Success is the result of action and mindset

"[Successful people] stay focused on their past successes rather than their past failures, and on the next action steps they need to take to get them closer to the fulfillment of their goals rather than all of the other distractions that life presents to them. They are constantly proactive in the pursuit of their chosen objectives."

When reflecting back on The Success Principles, the key takeaway that comes through clearly in the text is that success is the result of action and mindset. Canfield suggests that the reader do activities such as write out their vision and mission for their life, write down meaningful goals and create vision boards. The point of doing all of this is to imagine and believe in what’s possible. After all, if you were bogged down in negative feelings and thoughts, it would feel impossible to achieve what you desired. That’s why Canfield emphasizes creating a positive, success-driven mindset that will support you daily.

Sometimes no negative, fear-based thoughts may seem a bit unreasonable. At some point, one will creep into our mind. Canfield suggests an exercise for managing this that I found very useful. He suggests writing down the negative thought on a piece of paper. Then right below it write a “turnaround statement.” This is a statement that affirms you or helps give you permission to release that thought.

Once the mindset has been created, it’s then important to take action. It’s very easy to fall into patterns of planning and imagining, but at some point we do have to take action if we are to realize our goals. Canfield suggests spending the last 45 minutes of the day planning out the next day and reflecting on how the current day went. He calls this “The Evening Review.” Another suggested exercise is “The Daily Success Focus Journal,” where you can document your top 5 successes of the day and the reason why you consider them to be a success. Again, this is a way to celebrate what has been accomplished and then to use that as a tool to motivate you and assist in planning your next steps.

Focus Days and Buffer Days

"Most entrepreneurs spend less than 30% of their time focusing on their core genius and unique abilities. In fact, by the time they’ve launched a business, it often seems entrepreneurs are doing everything but the one thing they went into business to do. Don’t let this be your fate."

I think the above statement is probably true for everyone – regardless of whether or not you are an entrepreneur. Canfield suggests that excellent time management is essential to success. If we want to be great at something or achieve a particular goal, we need time in order to do it. In light of that, he suggests creating Focus Days and Buffer Days in your schedule. A Focus Day is a day where you spend at least 80% of your time in your core genius and a Buffer Day is when you prepare and plan for a Focus Day. There are also Free Days, which are full 24 hour periods that involve no work, emails or phone calls.

Focus Days are fairly straightforward and I think this is what everyone strives to have more of in their schedules. But what’s interesting is that we don’t often engineer our schedules to actually create these days by chunking tasks and delegation into other days. That’s where Buffer Days come into play. Canfield suggests spending your Buffer Days “learning a new skill, training your support team, or delegating tasks and projects to others”. This was the biggest “ah ha moment” for me while reading this book and is a tip that I’ve implemented. Right now I strive to have three Focus Days and two Buffer Days in my week.

Create Community

"You would never expect an athlete to reach the Olympic Games without a world-class coach."

Sometimes blazing the trail to success can be a lonely, solitary path. Canfield reminds us that we don’t have to be alone on the journey. There are numerous ways to create community around our success and in the end, we are better for it. There are times when we need someone to help us stretch to our limits or give us a pep talk along the way, which is exactly why creating a community to support your success is so valuable.

Canfield lists several ways that you can go about doing this, including: hiring a personal coach, joining or starting a mastermind group, finding a mentor, hiring staff and making space for personal introspection. Each of these offers something slightly different in terms of support and it is important to find the one (or combination) that works best for you. Over the last couple of years, I’ve found that hiring a personal coach, bringing on two part-time staff and making time in my schedule for yoga and walking has yielded the best results for me.