Stimuli to Achieve Success

Last week was my birthday.

So I took my friends and family out for a nice dinner to celebrate. After dinner, while I walking on my way to get my car, I saw an old man sitting by the road – who looks poor. Actually, he is poor.

As much as I felt sympathy for him (different than looking down on someone), I couldn’t help thinking – what happened to him when he’s growing up? I mean, what could have happened in his course of life that he ended up becoming like this?

Maybe he lost his job or his house got burned down or something. Well, that’s possible but I doubt those were the reasons.

You see, in our life, there are ‘stimuli’ that effect how you think and feel. And the thing with these stimuli is, you probably don’t pay any attention to them if they don’t appear ‘big’ enough – that’s where the root starts.

Look at people who are overweight. Do you think they become overweight overnight? No. It started with the first candy bar. They tasted it and it stimulated the pleasure of eating. The next day, the mind says, “Ah, one more bar is not going to hurt me.” Then you know the rest of the story.

Same thing with a guy who is suppose to wake up early for his exercise but ‘miss’ because he tells himself, “It’s fine to skip the exercise today, I’ll just do double tomorrow.” Tomorrow comes but the exercise never gets doubled.

I’m not trying to scare you – but I’m telling you, negative stimuli creeps on you every day and if you don’t catch yourself alert, it’ll become a HABIT. That’s how procrastination starts. Then it leads to getting the people in the office not liking you and also, you can’t seem to finish your work on time anymore. Next, you lose your job. Then you sit down and think, “How I end up losing my job?” Hmm. Interesting.

Stimuli are normally ‘cultivated’ from the Environment you’re in and the People you stick with. So there’s the saying that you should not mix with negative people- take that piece of advice.

Talking about association and soaking the mind a successful person, a Mumbai-born fund manager and a partner paid $650,100 to have lunch with the richest man in the world, Warren Buffett (not sure if he is still is as of today).

If that shocks you, Zhao Danyang pays $2.11 million for lunch with him. (Source: http://streetcapitalist.com/2008/06/28/zhao-danyang-wins-lunch-with-warren-buffett/)

Well, it’s like this – some people see the value, some don’t. In their shoes, I’m very sure they do. Maybe just one piece of advice from Mr. Buffet would made them millions in return.

How far have you stretched to make sure that you’re eliminating negative stimuli and attracting the positive ones?

Patric Chan

P.S: My latest sharing in the Success And You Private Membership includes a video where I show how I ‘keep’ positive stimuli. You can register by clicking here to access this and also my past and future sharings.

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