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Life Health > Running Your Business

Success hint: Focus on what's working

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Entrepreneurial expert and author Jack Canfield, best known for his book “Chicken Soup for the Soul,” shares here his thoughts and tips for staying positive, speeding up success and being patient with slower-than-hoped outcomes.

“The truth be told success typically follows a series of little events and achievements that can seem to take an eternity, that include a few disappointments along the way, and that challenge everything about you to the core – your stamina, courage, integrity and even your willingness to keep going,” Canfield says.

If you focus on what’s not working, it engenders counter-productive feelings. And you attract what you are feeling: negative experiences, people and results. The key is to focus on what is working. Canfield recommends two basic practices: keeping a journal and meditation.

Keeping a journal helps you focus on the positive and renews your vision for yourself. Each day reflect and make a list of what you are grateful for, and end each day with notes on what went right, however small they are.

Meditation is a tool for finding solutions to problems and changing your attitude, so you can attract success sooner rather than later. Spend some time each day in quiet contemplation, prayer or meditation. Meditation is great for its ability to turn off your judgmental, highly critical brain and allows your unconscious to take over, allowing you to tap into a higher level of creativity that helps bring the results you want.

What if you are already doing these things, and you still aren’t happy with the results? Then ask yourself: Are you taking real action? Or are you doing what you’ve always done? It might be time to practice some new behaviors and change some habits. Change things up a bit — take new actions or modify existing ones.

And remember the rule of five: Do five things every day that move you toward your goal. Change up these five actions regularly.

Last, remind yourself to be patient. Canfield says, “It’s natural to underestimate how long a certain goal can take, especially a profound one. When I set a goal to become a millionaire, the year was 1983. How long did it take? Eleven years. It took time for “Chicken Soup for the Soul” to hit the bestseller lists. You could say our tenure on the New York Times list was more than a decade in the making. That’s a lot of patience for someone who initially wanted overnight success.”

It’s a clich?, but patience is a virtue. So keep working toward your goals, and soon, you’ll be only one month, one week or one day away from success.

Jack Canfield, America’s Success Coach, is the founder and co-creator of the billion-dollar book brand “Chicken Soup for the Soul” and a leading authority on Peak Performance. If you’re ready to jump start your life, make more money, and have more fun and joy in all that you do, get your free success tips from Canfield now at www.FreeSuccessStrategies.com.


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