The Ingredients To Success

My Early Years - What I Learned

It is only recently that I have reflected back on my life and looked at what I learned in my early business years.

During the 1980s (all of it) I was fortunate to work as a Sales Manager for a luxury car company in London - a company that happened to be owned by one of the UK's greatest entrepreneurs - Gerald Ronson who owned the second largest privately owned company in the UK (The Heon Corporation).

Having recently read his book I now understand some of the ingredients that have served me well through the rest of my life and how they match rather well with what I have learned in the world of NLP.

Gerald Ronson was a larger than life character who didn't suffer fools gladly. He loved his business, He loved doing business and he loved creating business. He worked 12 hours a day, or more, seven days a week because he loved what he did and had an expectation that his employees did the same. If someone wasn't prepared to do what he did then they didn't last very long. He paid well and people who worked for him had an incredible loyalty to 'GMR" - how he was normally referred to. He respected hard work, he respected loyalty, he wanted to see passion and drive and his staff gave it to him. He was a leader. Failure was not an option in those days - no-one wanted to have to explain to Gerald that they had missed their budget - the fear factor worked well!

10 years after I left his company I had changed my life and got involved in the world of NLP and up until recently I was never totally sure why I was drawn to it.

There are two reasons - one the excitement that people can change their thinking easily and, once they have changed their thinking they have access to success and the ingredients for success were principally what I had been taught at an early age.

So What Are The Ingredients For Success?

1. To quote directly from Gerald Ronson's book

"Achieving in business is no different to getting anything else in life. You have to focus your mind on what you want and then go after it. If you are not prepared to take pain, you're going to get knocked down and you won't get back up. If you step into the ring, you are going to get a black eye and a bloody nose and you are going to get knocked down, so be prepared for that because if you are going to stay in the ring, then you have to pick yourself up and keep on punching." GMR

In NLP we have a 'formula' called the principles of success and the first step is to know your outcome and to take action. Gerald Ronson says focus on what you want and get after it! Seems to be a similarity here!

In this world I have come across many people who say they know what they want in life and they talk a good story but never actually do anything. In this world there are doers and talkers - and people soon lose interest in the talkers.

"If you don't do, then all you've done is talk. In my world, no-one really wants to listen to talk. If I believe in something then I have a passion for it, I get on with it. Doers follow their passions and passion is one of the qualities for success. Passion creates commitment and focus." GMR

2. Step two -

"If you work hard, if you have passion for it and if you really want to succeed then sooner or later your persistence will pay off. How much money you will make, nobody knows. But if you are passionate about it, then what you are doing is not about money." GMR

Here Gerald Ronson talks of persistence and this equates nicely to our our 3rd and 4th principle of sucess which is to have sensory acuity (to know if you are getting what you want) and behavioural flexibility which is all about being able to choose different paths in order to get what you want.

Life has a habit of throwing challenges out to see how much you want what you want. I see them as a test. Do you REALLY want it? Gerald Ronson was the most persistent man I have ever known. When he wanted something then he would go after it and, no matter what happened along the way, he would change approaches to the end goal until he found a pathway to it. One of his projects was to build the Heron Tower at Bishopsgate - it took him 8 years to get the relevent permission to start building. He is not a quitter!

3. Step three -

Gerald Ronson always speaks about passion creating commitment and focus. In the NLP world we say the last step to success is operating from a physiology and psychology of excellence. In other words to be in the right state of mind to achieve what we want, to take responsibility for ourselves.

I recently saw a quote "you are not a product of your circumstances, you are a product of your decisions."

The problem many people have is they actually think their life IS the product of circumstances and that is just not the case. Sure, stuff comes along in life - "sh*t happens!" That does not define you - it gives you the opportunity of proving to the universe how you go forward towards your life goal and hence the decisions you make then are the ones that define you.

So here is my take on the ingredients of success - mixing the Gerald Ronson world and the NLP world.

1. Know what you want and focus on it

2. Take action - you will need total passion, drive, determination and hard work. Be prepared to take the knocks and get up and go again!

3. Make sure every step of your path takes you closer to your goal and if it doesn't.

4. Be flexible in your approach - you won't get every step right every time so be prepared to adjust.

5. Have the right mindset. No-one apart from you is responsible for your goal apart from you. You make decisions that will define your outcome.

If you want to read Gerald Ronson's book - Leading from the Front - click the link.

What Goes Wrong?

There are several reasons why people do not achieve the success that they want.

1. They lack the passion for what they say they want and hence are not congruent with their outcome. If they are not 100% congruent with their outcome there will be no real passion and hence they will fall along the way.

2. They lack certain abilities and do not have the determination or sense to improve those abilities before taking on their goal. For example, someone who has a goal that they want to own a successful business and has no idea how to run a business needs to go and learn how to do it before embarking on their goal. This is common sense!

3. They lack the deternination and drive to make it happen. If you are passionate about something you will probably have a certain amount of this and you need LOTS! Whatver your goal in life is, you need the determination and drive to make it happen and you need this all the time. You need to be able to pick yourself up when someone knocks you down and to have the energy to go again. This is the difference between a winner and a loser.

4. They don't learn from their mistakes or from things that don't work. You need to be able to acknowledge and learn from your mistakes and, to go again using the learnings to your advantage. You need to acknowledge that in this world there are people who want to drag you down to their level and you need to understand that they are doing this, usually because of jealousy and that is their problem - not yours.

5. They have more interest in talking a good story rather than doing. This is their choice and is guaranteed to NOT achieving success.

6. They don't unconsciously believ they can do it and consequently, this becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

What Will They Write On Your Gravestone?

A slightly morbid question but one that deals with your legacy.

What will be your legacy in this lifetime. We do not have many years on this earth and what you do with that limited time is your choice.

Will you legacy be one that says "they talked a good story but never achieved anything" or "they could have been great but quit before they did because it was hard" or "they never had the passion to achieve anything" or "they were good at excuses" or perhaps "they had great dreams which they never had the drive to turn into reality."

Will you be a "I could have" person or a "I did" person?

Get YOUR Head in the Right Place

Whatever you regard as your goal in life is your decision - it might be to do with a business, or material things, or being a fabulous parent or buying a place in the sun or something else. Whatever you choose is up to you and you must choose something that you are REALLY passionate about and are willing to put the energy, drive and determination into achieving.

Once you have decided that then you MUST get your head into the right place to achieve whatever it is you want in life. You must sort out your beliefs and values and have them aligned to what you want. You must get rid of any internal conflicts that you have - this is congruence with your goal.

You must FEEL the passion for what you want. This is your fuel for your achieving your goal.

There are few people who can get their head in the right place without a bit of help and that is where NLP and Time Line Therapy comes in.

As people who have been on our courses know our courses gives you the opportunity of straightening out your thinking. Of removing limitaions from yourself that are holding you back.

Some people come on an NLP course to fix one thing and some people come to fix a LOT - and that's fine!

If you have the dream then we have the technology to help you change your thinking to achieve it.

If you want to start towards your goal and maintain progress then NLP and Time Line Therapy is for you because it gives you a method of changing your thinking easily. Remember, the reason you have missed any goals in your life to date is because of your thinking.

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