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| Richard Branson, the Billionaire entrepreneur, famous for creating the Virgin bramd |
When browsing the web, we come
across a multitude of success stories of people who managed to make it with
nothing but their own strong will, people who defied the odds and edified their
name to the top of the pyramid while they didn't have a cent when they started,
they even called these stories “Rags to Riches”, some of my partners call them
“Rags to B*#@%es”. Although it is true that learning how a successful and
notorious person made it can help you in your venture, we tend to forget that
many of us do not share the same environment that Sir Richards Branson, Mr
Virgin Group, had in the suburb of Blackheath (London, England), or the same situation
of Chris Gardner (Do you remember the movie “The Pursuit of Happyness”?...that
was his story) while he was broke, living in the street with his son… not
really. Through my (not that long) life and personal experiences, I’ve learned
why most of us can’t rise to the top and have our names in the history book,
and I managed to come out with these 5 “Don’ts” to the path of victory.
1.
A negative state of mind
The power of
persuasion is one of the greatest powers that one has. The moment you put in
your mind that “I can’t”, without knowing it you just bought a one way trip to
failure.
Advice: Good
things always happen to positive minds, not necessarily good people. So take
the Inngozi state of mind and never drop it.
2.
A lack of initiative
We all have
thousands of plans that we judge to be either good or bad way before even
starting them because the first step is always the hardest so we lay and say
“right now is not the right time…” and so on and so on.
Advice: “The only thing that stands between a person
and what they want in life are the will to try it, and the faith to believe
it’s possible” – Rich Devos
3.
The fear to admit that we do not know
“anything”
Starting
something new is sometimes scary, but starting something new and approaching it
like a common routine is suicide. We never admit that we are making the wrong
move or that other persons might have the right angle concerning our
project…since it is ours.
Advice:
Network, join forces with people smarter than you and the most important is the
final decision and take the blame for any outcome, bad or good.
4.
Speeding instead of persistence
Fast money,
fast life: early crash. The success is achieved through a marathon, not a race
against Usain Bolt.
Advice: it
took the almighty God 7 days to create humanity, and we all think for someone
like us, human beings, it will take us less time to change our lives.
Perfection is made with time and a masterpiece is made with the time spent on
its details.
5.
Learn how to fail…properly
Like my associate Lego says: “Painful experiences toughen you up, you
don’t want to repeat the mistakes that brought you that pain”. This is the
most common mistake, we never learn from our failure. Nobody knows why, either
because we are stubborn or because it is genetic (I know for me it might be
genetic).
Advice: as Nathan Rouse said if
you want to fail well: respond immediately by owning your mistake instead of
delaying it, identify the mistake and be clear about it, share the lessons that
you had from your mistake and acknowledge the feedback, then most importantly,
move forward. But to be able to learn from mistakes one must first put a step
forward and embrace his/her dreams,
The road to success is near a long
highway and a difficult slope. All we must do to reach the terminus and
stay
focused and work hard. Don’t let the world change your vision, don’t let the
people tell you what you can or cannot do and don’t let the cruel world take
over your dreams; “The reasonable man
adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt
the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on unreasonable men” –
George Bernard Shaw
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