Tag Succeed Easy

The One True Shortcut to Success

Steve Keating 1 Comment

I’ll begin by admitting that the title to this post is clickbait. But lots of people will indeed click on it because lots of people are indeed looking for that shortcut to success.

 

If you’re one of those you’re going to be disappointed with this post. You’ll be disappointed because the only true shortcut to success is to lower your expectations for yourself. Settle! 

 

Settle for less than you deserve, settle for less than you could have, settle for less than you know in your heart you are worth. 

 

Settling is easy, it’s fast, it’s efficient and once you’ve told yourself that you’ve achieved as much as you can, you’re set! When get over that feeling of failure you’ll be able to convince yourself that you’ve achieved an acceptable level of success. Unless you’re like most people and you just can’t get over that feeling. 

 

If you’re one of those people who just can’t shed that feeling that life has more to offer then I’m sorry to say it but there is no shortcut for you. You’ll have to work for your success.

 

The good news, great news actually, is that there are no limits for you. You can do it all, you can have it all, and once you believe that, it’s possible that you will have it all. 

 

Having what you want begins with knowing what you want. Most people have madhouse type hectic schedules these days. So much so that they often don’t stop long enough to ask themselves if what they are doing is actually what they want to be doing. In essence their life is running them instead of the other way around. 

 

That’s where goals come in. 

 

The process of setting goals, at least the serious process of setting goals, begins with self-reflection to determine your core values. That allows you to determine exactly what you’re willing to do in order to hold firm to those values. 

 

For instance, perhaps your core values include raising your kids to value all people and help them understand the importance of giving back to their community and those less fortunate than themselves. That will require a fair amount of influence from you. That influence will most likely come from modeling that behavior while investing loads of time with them.

 

Where will that time come from? What are you willing to stop doing so you can start sharing time with your kids? You undoubtedly would say nothing is more important than your kids. Do your goals reflect that? Are you actions reflective of your goals. Do those all important kids only get whatever time is leftover at the end of your hectic day? 

 

I don’t know anyone who wants to lose site of what’s important to them while on their journey to success, it just kinda happens. Unless you make it not happen. Setting goals can be a challenge but the real challenge is developing the habit of reviewing them on a regular basis so you never lose site of them. 


Setting, reviewing, and reaching your goals is not a shortcut to success but it is a proven method of achieving it. Stop wasting time looking for shortcuts and start investing your efforts into something that gets you closer to your goals.

How to Succeed in One Easy Step

Steve Keating 10 Comments

20121122-183432.jpgSuccessful people tend to put themselves in a position to succeed.

There you have it! One easy step! I suppose I could just leave it at that and make this my shortest blog post ever. I also suppose that some people are probably wondering how to put themselves in that position. Perhaps I should explain.

Once you’ve put yourself in the position to succeed almost everything about success appears easy. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say success is ever easy but if you’ve made the effort up front, the right effort, then success is going to happen. It’s only a matter of time.

I guess I’ve gone about as far as I can go in this post without writing the word that most people reading this post won’t want to read. I know how this blogging stuff works and I’ve pulled a good number of people into this post by putting succeed AND easy into the same title.

I hope you’ll hang around and continuing reading after you see the word. In your heart of hearts you know it’s coming. You know within yourself that nothing worth having is really easy. So brace yourself, the word is WORK!

You put yourself in a position to succeed by working at it. You lay the groundwork for success with effort, planning, and skill building. Sometimes this work is done in almost complete anonymity, without recognition or immediate reward. It’s hard work, it’s long hours, often filled with despair and thoughts of quitting. At times, the work can seem endless and pointless too.

Yet, successful people continue on. They know that almost every “overnight” success worked long and hard for “that night” to arrive. Successful people smile knowingly at each other when less successful people say they “lucked” into their success. Successful people know that even their “luck” was hard earned. They know that while people seldom get what they want, they almost always get what they’ve earned.

The good news is that while putting yourself in a position to succeed might be a long journey it doesn’t have to be a lonely one. In fact, it shouldn’t be.

Most successful people also have this in common: they were not afraid to ask for help. Mentors help. Successful people, even the most successful, have mentors. They have people in their life who will tell them the truth. Mentors will tell them when, where,and how they have screwed up. Mentors will also point and their strengths and help them to maximize them.

Everybody loves a winner but not everyone hangs around when the winner stops winning, mentors hang around through thick and thin. If you want to put yourself in a position to succeed then find yourself a mentor.

Another way to put yourself in a position to success is to develop a plan. I’ll call it an honest plan. Some people would say “realistic” is a better word than honest but I use honest because too often we lie to ourselves about what we are willing to commit towards our efforts at success. Which leads us to the absolute key to success which also happens to be “that” word.

Work hard! Work harder than you think you can. Work longer than you think you can. Work better than you think you can. (Your mentor will be a huge help with this) Risk making supreme effort and failing anyway. When you stumble on your way to success make sure you know why you stumbled. Make your next stumble smaller. Work harder still!

Never tell yourself you can’t succeed. You will come across plenty of people willing to tell you that. Never add your voice to that off key chorus. No one needs to tell you that the sooner you begin your journey to success the sooner you will succeed.

What exactly are you waiting for? Once you have your plan, set some goals and work your tail off.  Success is easy – just do it!