Plan for Success

Everyone wants to be successful, but we often rely on luck and chance to achieve our goals. A good example of this is someone who wants to be rich but only has one plan for achieving this goal: playing the Lotto. Of course, there's always a chance of hitting it lucky and becoming rich overnight, but how likely is this really to happen?

Creating a realistic plan to achieve your desired results is vital, no matter how high or low your hopes may be.

The best way to do this is by taking successive steps and gradually increasing your chances of reaching your ideal. Let's say your goal is to win a professional swimming competition, but you're afraid of water. The first thing you need to do, in order to win the competition, is conquer your fear of water. Before you even consider entering the race you have to eliminate your fears.

Once you have conquered your fears, you have to start the next phase in your plan: preparation. You cannot expect to win a professional swimming competition if you don't know how to swim. Start with the basics and don't skip any steps in your plan. Skipping steps won't help you reach your goal faster. It will hold you back later on because you won't have the experience and knowledge you need to reach your goals. Prepare by taking orderly, gradually increasing steps. Swim half a lap first, then move on to a full lap. Your skills will improve with time and practice and soon you'll be beating your own records every time you enter the swimming pool. It may take days, or weeks, or years to prepare for your "race", depending on what your goals are. The main thing is to enter the race feeling confident in your own success and having all the skills you need to win.

Taking steps one at a time and keeping your plan realistic gives you two important benefits. The order and precision of a plan brings confidence. You don't feel like you are attacking every issue on a day-to-day basis. Organizing your strategy reduces the chances of making a wrong move or bad decision. Secondly, having a sound plan has many psychological benefits and your subconscious mind worries less, saving your energy for what's important. You are creating a pattern in your awareness that accepts success and integrates it into your plan. When both your conscious and subconscious mind believe in your chances of reaching a goal, you benefit from a power of concentration and focus that eliminates outside interference and lets you follow the shortest path to success.

Even though chance may still have a role on your path to success, having a realistic plan let's you change the "unlikely" into the "likely".