“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.”
—Zig Ziglar
Do you feel that you lack discipline and grit? It’s more likely you’re suffering from a lack of motivation.
When you don’t have a vision for the future that excites and motivates you—a compelling outcome—it’s very challenging to keep putting in the time and effort necessary to accomplish a big goal. Without a compelling future, each step forward can feel like torture.
You can create a highway to your dreams by having a clear and compelling outcome in mind. Whenever your motivation is lagging, you can return to that picture and remember what you’re working towards.
Sit down and make a list of all of your goals. It’s important to have a compelling outcome for each goal. Make your outcome as appealing as possible while still being realistic. Focus on what you will feel and experience when you accomplish that goal.
For example, pretend that you have a goal of losing 25 pounds. What will you experience when you complete that goal? You might imagine looking at yourself in the mirror and admiring your new body.
You might also imagine wearing a smaller size, fitting into clothes you used to wear before you gained weight, and receiving compliments from others. You could also imagine feeling pride that you were able to accomplish this goal.
A compelling outcome should include all of your senses
What will you see, hear, feel, smell, and think when you accomplish your goal? What is the air temperature in your surroundings? Who will be there? Fill in every possible detail and it will be more realistic to your brain. Make it a complete experience.
Your compelling outcome will improve over time. You’re unlikely to get it perfect after the first attempt. Keep adding details and changing things around until you find the perfect version.
Revisit your compelling outcome at least once each day
Be sure to spend a few minutes visualizing this compelling outcome each day. Even better would be two or more times each day. Keep it fresh in your mind.
When you’re feeling stuck, relax, and think about your compelling outcome
Your compelling outcome is a tool to be used whenever necessary. If you’re having a hard time motivating yourself to do something, use your compelling future to provide a boost of motivation.
When faced with decisions in your life, remember your compelling outcomes
It’s much easier to make choices when you remember what you’re trying to accomplish. Imagine that you’re a writer with a goal of writing the world’s greatest novel, and you’re not sure if you should buy House A or House B.
It’s as simple as asking yourself which living situation will make it more likely for you to reach your compelling outcome.
The right decision becomes much clearer when you have a compelling outcome to serve as a guide. When you aren’t clear on what you’re trying to accomplish, how can you make an effective decision?
“People with goals succeed because they know where they’re going.”
—Earl Nightingale
Compelling outcomes are like a guiding star and a source of motivation that are always available. Our minds work in pictures, so have a clear and exciting vision for your future.
Creating a vision of a compelling outcome also forces you to clearly define what you desire for your life. Many people are foggy about their desired outcome.
Without a compelling vision for your future, you’re standing still. Define what you want for your life. Ensure that it’s motivating and use it to your advantage each day. What do you want your future to look like?
“Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity. Successful men act as though they have accomplished or are enjoying something. Soon it becomes a reality. Act, look, feel successful, conduct yourself accordingly, and you will be amazed at the positive results.” — William James
A huge part of being able to achieve success comes down to how we think; not just about ourselves or our business but how we think about our successes and failures. Negative self-talk can reveal lot about how we really think about our progress, even if you don’t realize it at first.
If you’re constantly being negative, you’re more likely to subconsciously sabotage yourself, eventually racking up more failures than successes. While failure is an important part of achieving success, it’s still nice to have some wins on your plate, right?
What you need to do instead is take that negative self-talk and replace it with some positive affirmations for success and growth! This will help change your mindset from “I could never do that” to “what steps do I need to takes to make this possible”
Think of it this way: positive self-talk leads to success, negative self-talk leads to failure. As an online entrepreneur, some negative things you might be telling yourself might be:
No one ever visits my website
I’ll never make a sale
Purchasing ads would only be a waste of money
No one wants my services
I will never figure this out
I can’t be as successful as her
While I’m sure we’ve all felt this kind of frustration before (I definitely have!), if we truly believe these statements, we might as well quit trying and give up. And if you repeat them to yourself long enough, you really do start to believe them.
“Believing in negative thoughts is the single greatest obstruction to success.”
You have to stop yourself and really think about what you’re telling yourself. Are you going to continue being negative about your struggles, or are you going to focus on the things that you have achieved? Will you move past the ways that you now know don’t work so you can progress towards other ways that will?
The hard truth about being an entrepreneur is that it’s not always sunshine and daisies. You have to be able to push through the hard times. Positive affirmations can help you do this.
If you can make yourself believe the negative things, you can make yourself believe the positive ones, too. Keep reading for some negative thoughts to avoid and a few positive affirmations for success that you can use in your daily life.
Instead of letting negative thinking take over your life, make positive self-talk a new habit. You’re here reading this post, so you probably realize that you need a change already. That’s the very first step, and it’s actually a pretty huge step.
Now, you need to recognize your negative thought patterns and learn how to replace them with positivity.
“I’ll be happy once I…”
It’s a mistake to believe that you need to have or do anything before you can be happy. As soon as the criterion is met, another will simply take its place.
It’s always good to strive for more, but making your happiness dependent on achieving something may delay your happiness forever as you keep chasing things that you think you need to be happy instead of seeing the good in what you have already.
Find something that makes you happy right now and realize that this happiness is just as important as any happiness you’ll attain in the future.
“I can’t do this.”
Well, surprise, yes you can! Thinking that you can’t do something makes it that much harder to actually figure out how to do. You’ve already made up your mind that you can’t, so why bother trying, right?
What if you decided that you can do this? Instead of giving up before you’ve began, walk into every situation with the belief that you can work through it if you put in the time and effort. Focus on small wins that will add up to bigger ones.
“Today is a new beginning, a chance to turn your failures into achievements & your sorrows into so goods. No room for excuses.”
— Joel Brown
If you find yourself falling into this thought pattern in the middle of a task, it might be a good time to take a break or focus on something else so you can come back to it with clear eyes.
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve felt defeated by a project only to return to it the next day and get it figured out, often with better results than I was trying for to begin with.
“I can’t do anything right” or “I’ll never be successful.”
You’re going to make a lot of mistakes. It’s a necessary part of success, which means it’s important to view those mistakes as a learning process rather than a score or grade the measures your success.
The most successful people have failed more times than you can imagine. The difference between them and the average person is that they’re able to take the tumble, pick themselves back up, and continue moving forward.
Perseverance may be the most important skill for any entrepreneur to have. Tell yourself that you will learn how to do it right and you will achieve success, even if picking yourself back up is the most difficult thing you’ve ever done.
“Put all excuses aside and remember this – you are capable.”
— Zig Ziglar
Jealousy or resentment for the success of others
You’re going to see a lot of people who are lightyears ahead of your own success. They may be friends or colleagues and for a lot of people, that’s tough to stomach.
How can someone you know be so much more successful than you, especially if you’re working in similar fields? You do many similar things but you just haven’t found the same level of success.
Well, first of all, you don’t truly know how much effort someone else is putting into their business. You don’t really know what they’ve sacrificed to get where they are.
Instead, you have to worry about what you yourself are doing. Have you really exhausted all resources at your disposal? Are the actions you’re taking ones that lead you to success, not just the actions that someone else is doing to achieve their success?
Learn to admire the successes other people achieve and be happy for them! They have worked hard, too. Instead of feeling resentful, recognize the lessons you can learn from someone else’s success.
“Why do these things always happen to me?”
“When things go wrong, don’t go with them.”
— Elvis Presley
Bad things happen in everyone’s life. Things not being easy or not going your way isn’t something that’s exclusive to you. Believing they are is a good way to ensure everything you do will fail or turn out negatively.
Besides turning your thought towards positivity, acknowledge when you’re having a bad day and try simplifying your tasks so you can achieve quick, easy wins that put you in a better mood.
“I’ll do it tomorrow (or next week).”
Procrastination is one of the greatest enemies of success and ignoring dealing with it is just as bad as ignoring the work you need to do. Putting things off even just one day may set off a chain nof putting that thing off “until tomorrow” for weeks, months, or even years.
If you want to be successful, you need to focus on getting things done now rather than waiting until later when you think you’ll feel more up to the task. Chances are, you won’t, and you’ll put it off again.
Recognize and replace any other negative self-talk
There are loads of different ways we talk down to ourselves. I can’t list them all, but you should have a pretty good idea of what negative self-talk sounds like by now.
Whenever you’re feeling uncertain or lack motivation to focus on your goals, look out for any negative thoughts you have that may be blocking your enthusiasm. Recognize any negative thoughts and make a conscious effort to replace them with positive self-talk. At the very least, don’t let your negative thoughts drag you down further.
“If you absolutely can’t stay positive, don’t go negative, just cruise neutral for a while until you can get back up.”
— Terri Guillemets
With practice, you may find yourself automatically replacing negativity with much more positive outlooks. One way to practice this is through using affirmations, specifically ones that are designed to attack your own negative thoughts and focus on highlight how awesome you actually are!
Use affirmations to inspire success
Your negative thinking is just that, thinking. It’s all in the mind.
Rarely are any of these things you tell yourself actually true. You’ve just told yourself them for so long and so often that you now believe them.
If you can do that with negative thoughts, do it with positive thoughts instead!
Repeat affirmations that tell you that you can do this, you are ready to branch out, you will make that sale. You’ll approach your life and business much more confidently if you believe you really can do it.
When things don’t quite go your way, instead of blaming it on bad luck, you’ll realize that there must be something you’re missing that will make it work. You’ll focus your energy on finding out what that is rather than just assuming “it will never work for you.”
You have the power to transform your life, as long as you’re willing to do so. Banish all negative thoughts from your mind and nurture yourself with positive affirmations to achieve the success you deserve.
“Remember, you have been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.”
Below you’ll find some examples of positive affirmations for success that you can repeat yourself daily and when things are looking rough.
Affirmations work best when they’re personalized to your own situations, so feel free to re-word them in any way that better fits your needs or to make them sound more like yourself.
I am putting my life in order, preparing to accept all the success that is coming to me.
I believe in my skills and abilities.
I am focused and persistent. I will never quit.
I am continually and easily moving towards my next level of success.
I choose to place my focus and effort one the value-generating aspects of my business.
I choose to see challenges as invigorating and purpose-filled opportunities to succeed.
I am filled with enthusiasm that attracts the “right” people I need in order to achieve success.
I manage my time effectively so I have “extra” time each day.
I let go of my excuses so I am productive and focused on results.
I learn something new every day about niche related topics.
I interact with people and build relationships every day.
I delegate tasks and projects wisely, fueling my success as well as others’ success.
I am courageous, willing to act in spite of any fear.
I create and follow daily routines that support my self-care.
I am prepared to answer the door when opportunity knocks.
I show appreciation of others kindnesses and efforts immediately.
I enjoy helping others achieve their goals.
I give myself a positive “locker-room” talk twice a day to keep my positive attitude.
I am a savvy business owner who has confidence in my well-chosen team.
I lead by example in my business and personal life, every day.
“Winners make a habit of doing the things losers don’t want to do.” ― Lucas Remmerswaal
Being an online entrepreneur who works from home requires a certain discipline. You have to be able to get your done despite all the comforts and distractions that home life brings.
Develop habits shared by other successful entrepreneurs to promote balance, stability, and success in your own life while enjoying the amazing opportunity you have to work in your pajamas.
Practice these 8 habits for success as an online entrepreneur
Increase your chances of building a successful business by implementing these 8 success habits into your life.
Establish a solid work ethic
If you haven’t realized it already, it takes a lot of time and effort to grow your business, especially if you’re going at it alone. You often have to wear many hats, being your own content creator, social media marketer, graphic designer, accountant, and whatever else your business needs.
Until you’re able to hire other an assistant or grow a team, you need to be prepared to get work done in all these areas in order to achieve your business goals.
Diligence
It’s best to have things done right and on time in your business. Your reputation as a business owner will depend on it.
With yourself as the face of your business, you can’t hide behind a company or brand name when clients or customers are unhappy. You’ll be the one expected to be producing quality work or products in the timeframe you promised.
“If you believe you can change – if you make it a habit – the change becomes real.”
Time is the most precious resource, so how well you use it is directly related to how successful you can become. Juggling all your responsibilities will be difficult, but manageable with various techniques.
Always have a plan and work when you know you won’t have any distractions, even if it’s just a few minutes at a time.
Have a plan for each day
One easy way to get started with time management is to plan each day the night before.
Never go to bed without a clear idea of what you’re doing to do the next day. It also makes a relaxing way to spend time before winding down for the night.
You can write down your plan in a journal, use a project management app, or just leave a note for you to find in the morning.
That way when you wake up the next day, you’ll know exactly what you need to do and you won’t waste time trying to figure out where to start.
Wake up early
In entrepreneurship, time is often relative, but everyone has a definition of “early.” With that in mind, for those of you looking to do business at traditional hours, make sure you’re up and rolling before the average person.
Some successful entrepreneurs are even up before 4 am, but it’s up to you to decide what will work best for you.
Waking up before the most excitable events in your daily life gives you some extra time to eat breakfast, plan ahead, and have some “you” time.
You can work as hard and smart as you want, but if you don’t have a clear path to where that work will lead, you might end up actually achieving nothing.
Having a clear, goal-focused plan will help you make the right decisions for your business. Decision that will keep it moving forward rather than in circles.
Set goals for what you want to accomplish today, this week, this month, this year, and 5-10 years from now.
Actually deal with your stress
Being an entrepreneur can be really stressful, but for many, the freedom is worth it. Unfortunately, you may be dealing with stressful situations often, especially when you’re still trying to nurture your idea into a full-fledged business..
You need to learn how to acknowledge and manage any stress and anxiety rather than try to ignore them or let them consume you. Have a process for dealing with stressful situations and managing your anxieties.
Find a support group of like-minded entrepreneurs who can understand your situations and offer help, advice, or just a friendly ear to listen when you need to vent.
Prepare for obstacles
It’d be nice if everything would always go according to plan, but the truth is, it won’t. Plan ahead for the “what-ifs” that could happen during a project, a launch, or just day-to-day business.
Try to keep note of any potential setbacks. If you know you don’t have much experience with something, give yourself extra time to work through it or practice ahead of time if you can.
Deal with any challenges that pop up immediately rather than putting them off until later.
Work as ahead of yourself as you can rather than waiting until the last minute.
“The quality of your habits will determine the quality of your future.”
― Clyde Lee Dennis
Questions to ask about your current habits
Use these questions to reflect on your current habits and any changes you should make.
What are your current habits?
Have they helped you or harmed you on your path to business success?
Do you know why?
Discover what new habits you need to focus on building to achieve the success you deserve.
