Your biggest barriers to success can be overcome

To put it very simply, you cannot control something unless you take responsibility and have sufficient knowledge.

Let’s start with the "R" word, responsibility. If you insist on making others take care of you, instead of taking responsibility for your own life and success, you end up in a company or under a government that dictates almost every activity in your life. Don’t be surprised if the organization has its own ideas on what your life should be like.

Those of you who are or have been married may have encountered situations where a lack of responsibility made for an unhappy relationship. Whining, by the way, is a dead giveaway that the person doing the whining has not taken responsibility for his or her actions.

Your thrust toward success in life is powered by your willingness to take responsibility.

Let’s consider the "K" word, knowledge. When you consider that you don’t need to know any more about a person or subject, you give up any chance of controlling that part of your life which is affected by that person or subject. As soon as you take someone else’s opinion about something, or someone, you are denying yourself access to actual knowledge.

Watching the evening news on TV is one sure way to get a biased view of life, people, and international affairs. Most news is actually an editorial exercise, so you are getting some anchor person’s opinion about the State of the Union, who did what to whom, and you get very few facts. I suggest you go to the source the next time you hear an alarming report about anything. Google the matter until you come up with the original transcripts, not an Associated Press version or a NY Times version. Get eyewitness reports from a blogger. It’s not that hard to do.

Listening to self-professed experts rather than using your own judgement, will cost you dearly. If you are going to make decisions, make them by relying on data that you can personally verify. If your sources are wrong, you will learn from the experience and will do better the next time.

Certainty of truth gives you incredible stability in the face of hecklers and naysayers. If you know the truth, you are freed from a craving for agreement from others. There is not enough time to persuade some people of truth. They may just have to figure it out on their own nickel.

Finally, there is the "C" word, control. Control is no more than making things start, change, and stop as required. It is an absolute necessity for driving a car and for all of the important things in life. Control is what gets  a student through school. It is also what is involved in creating a successful relationship. It is what enables a salesperson to sell and a manager to manage.

A person has to be able to accept control as well as exert control in order to operate successfully in  a group. For some, "control" is so loaded with bad memories that the mere idea of control makes them go bonkers. These are the few who will end up in restraints, if they can’t manage to control themselves.

When you see someone who is in a bad way in life, they are usually not in control of their day-to-day existence. They are also missing knowledge or responsibility as I mentioned earlier.

The interesting thing about all of this is that no matter how badly a person may have screwed themselves up, they can begin recovering immediately by gaining a little more knowledge, taking a little more responsibility, and exerting a little more control. If a person works these three things back and forth, gaining a little ground in each area, it will not take long before they will make progress toward a better situation in life.

If you are up against a major stop in life, or trapped helplessly in your cubicle, try working your way out by improving your knowledge, responsibility, and your control a little bit at a time. I can testify that it works. Take the information and run with it.

This entry was posted in Basic Business Concepts, post-corporate, Working For Others. Bookmark the permalink.

0 Responses to Your biggest barriers to success can be overcome

Leave a Reply to Maya Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.

+ 64 = seventy four

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.