Personally, I see myself as extremely successful.  I’m not yet as successful as I know I can be someday.  In the future, I see myself having enough money to help others on a regular basis through charitable donations.  Once I am making enough money to not only pay my own bills, but to help those less fortunate without harming my own lifestyle, I will consider myself as successful as I personally wish to be.

You may feel that if you don’t drive a luxury vehicle and live in a mansion, you’re not yet successful.  And that’s fine, in my opinion.  Whatever you personally feel successful means is just fine for you.

The point is, how will you know when you’ve become “successful” if you don’t know what that means?  Success in business is very arbitrary.  For me, I consider myself already successful, even though I’ve cut down my bills to bare essentials in order to scrape by.  While most people would see turning off their cell phone and eating rice and beans at almost every meal as a massive failure, I see it as success.  Why?  Because I’m doing it on my own.  I don’t answer to a boss, I work my own hours, and I am free to choose my own destiny.

Am I as successful as I want to be?  Not by a long shot.  But do I consider myself a failure?  Absolutely not!  I have done more than I ever thought I could, and it will only get better from here!

There were so many times when I just wanted to give up.  Sometimes I was so down on myself that I just felt worthless.  I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t making any money when I felt like I was trying so hard!

As time went on, I began to realize that my failures were my fault.  Some would let this realization sink them into despair, but I saw it as an epiphany!

It wasn’t that I was stupid, worthless, lazy, or in some other way deficient.  I was simply unfocused.  I kept skipping around from one thing to another, and I never stuck with any one thing long enough to really be successful!

I also realized a few other things that made a HUGE difference in my success:

1. I was unfocused, as I mentioned above.  That was my biggest problem.
2. I was afraid of failure.  The more I failed, the worse this got.
3. I was letting my fear and self-doubt consume me.

So how did I resolve these issues and go on to become more successful?

First, I had to focus.  I figured out which method of making money I was best at and that I really ENJOYED doing, and I made the commitment to stick to it for at least 60 days.  Once I did this, my income improved DRAMATICALLY during that time period!  That was a HUGE motivator!

Next, I had to get over my fear of failure.  This was actually a LOT easier than it sounds.  You see, I realized that YES, I might fail.  I might spend hours and hours of my time working hard on something and then not make any money with it.  But, more importantly, I realized that if I didn’t do anything, I would DEFINITELY fail.

So put this on a sticky note on your monitor, scrawl it on your wall, tattoo it on your forehead, whatever you have to do…

“If I try, I have a chance to succeed, however small it is.  If I don’t try, I have NO chance to succeed.”

Or, to put it another way:

“If I don’t try, my odds of failure are 100%!”

Finally, I had to pull myself up out of the pit of despair I was in.  I managed to do this by committing to something for 60 days and seeing results, but I kept myself motivated my constantly reading motivational books and watching motivational movies in every spare moment I could find.  Once I started seeing some money coming in for the hard work I had done, the rest was easy!

So, the bottom line is this:

1. Choose ONE business model and commit to stick to it for a period of at least 60 days.  Work HARD on it!
2. Remember, if you don’t try, your chances of failure are 100%!  If you try, at least you have a chance!
3. Don’t let yourself get down.  You CAN do it.  Once you believe you can, you will succeed!

Don’t give up!