you don’t wait for prosperity and abundance to come to you. You create it.

Choose an area in your life where you want more prosperity. Is it in your career, your financial status, credit card debt or savings and retirement?

Once you’ve honed in on an area, take the following steps to create prosperity:

Prosperity is a mindset

Once you understand prosperity is a mindset, the rest will flow. Prosperity is not something that happens to you. It is something you make happen.

Change your mindset around prosperity.

Your subconscious mind is solely responsible for all of your habits, even your prosperity habits.

In order to tap into the power and leverage of the subconscious mind, you will need to work on creating new mindset habits.

• Positive thoughts create prosperity. Your subconscious mind only knows its past history. All the stories, the negativity, and the events are ingrained in your subconscious mind.
• If you allow your subconscious mind to rule the roost, you will see the same habits and the same trends without much change. Begin to reprogram your conscious mind with positive thoughts and, over time, this practice will show you how quickly and easily you can create prosperity and success into your life.
• Take on the practice of positive thinking. You don’t necessarily have to make things up if you are not at that stage, however, you should take on the practice of what is working as compared to what is not. The more you focus on what is well in your world, the more enhanced wonderful things will appear and magnify in your life.

Spirituality

Success in spirituality comes when you allow and accept what works for you.

No one can tell you what, how, when or where to practice your spirituality or what spiritual practices you should take on.

Spirituality success comes when you accept who you are and what works for you. Once you get beyond the mind and the ego, you can tap into spiritual success.

Spiritual success comes from one very important tool – practice.

You need to try on many different things until you find the one or the combination which works for you.

Goals – How to Achieve Them Once and for All

• Action steps – no goal is achieved without this first important step. It is vital you get out of your head and into your heart and then into action. Without small, measurable action steps, your success remains nothing but a story.
• Small steps and bite size pieces – it is important not to get over zealous with your goals and do not take on too many at the same time. Stick with one goal, one set of actionable and measurable goals.
• Having an accountability partner – there’s nothing like a best friend. He or she tells you the truth even when you don’t want to hear it. Having an accountability partner is one of the best ways to keep yourself in line and in check. There’s no greater or worse feeling than having to tell somebody you did or did not do something you were supposed to.
• Holding yourself accountable – check in with yourself every once in a while. Make certain you ask yourself the hard questions and tell yourself the truth about why you didn’t do something. Don’t make yourself wrong and allow yourself to feel what you feel and then take the necessary action step to correct it. Keep practicing.
• Taking on the possibility of being self-disciplined – Learn how to take on self-discipline. Understand it takes practice and don’t beat yourself up. Just keep practicing. The more you practice the art of self-discipline, the more easily it will come to you.
• Talking to yourself … why it’s a good thing in order to achieve success. In order to achieve success in all areas of your life, it’s important to watch the self talk. The better you talk to yourself, the better you’ll feel and the more prosperity you will experience in all areas of your life. Picture it this way – would you talk to your best friend the way you speak to yourself sometimes? Often times, the answer is no. Be kind to yourself in words.

Momentum – How to Incorporate it into Your Daily Life

Once you’ve got these skills, habits and mindsets in order, it’s time to keep up the momentum.

• The biggest mistake, when it comes to momentum, is that people start too big and fall short. Allow enthusiasm and passion to fuel your momentum rather than let all the action take responsibility for keeping up momentum. Nothing fuels momentum more than excitement.
• How to incorporate momentum in your daily life so it doesn’t overwhelm you. Find something every day toward your goal that makes you feel excited. When you are excited, you create your own momentum.
• Create a plan – once you have the underlying feelings, you’ll begin to notice momentum building up speed, however, you need to reign in that momentum otherwise you might get overzealous. You may find yourself veering off into several other ideas and creative endeavors. Create a plan of action as to where that momentum will carry you so it doesn’t carry you away.
• Believe in yourself – above and beyond all things, belief in yourself is key.
• Tune out the voices and opinions of others.

Failure is Your New Best Friend

• Why fear of failure is actually more damaging than failure itself – once you get over your biggest fear and actually experience it, you will see it’s not the big elephant in the room you once though it was.
• Understand the definition of failure – failure is not taking action, not taking chances and not taking risks.

The Reward System

How to create a reward system that works for you:

• Keep a journal – every time you have a success write it down.
• Keep a journal – every time you have a failure look at your journal and see exactly what you are made of and where you can change a habit.
• Whenever you reach a small goal, boast about it.
• Tell others about it – don’t allow them to put you down or minimize.
• Allow yourself to treat yourself every time you achieve a goal – it doesn’t have to be big, but something that will make a connection in your brain that achieving goals reaps rewards.

How to Train Your Brain

• Play a new record – train your brain to have positive associations with things like money or work.
• Choose which emotion you want to associate success with – is it fear of failure or is it joy, happiness and fulfillment?
• Pay attention to your thoughts – you have the power of choice.
• Recreate your thoughts – you can change your thoughts at any time.
• Change your thoughts to more positive ones.

The Art of Visualizing and Manifesting

• Allowing the problem to sit for a while – when you think about a problem for too long it becomes bigger and more unmanageable
• Journal the problem.
• Let go of finding a solution the quicker you let go of finding a solution it pops into your mind – did you ever look for something and can’t find it and then the minute you stop looking, you find it? Same concept.
• Pick an uplifting vibe and stick with it – get enthusiastic about how excited you are your dream will come true.
• Before you do this step, however, you must know your goal, and name it – be enthusiastic about your specific goal.
• Think about the end and not how you will get there and you will begin to manifest at the speed of light.
• Visualize daily, especially out in nature or in the shower. Notice more positive things than negative. Face your fears in small doses then let them go as you realize you survived each and every thing you were afraid of.

Meditate

• Try many different forms of meditation until you find the right one.
• Meditate at night so you reset your subconscious brain. Let the meditation play as you fall asleep. Your subconscious will pick it up.
• Too many people try to meditate in the morning, but their busy bee minds are already on the go and it’s not as effective.
• Stop holding your breath – check in with your breath throughout the day, notice how tight your stomach is – let your stomach relax.
• The center of the body is the stomach – it’s your gut and your gut doesn’t let you down – how are you taking care of your gut? Are you eating right, hydrating, relaxing, working hard and then taking a break? Are you checking in with your intuition to feel your way through and getting out of your head?
• When it comes to meditation, get out of your head …practice present moment techniques, journal it and burn it if you choose to do this and practice, practice, practice.

Create Success Habits

• No setting unachievable goals
• Small steps/one new habit at a time until that one is in place
• Celebrate success both personally and with others.
• Take a look at habits and what hasn’t worked so you can figure out a new strategy for what does.
• Write your strategy down and carry it with you – use an app if necessary. Technology works wonders toward achieving goals.
• Make a decision, if it doesn’t work simply make a new one – don’t beat yourself up.
• Always be in action and in momentum don’t sit in analyzing for too long. Keep moving.
• Delegate
• Learn how to say no.
• Kick procrastination to the curb. Reward yourself for every goal achieved no matter how small, especially for the small ones.
• Write it all down, put it away and revisit it – you’d be surprised at how much you achieved.
• Write it all down and the steps you will take to achieve each new habit.

It’s called learning to think and aim big for a reason. If you already knew how to put all these practices into place, then you wouldn’t need any training.

You most certainly can retrain your brain. It just takes practice.

The more you practice, the easier it will become.

With these tips, practices, and goal-setting techniques, you’ll be on your way to not only learning to think and aim big, but you’ll be on your way to living big.