Is it truly possible to obtain a “Success-Type” personality?

As I make my through Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz (which I highly recommend, btw), I find more and more that becoming successful is merely a decision. We hold ourselves back from “success” far more than “the world” or “circumstances.”

Maltz uses a SUCCESS acronym I found useful in Chapter Eight, I’d like to share with you all this week:

Sense of direction
Understanding
Courage
Compassion
Esteem
Self-Confidence
Self-Acceptance

Sense of Direction - We must have a purpose or a goal we are striving to achieve. Success begins with an aim. Maltz says, “we are built to conquer environment, solve problems, achieve goals, and we find no real satisfaction or happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve.”

Maltz’s Prescription: Get yourself a goal worth working towards.

Understanding - We cannot be successful without understanding others through good communication. Learn to recognize fact vs. opinion. Be willing to seek and see truth. Maltz writes, “it is a good exercise to daily admit one painful fact about ourselves to ourselves,” because the success-type personality does not cheat or lie to others or ourselves.

Maltz’s Prescription: Adopt the motto, “It doesn’t matter who’s right, but what’s right.”

Courage - Success is not for the weak. Maltz states, “You must have the courage to act, for only by actions can goals, desires, and beliefs be translated into realities.” Bet on yourself! “Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one’s better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on their own ideas and take the calculated risk to act!

Risk being humiliated. Risk failure. Risk making mistakes. This is how we learn, adapt, grow and succeed. We didn’t tie our own shoe, learn to ride a bike, or learn to walk without failing first. We must risk failing to succeed.

Maltz’s Prescription: Be willing to make a few mistakes, to suffer a little pain to get what you want. Don’t sell yourself short.

Compassion - Maltz suggests that successful personalities have some interest in and regard for other people—compassion. Compassion towards others is a trait of those who become successful, and typically the loss of compassion towards others is one of the traits that leads to a persons downfall.

Maltz’s Prescription: Develop a genuine appreciation for people by realizing the truth about them; they are children of God, unique personalities, creative beings. Take the time to think of the other person’s feelings, viewpoints, desires and needs. Act as if other people are important and treat them accordingly. The Golden Rule.

Esteem - Having a low opinion of ourselves is not a virtue. Self-doubt is a destroyer of succcess.

Maltz’s Prescription: Stop carrying around a mental picture of yourself as defeated. Stop dramatizing yourself as an object of pity and injustice. Begin to appreciate other people more; show respect for any human being merely because he is a child of God and therefore valuable.

Self-Confidence - Success breeds confidence, and thus more success. Begin with small wins. We will fail in the beginning. It is the successful attempt that keeps us motivated.

Maltz’s Prescription: Use errors and mistakes as a way to learning—then dismiss them from your mind. Deliberately remember and picture your past successes. Systematically relive our brave moments.

Self-Acceptance - Maltz writes, “No real success or genuine happiness is possible until a person gains some degree of self-acceptance.” Again, bet on yourself. As Dan Sullivan writes in 10x Is Easier Than 2x, “the number one goal of life is develping mastery in your Unique Ability and thus living out your unique calling and purpose at the highest possible level.”

Maltz’s Prescription: Accept yourself as you are—and start from there. It is necessary to intellectually recognize our shortcoming, but disastrous to hate ourselves because of them.

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