By Celestine Chua

Success. Growth. Abundance. Results. Excellence.

These are things we set out to achieve in life. Whether it is at work, in our relationships, with our health, in our fitness regime or with our friends, we do our best to achieve peak results. We want to be our best and live our best life.

Like you, I’m a passionate advocate for excellence. I love being the best I can be and being the best at what I do. You know the feeling of satisfaction when you achieve something you set out to accomplish? I feel that as well. It reminds me that as long as we set out to achieve something, we will achieve it.

After years of pursuing and studying excellence, I have learned several key, timeless tips to achieve excellence. These tips have continuously brought in results in whatever goal I seek. For one, they’ve helped successfully develop my passion into a full-time career within a short span of 1.5 years. My blog, The Personal Excellence Blog, is read by thousands of people every day and has been featured on prominent media such as CNN. I’ve founded my training school, The School of Personal Excellence, where I coach and train individuals to achieve excellence in life.

In this article, I’ll share 8 of my timeless tips to achieve excellence:

1. Have a goal

“In life, as in football, you won’t go far unless you know where the goalposts are.” – Arnold H. Glasgow

How true is that? Have you ever seen people play football without knowing where the goalposts are? They’ll be running up and down the field the whole time with the ball and not scoring any goal! Likewise, we need to set our goals for us to move somewhere.

Don’t let your goal be just any goal to. Make it a big, bold and audacious goal – one which will truly excite and inspire you. It’s pointless to have a goal that will automatically be achieved without much of a fight. On the other hand, if you have a goal where you really have to work for it, that’s one worth striving for.

More about goal setting:

• 6 Important Reasons Why You Should Set Goals
• How to Set Goals When You Have No Idea What You Want

2. Do what you love

“You will not do incredible things without an incredible dream.” – John Eliot

If I’ve been doing things I hate all this while, I wouldn’t even have made any headway in them. The reason why I’m continuously inspired to write and bring The Personal Excellence Blog to greater heights day after day is because I’m passionate about what I’m doing. I’m passionate about achieving excellence. I’m passionate about helping others achieve excellence. I can do this day after day, for the rest of my life without even getting paid for it. If I have tried to do something else, say become an accountant or an engineer, I would never have lasted. There’s nothing wrong with those occupations, just that they aren’t what I’m passionate about.

What are you passionate about? What do you love to do? Pursue that, and let the love of what you do drive you to greatness.

How to discover your passion:

• How to Find Your Passion
• Using Fear To Find Your Passion

3. Have a strategy

Strategy is more than just planning. A plan is simply what you are going to do. Strategy is like your blueprint for success; the secret keys that will guarantee your victory. A more layman term for strategy would be “working smart”.

Every goal has its own set of strategies to guarantee its victory. In all my goals, I’ll always spend proper time to develop a strategy. What are the obstacles I’ll face? How can I overcome these obstacles? What is the best mode of action to achieve this goal? How can I achieve this goal faster and better? How have people who achieved this goal done this? These are some questions I consider. And once I develop my strategy, I set out to achieve my goal. Undoubtedly, strategizing helps me achieve my goals with ease.

More about strategy:

• Strategy from Wikipedia
• Goal Achievement: Strategy

4. Study the successful

There’s no matter way to succeed than to study the successful – those who have been here, done that. When I first started The Personal Excellence Blog, I studied the A-List bloggers, such as Steve Pavlina, Darren Rowse from Problogger, and read a lot of materials by them. I also read other big sites such as Copyblogger and Yaro Starak’s Entrepreneur’s Journey. Because of that I’ve learned a lot on what I need to do to have a successful personal development blog. Even today I continue to study and learn from bigger bloggers so I can grow quickly.

Who are the people who are successful in the goals you want to achieve? What have they done which has enabled them to succeed? What can you learn from them?

5. Overcommit your resources

Goal setting is about getting from point A to point B. When we set goals, we have in mind a set of things we need to do. If we complete these XYZ set of things, we will naturally achieve the goal. Right?

Wrong. When we are creating our plan, we are doing it from the point of view of someone who has never achieved the goal before. So how would we even know these XYZ things are what we need to achieve the goal? They are nothing more than just assumptions of what it takes to achieve the goal. It might be 50%, 60% or even 70% accurate, but we have no way of knowing if it’s 100% accurate. Most likely it’s not, else we would already have achieved the goal long ago, wouldn’t we?

So when you set out for our goals, it’s important you overcommit your resources. Come up with what you think you need to achieve the goal, then double it up, or even triple if possible. That way, you can be almost certain you will achieve it. Even if your original estimations are right and there are no need to up the efforts, then you’ll be exceeding your goal when the results are out, which is more than fantastic.

6. Keep reading

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.  ~Mark Twain

The more you read, the more knowledge you gain. There is no end to what you can read. Seth Godin, best selling author on Business Week and New York Times, buys 400 new books every year, and probably reads a lot more than that. Lately, I’ve been frequenting the local library to borrow books and enrich myself. The book I’m currently reading is “How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be” by Jack Canfield, and it’s a great read.  With the wide availability of information on the internet, there’s even more reason to read now than ever.

Here are some you can start off with:

• The Definitive List of Free Personal Development Ebooks
• A Guide to Free Online Audio Books
• 40 Modern Nonfiction Books Everyone Should Read
• 33 Personal Development Blogs To Read in 2010

7. Work hard

There’s working smart (tip #3 – Have a strategy), then there’s working hard. In order to succeed, you have to both work smart and work hard.

And working hard really isn’t all about toiling and sweating and dreading what you are doing. If you are doing what you love (tip #2 – Do what you love), then it really isn’t work at all. I work hard day in day out, writing new articles my blog, coaching others and building my business, but that’s because I love what I’m doing so much that I can’t get enough of it. It doesn’t even feel like work. It feels like I’ve won the lotto, except that it’s a lifetime lotto.

Are you working as hard as you could? How can you put in more effort in what you are doing? The more effort you put into your goals, the more results you will see.

8. Ask for feedback

Feedback gives us a different perspective – one which you cannot see because you are looking from your point of view. I’ve learned a tremendous lot from my readers’ and clients’ feedback, which in turn helps me to write better articles and be a better coach day after day. All of us have blind spots we can’t see and these blind spots are exactly what’s preventing us from achieving results. The more feedback you get, the more aware you become, and the better you will become.

Pick 5 people you interact with frequently. Ask them for feedback on how you can improve as a person. They’re probably going to say you are fine and I believe you are too, butthere’s always room for improvement.  Press them to name 3 key areas of improvement for you. You might just learn something new in the process.

Author bio: Celes writes at The Personal Excellence Blog, where she shares her best advice on achieving personal excellence. Her blog is read by thousands of people every day and has been featured by prominent media such as CNN.com. Get her RSS feed directly here and add her on Twitter @celestinechua.

By Karl Staib

“Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious.” – Thomas Edison

Your subconscious loves to do work while your body performs other tasks that are easy. I can prove this very easily by asking you how many good ideas you have had while driving or in the shower. When you are relaxed yet slightly distracted, your mind is often at its best.

Using subconscious requests will…

• Improve your motivation.
• Help you become happier.
• Increase your emotional intelligence.

You’ll see improvement in less than a month.

My last request was…

“Please give me more patience when commuting to work and allow me to even enjoy my time in the car.”

Within a month I was enjoying my ride to work.

My latest request is…

“Let’s find creative ways to grow my blog.”

I took this approach because it’s going to take a request to my subconscious and action in my waking life to make this happen. This request is only a few days old, but it’s already working. Instead of just asking people to help vote for my blog on social sites that rate articles such as Stumble Upon and Digg, I’ve change my communication. I now friend someone, give a compliment (only if they are worthy) and tell them that they ever need any help to shoot me a message. They are much more willing to help me out.

Mindset

My mindset is changing by setting my subconscious on a certain issue.  I start to see new angles that I’ve never seen before. This subconscious request works for personal issues as well as work related concerns.

The 3 step request only takes five minutes:

Step 1: Before you turn out the light, close your eyes and take one minute to make a request to your subconscious. It can be anything. I would start small and make it open ended. I wouldn’t request to be an astronaut by the end of the month. Your subconscious is good, but not that good.

Step 2: Take two minutes to visualize yourself actually able to do this thing. Whether it is getting the motivation to jog before work or eating a healthy snack, you must visualize yourself doing the request that you asked your subconscious. Let’s say you want to jog before work: imagine yourself getting up a few minutes earlier than usual, putting on your exercise clothes and jogging shoes, and heading out into the crisp air. Then you start jogging, watching the sun rise over the buildings, the birds chirping, and you are feeling good.

Step 3: Take two minutes to imagine the feeling that will occur when you are able to accomplish this new thing. How do you feel when you walk back in your front door after a morning jog? Energized? Whatever feeling you want to achieves imagine that you have already created this emotion inside of yourself. Let it sink in, then go to sleep and let your subconscious do the rest of the work.

Your subconscious mind wants to help you improve your life; you just have to trust its vast resources and allow it to do its thing.

Action Makes Your Request Real

You may not want to go jogging after the first subconscious request, but try to visualize yourself going through the motions the first couple of weeks. Then just start putting on your exercise gear and go for a five minute walk. Taking these baby steps will set you up for your jogging routine. Then after a few weeks just go for it. Now that you have your emotions geared toward jogging it should spur you into action.

By allowing the emotional momentum to build, you can create motivation that will help you accomplish things that make you happier.

Do you have a motivational tip to share? Have you ever tried making a subconscious requests before bed? We would love to hear it. Let’s discuss in the comment section.

Author bio: Karl Staib writes about unlocking and kicking open the door to working happy at his own blog: Work Happy Now! If you enjoyed this article, you may like to subscribe to his Free 10 week E-course or follow him on Twitter.

Want to use your subconscious to change your life? Try hypnosis downloads from HypnoShop.com.

By Mr. Self Development

“If you shoot for the stars, you’ll at least hit the moon.”

Want to reach your goals for next month?  Here’s the best way to do it….

Let’s say you want to lose 4lbs next month.  Instead of putting together a workout routine where you’ll lose 4lbs, put together a workout routine where you’ll burn enough calories to lose 8lbs; instead of working out 1 hour a day, workout 2 hours a day.

If this sounds like a lot of work, that’s because it is!

Often the reason we don’t hit our goals is because we don’t realize the amount of work required to reach that level of success.   By doubling your effort you’re much more likely to reach your goals.

Why is this?  Because it typically takes twice as much work as you think to accomplish a goal.

Twice as Much

It takes twice as much work as you think to successfully lose weight, twice as much work as you think to successfully run a business, twice as much work as you think to become a good parent, or have a great marriage.  TWICE AS MUCH!

What’s the point?  It’s going to take more work than you initially estimated, so plan for it…

An Example

When I was a freshman in college, I didn’t know how to do well academically.  However, I knew that it would require a lot of work to get the 4.0 that I wanted. I initially thought that I should dedicate two hours a day to studying in order to get straight A’s (two hours a day represented much more studying than I ever did in high school).

So did I study for two hours a day?  No…

I didn’t know what to expect!  Knowing that I wouldn’t have a second chance, and knowing that I had to get it right the first time, I doubled my efforts.  I studied for four hours a day Monday through Friday, and I finished with all A’s.  Did I sometimes over study, probably so…but I reached my goal.  Was it hard? It certainly was, but it was worth it.

Even right now, my “4.0 Plaque” that I received from LSU is on my desk as a reminder to always give double the effort.

It’s Going to Get Hectic

If you’re going to accomplish anything worth achieving, it’s going to be a challenge.

Things should be hectic on the path to success.  Like I always say, you know that you’re on the path to success when things are getting a little “chaotic.”  If everything is moving along smoothly, you’re just not doing enough!  The path to success isn’t like a leisurely joy ride; it’s more like a NASCAR race.

In closing, you must craft a plan that allows you to give double the effort.  If you do, you will at least double your chances of succeeding.

That’s all for now, be sure to double your efforts today.

About the author: this guest post was written by Mr. Self Development. Please support Mr. Self Development by subscribing to his blog at mrselfdevelopment.com; Mr. Self Development is a motivational author who offers a practical guide to success and wealth.

By Mr. Self Development

I was talking to a friend yesterday who said the reason he hasn’t succeeded is because he doesn’t have the money to start his own business. He said, if only he had a good friend who could lend him the money he could succeed (he may have been referring to me as that “good friend,” I don’t know).  But the reality is, you don’t need lots of money to achieve success.

There are 4 things that you need to succeed, and they don’t cost anything:

1. The first thing you need is “Time”

With time you can climb mountains, develop a six-pack, break world records, write a bestseller, become rich, or anything else.

Time is far more valuable than money.  You can exchange your time to get money, but you can’t exchange your money to get more time.  Time is the first thing you need to succeed, and it’s free.

2. The second thing you need are “Ideas”

I think about the articles that I write; everything I write is just an “idea.”

There’s no limit to the number of ideas we can have.

I am inspired to write maybe five or six times a day, I have more inspirational thoughts than I can possibly write about.

Why is this? Because there is no shortage in this world; shortage is only a figment of the imagination.

You know, it’s an amazing thing; ideas that are “free” can actually make you rich.  Randy Gage said, “You don’t have a money shortage, you have an idea shortage.”

If you wanted to write a bestselling book, all you would need is an “idea.”  An idea of what to write about, an idea as to how you could make it unique, an idea as to how you could get a publisher, an idea as to the best way to market it, an idea on a catchy title, an idea on how to get the right person to foreword it.  It’s all ideas.  Success comes from ideas, not from money.

You need to tap into your limitless river of ideas.

3. The third thing you need is “Consistent Action”

This is where most people have trouble.  Our society has so programmed us with “get rich quick schemes,” and “instant gratification fixes” that we don’t understand that some things require consistent action for many years.

Instead of us patiently cultivating the talents that we have, we sell our birthright of success and prosperity for a false hope; we sell it for fool’s gold, the false thinking that we can somehow get something for nothing.  Let’s be clear, becoming a success and fulfilling what’s on the inside of you is going to take work!  It’s going to take patience, persistence, faithfulness, faith, dedication, consistency, and determination, when it seems like nothing is working.  But if you’re consistent, you will succeed.

4. The fourth thing you need is “Passion”

It’s critical that you pursue your passion.

Firstly because you’ll be willing to put in the time and dedication to make it a success, and secondly because your passion sparks your creativity and the flow of ideas; it sparks ideas that are unique, ideas that people will gladly pay to see manifested.

Just like a seed, you have everything you need on the inside of you to succeed, you just need to be planted in the right soil and cultivated.  The soil represents being involved in activities that you’re passionate about; the cultivation means doing the hard work which causes success to come.

In conclusion, there are no excuses, everyone has the ability to succeed, so get started today!

About the author: this guest post was written by Mr. Self Development. Please support Mr. Self Development by subscribing to his blog at mrselfdevelopment.com; Mr. Self Development is a motivational author who offers a practical guide to success and wealth.

By Mr. Self Development

What separates the average person, from the super successful?  I’ve spent most of my life uncovering the differences between the mighty and the mundane.  I’ve discovered the following 5 keys which cause the great, to be great.  I believe if you practice these keys they will literally transform your mind and your life.

5 Keys to Transformational Success

1. Meditation, Affirmation, and Visualization – Every successful person I know either meditates, visualizes, or makes affirmations. If you want to see transformational change in your life, begin by taking 15 minutes to meditate, affirm and visualize the life you desire.  This doesn’t work because of its strange “mystical” powers; it works because it reprograms your thinking.   “As a man thinketh, so is he.”

Meditation, affirmation and visualization give you the “motivation” to make your thoughts a realization.  Motivation is another word for “energy,” nothing great is ever achieved without first having a vision, and the “energy” to see it realized.

If you’re going to transform your life, you must begin by transforming your thoughts (this is why you must meditate, affirm and visualize).  To-the-degree that you transform your thoughts will be to-the-degree that you transform your life.  Taking time to mediate, affirm and visualize is the perfect way to consciously decide what thoughts will occupy your mind.  In order to be great you must think great thoughts.  Don’t think that you will eventually be great, begin to think that you are great now, and greatness will follow.

2. Reading – Once your mind has been expanded it never returns to its original state. I enjoy reading or listening to audio books daily because it stretches my mind with new ideas and new perspectives.  Do you realize that by spending three or four hours reading a book, you can literally pick someone’s brain.  What took them 20 years to learn through trial and error you can learn in a few hours, you can access their best ideas for a few dollars and a few hours.

You have daily access to the most intelligent and most successful people in the world through reading.  They say, birds of a feather flock together, maybe you can’t hangout with the super successful yet, but by reading their ideas, you are hanging-out with them, and you will become like them.  Daily reading will stretch your mind and will assist you on your path to transformational change.

3. Studying – It’s not enough to just read. Don’t learn the tricks of your trade, master your trade.  In order to have transformational success, you’re going to have to decide to be the best at whatever you do.  In order to be the best at what you do, you’re going to have to study the very best.  You can’t cheat or skim your way to transformational success; you’re going to have to put in the time to get the results.  Study what the “masters” study, obsess over the details, and you will become a master.

4. Pursuing Your Passion – The decision to follow your love. Do you know anyone who’s very successful who’s doing a job they hate? …Think of anyone who is famous or really successful, there’s a subject that their passionate about.  Donald Trump, real estate; Bill Gates, computers; Michael Jordan, basketball; anyone who’s successful can be summed up by their passion.  How do people sum you up?  Is there a word that comes to mind when people think of you.  If you’re successful there is?

5. Emptying Yourself – The decision to go to your grave empty. To empty yourself means to discover your purpose, and to dedicate your life to fulfilling that one purpose.  If you dedicate your life unreservedly to fulfilling one specific purpose, you will accomplish it.  There’s a quote that goes something like, you can do anything, but not everything.  No one can ride two horses well.  Determine what your life’s passion is, and empty yourself into this passion.  This will define you, and transform your life!

These are the steps to transformational change, make a note of them and be sure to implement them today.  Thank you for reading.

About the author: this guest post was written by Mr. Self Development. Please support Mr. Self Development by subscribing to his blog at mrselfdevelopment.com; just reading Mr. Self Development.com will raise your prosperity consciousness, expand your mind, and challenge you to live the abundant life.

By Mark Harrison

Success is very simple. But it is not very easy for most people. In fact, success boils down to two simple steps.

1. Set goals – have an intention to do, have or be something
2. Keep acting in a way which is consistent with your goals

Just doing these two things will almost certainly bring you success. The trouble is that most people don’t do either of them. Most people drift along aimlessly, not really knowing where they are going and having no clear vision of the future. If you ask most people why the get out of bed in the morning, why they work, what is the purpose of their life, they won’t be able to tell you. The few people who actually set goals are way ahead of the crowd. And those who take the second step, and keep acting to support their goals make up the tiny minority of people who are successful in life. In fact, the second step flows naturally from this first. If you’re serious about your intention, then you cannot help but act in the direction of its fulfillment. The action is effortless.

Set Goals

The first key component of success is to set goals. In other words, have a vision of what the future is going to look like. So few people imagine what their world will look like in ten, twenty, thirty or fifty years time. They look in the mirror and think ‘where did time go? What happened to me?’ At the end of the year, they say ‘I can’t believe another year has passed!’

Most likely, your life will not work out exactly as you planned it, whatever you do – we are not fortune tellers, and life is full of surprises and odd twists and turns – but a goal (or intention) oriented life will be a successful life.

Honestly, I don’t think it matters much how you set goals. Just so long as you do it. Try to be as specific as you can when goal setting, but don’t  get too worried about detail. It’s also important to be flexible. Things change, life changes, so you need to adjust your goals accordingly. Not to say you should be constantly tinkering, but sometimes a goal just isn’t right any more – maybe you already achieved it, maybe it’s to do with a part of your life that has disappeared, or a new part of your life (maybe you changed jobs, for example).

The main thing is that your goal is something you know you are going to achieve. It shouldn’t be an option – it isn’t going to take strain or stress; in fact, it’s going to be easy. But action is, nonetheless, required. Which brings us to the next point.

Keep Acting in a Way Which Is Consistent With Your Goals

The second component of success is to keep acting to support your goals. This sounds like a lot of work, but it really isn’t. And in fact, it’s unavoidable. And this is really the point I am trying to make here – your actions flow naturally from your intention. If one of your goals is to get fit, then you should start by really believing that you’re going to be fit, saying to yourself ‘I intend to be fit.’ If you really do intend this, then you can’t sit around, do no exercise, eat junk food, drive everywhere and so on. You have to change your habits, but this will be natural and easy if you really intend to achieve your goal. If you want to make money, you’re going to have to get into the habit of saving more, investing, studying money related matters, spending less, finding ways to make more, developing multiple income streams, and so on. But if all this is a chore, then you aren’t serious in your intention. If you don’t find something natural and easy, then it probably means you aren’t serious.

The small, natural and inevitable steps you take will almost certainly get you to where you want to be. A dripping tap will fill the bucket. To give a simple example, if you start at the age of 25 and invest $100 a month at 11% per annum until you are 65, you’ll end up with $760,000. You can fiddle with the numbers for yourself by clicking here.

The point is to keep going. Why do your New Year’s resolutions fail? They fail because you stop acting to support your goal. You hit one rough patch and you give up. And this suggests that you weren’t really serious. Winston Churchill said ‘Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.’ The enthusiasm comes from the seriousness of your intention. When you have a goal and your actions support it, you’ll find that things just seem to work out, often better and faster than you thought possible.

Why People Fail

People fail because they don’t realize the importance of thought. They don’t know how to use their mind to carve out the future, the way water carves a river through a landscape. They think they are the victim of circumstance and that their lives are down to chance. They fail because they don’t have a vision for the future.

People fail because they act like sheep. They don’t think for themselves, instead preferring to rely on gurus and teachers and the latest ‘big idea.’

People fail because they aren’t serious in their intentions. They’re lazy. They think they want to be rich, but they aren’t serious. They think they want to be successful, but they aren’t serious. Most people are too (mentally and physically) lazy to be rich and successful. They can’t be bothered to make goals and act to support them, even when they know that it could make all the difference in the world.

People fail because they give up. They settle for second best. They fall down and think, ‘well, it’s not too bad down here on the floor. At least I won’t get knocked down again if I stay here.’ And eventually, they get so used to being on the floor that they’ve forgotten they used to be standing up.

If you really intend something, then you can have it. Nothing can stop you. But are you really serious?

About the author: Mark Harrison writes at effortlessabundance.com.