If you've been reading success literature and are still looking for a breakthrough in your personal life and your business, it might be because you've been listening to the wrong advice. Robert Ringer, a multi-million dollar real estate salesman and the author of "To Be or Not to Be Intimidated," reached a point in his career when he stopped paying attention to the success literature and started focusing on learning what really works. It's interesting how his first year after that resulted in nearly one million dollars in sales. Could it be that what we are learning in the success literature is flawed when it comes to creating real results?
If so, how is that that a successful person can be completely ineffective in teaching others how to be successful? Better yet, if what's being taught in the success literature can only get you so far, what will it take to get you to the six and seven figure level and help you to build a world class organization?
What is Popular Verses What Really Works
Is it possible for something to be a part of popular mainstream belief to be wrong and even ineffective? When you consider some of the popular misconceptions which have been handed down through history, it's not too hard farfetched that popular thinking could be critically flawed. Just think about the theories of the geocentric universe, the theories of the flat earth, the theory of bloodletting and dozens of others. People believed these things because they had become comfortable believing them and they didn't have enough incentive for questioning them.
All you need in order to keep a myth popular is for that myth to have some kind of appealing quality to those who believe it and who promote it.
Why Popular Success Teachings Are So Popular
Popular success teachings focus mainly on positive thinking and speaking of positive affirmations. I did this for many, many years while I was in sales. I made about 30k a year the whole time, but I never dared to stop and think that these techniques "weren't working" because the whole idea was to be positive...don't doubt. What a marvelous strategy for perpetrating the myths of positive thinking as the secret to success. First, being positive makes you feel great, and since everyone loves to feel great of course we are more likely to keep doing things which makes us feel great.
Second, positive thinking forbids you to question it, and so the very nature of the myth insulates it from being questioned by those who practice it. The entire philosophy is based on the idea that success will "eventually" come. Sadly, for most, this dangling carrot names "eventually" leads many on a road directly to mediocrity.
Okay, So What Now?
The cure for the popular success myths is "proactive thinking," and the sooner you learn to practice it, the better of you're going to be. Proactive thinking can be optimistic or pessimistic and is consistently focused on which actions are necessary to optimize desired results and to be well prepared for negative results. This might not be the biggest secret that successful people know, but it's one which paves the way to learning all of the genuine secrets to success.
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