Embracing the Invisible

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“When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.” – Paulo Coelho.

Personal development and coaching practices have become recently major subjects and even challenges for many companies and institutions. Many leaders, motivation speakers, authors, lecturers, politicians and many others wrote about this field of activity and shared their own rules of success. They attempted to inspire, raise consciousness to pursue a personal growth, and drive change to improve talents.

Success here does not refer solely to financial abundance, the millions or the billions you have in your account, but it reflects also your own inner achievements, and how you handle your own challenges.   

Personal development or soft skills may be perceived by many people as luxurious thing in our life, but nowadays, it has become a MUST and should be adopted by everyone. Personal development programs and tools should be even integrated in our educational system from early stages to build strong and powerful figures for the future, and not only consuming-driven young people.

It’s true that it encompasses invisible attributes but once embracing them, they will lead to visible results and tangible self-fulfillment.

My curiosity and great interest for this topic encouraged me to search and study more than 100 rules of success that involve leaders, authors and speakers from different cultures; and who contributed tremendously to the well being of many nations across the globe.  The analysis was based on 15 approaches including Napoleon Hill, Jim Rhon, Tony Robbins, Sadhguru, Paulo Coelho, Muhammad Ali, Neson Mandela, Steve jobs, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, and so on. My aim is not to set up a simple benchmark to display the similarities and the differences between them; but it’s more about scrutinizing the perfect rules that mirror our own needs and dreams. My goal is to go beyond this comparison to search for the ones that most fit our life journey; to shift from consuming rules and approaches and allow each one of us to think about their own rules of success. You don’t need to be financially successful to do this exercise, because after all the real wealth is your inner satisfaction and self-fulfillment.

5 Main Aspects about Them to Remember:

1. The 150 rules of success analyzed don’t represent a set of pre-defined principles that can guarantee anyone a successful life. These rules and attributes are all reflections of their own personal experiences; they merely describe how they managed to overcome their own challenges, struggle, confusion and even torture. Adopting them may have a positive impact on your life, but this will depend on the emotions, and convictions that you hold in your heart when embracing them. You may seek positive results, but the fear of not achieving them may hinder you from reaching them.

2. Most of these rules are derived from the fundamentals of the law of attraction, which started with the creation of the universe; and all religions are lined up with it. You attract into your life whatever you focus on. Filling the mind with positive thoughts will attract positive and happiness into your life. ”And when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it” The Alchimist, Paulo Coelho

3. These leaders, politicians, or speakers all had an ordinary basic life; some of them experienced even prison, torture and defeats. They all started from scratch but they were able to build their life by their personal efforts and create their own stories and rules. Their success was the result of daily positive habits and attitudes they installed to overcome their crisis, hardships, and go beyond the challenges of life.

4. A clear vision, hunger, and perseverance were the key factors that made them successful and unique. Their great self-improvement efforts, excellence, patience, and faith were rewarding and allowed them to leave their own footprints that still impact millions of people across nations.

5. Over 100 attributes of success studies, 50% of them are related to the PERSONAL efforts we initiate to improve our learnings, skills, emotions, and self-discipline. It’s mainly about the daily habits we adopt to reach outstanding performance, raise our standards, and enhance our perception and intelligence. No one is ever responsible for this change expect you!

The List of the Leaders Is Long, but My Favorites Are:

Napoloen Hill is an American, self-help author, journalist, and lecturer. One of his notable works is “think and grow rich” published as a personal development self-improvement book.  Most of his rules of success come from the principles of the law of attraction. My favorite one is “conceive, believe, and achieve,” which sums up all what we need to do to achieve our goals. “Whatever your mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.”

Jim Rohn is an American author, speaker, a personal development trainer, and one of the most influential thinkers of our time. His strength relies on his ability to combine between lecturing, a great sense of humor during his seminars, and his inspiring anecdotes igniting the enthusiasm of his listeners. He always approached the subject of personal and business success by asking four questions: why? Why not, why not you? Why not now? His 10 rules of success all turn around excellence, outstanding performance, self-reliance, self-confidence, and so on.

“But the most crucial one, to me, is self-discipline as you can have a clear purpose, a great passion, and a considerable self-confidence, but the only way to maintain an outstanding performance is through your self-discipline, without which all other attributes may have no sense.” – Jim Rohn.

Paulo Coelho is a Brazilian lyricist and novelist. He got famous after writing “the Alchemist, which sold 35 million copies. What I like about him, is his character himself and his capacity to focus on what he really loves not caring about the others “When I write a book I write a book for myself; the reaction is up to the reader,” he says. “It’s not my business whether people like or dislike it.”

“Close the door, change the record, clean the house, get rid of the dust, stop being who you were and become who you are.” – Paulo Coelho

Sadhguru Jaggi is an Indian yogi, spiritual leader, humanitarian, author, and motivation speaker. He established the Isha Foundation, a non religious and nonprofit organization to offer yoga programs all over the world. My favorite rule is about “producing nice movies” in our mind instead of encouraging automatic negative thoughts-ANTS, which can only hinder us from stepping forward and taking full responsibility of our actions.

“Wherever you may be, if you are willing to strive, you can evolve yourself beyond the limitations of nature.”  – Sadhguru Jaggi

Tony Robbins is an American life coach, best-selling author, philanthropist and his work has impacted millions of people across the globe. He was inspired by Jim Rhon, who was his mentor, and then he started learning about PNL until he mastered this field and integrated it in seminars. When reading about his book regarding his own “rules of success” two main attributes caught my mind: “the raise of standards and “the change of mindset” These two are very interrelated because the only way to raise your standards is through change. Many people unfortunately consider change as a threat to their personal identity while the real threat is to stagnate and stop moving forward in your life. How many of you think that at a certain age, we can no longer change?

The truth is that “if you do what you have always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” – Tony Robbins

Steve Jobs’ name itself is a whole settled brand that reflects many attributes related to success, passion, perseverance, and creativity. The particularity about his journey is not about the financial abundance he accomplished, but the way he survived to the challenges of went through in his life. His perseverance was remarkable and catchy.

“… you have to trust that the dots will connect in the future; you have to believe in something because believing that the dots will connect on the road will give the confidence  to fellow your hearts… The only way to do great work is to love what you do. Have the courage to follow your heart and intuitions. They somehow know what you truly want to become! ” – Steve Jobs

My favorite rule of success is “stay hungry and stay foolish.” Hunger can stimulate other values and skills but again without self-disciple it may have no sense.

Muhammad Ali was an American professional boxer and regarded as one of the most successful and celebrated sports figures of the 20th century. He was known from early in his career as an inspiring, and polarizing figure. What I liked most about his rules is the idea “defy the rules.

“Challenge the status quo. Rules are set up to restrict and confine…. If you play by the rules, you will never be extraordinary,” One of the best of Muhammad Ali’s quotes.

Mr Philip Kotler, a marketing author, has more than 60 marketing books. In 1975, Kotler was the first person to receive the “Leader in Marketing Thought” award. Today, many companies base their strategies on the set of principles and approaches he established because of the power of trust, the trust that they will get the expected results. But how many of you have experienced deviated results even when respecting his approaches? How many was definite about his marketing strategy and turned into failure. This does mean obviously that his principles didn’t work for many others. My point is that some rules or methodologies may be relevant in certain circumstances, but may not be applicable for others. The approach that everyone has to do, has become a dominant concept in our life, which turned us to be more passive, and consuming-based individuals instead of seeking change and adaptation.

It was inspiring to learn more about these leaders, but it makes more sense to dig deeper to think and define our own rules. Are you going through challenges right now? What are your strategies to handle them? Your life and personality need a shift and improvement right now. What do you do about it? Are you self-aware about it?

One from my network asked me one day if it is worth to go for an MBA after 5 years of professional experience. The learning and improvement process for me has never been related to a formal education program. It should be a nonstop journey because once you stop, everything around you will stagnate. With disruptive technology and shift of paradigms, all what you study and learn become obsolete after few years if not months.

“I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don’t hurt me, because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am.” – Paulo Coelho

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