The Ten Secrets To Success, Fulfillment, And Happiness
As a dog trainer who travels the country training dogs and working with 20-30 families a week in their homes it is so important for folks to understand how a dog thinks. And when there is no authority figure present, the kind of chaos and bad behavior that can happen. Remember the bad behavior of your dog is not the problem it is just the outcome of a breakdown of leadership in your home.
My friend, co-host of the Train The Trainers Seminar Series, and LA dog training colleague Sean O’Shea from The Good Dog Training and Rehabilitation puts out such a great blog that I feature it here on my blog. Since the message is so powerful and important it needs to be shared by all. Enjoy the read and feel free to also join his Facebook Fan Page.
The Ten Secrets To Success, Fulfillment, And Happiness
By Sean O’Shea
Hey guys and gals, this is a special collection from our Train The Trainers seminar series that focuses on personal development. I’ve put together what I’ve found to be the most important and transformative principles. There are of course many, many more, but these seem to be the foundation for everything. I’ve dedicated years to the study of life improvement and have attempted to distill all that info down to the most important and easy to follow principles.
A few of the biggest issues with personal development work are typically that there is too much stuff, it’s overwhelming, and “where would I start?” Another issue is trust. As in any field there are bound to be those who operate from integrity and those that don’t. I worked tirelessly to find people (authors and speakers) who after searching through tons of their work still held up as solid people with solid integrity. I pulled this info from what I found to be the best of the best.
These laws in and of themselves won’t change your life, but if you use them as guide on your journey to consistent study, care, and attention to improving your internal skills, they absolutely can. What I would suggest is that you simply use these as a reminder of the fundamentals of living the great life. Commit daily to at least 30 minutes, or even better, an hour of studying transformational information, and like clockwork, the amazing concepts start to become a part of you. And then your life starts to reflect that all back to you with better relationships, opportunities, happiness, finances etc. Remember, your outside world is simply a reflection of your inside world. We become what we expose ourselves to. Expose ourselves to great stuff and we become, well, great stuff! 🙂
Change what you think and believe, and that will change your actions, and that will change your results, and that will change your reality. It all starts with your mind. 🙂
The 10 Principles
By Sean O’Shea
1) 100% Responsibility
You have to stop all blaming, all whining, all complaining. You have to honestly accept that the only thing responsible for your state of mind, results, and ultimately what happens in your life, is you. That everything you have at the moment, you’ve created through your thoughts and actions. Negative people? You let them in. Unhealthy relationships? You let them in. Financial trouble, you allowed it to happen through action or non-action. Unfulfilled or not where you wan to be in life? It’s not the world’s fault, it’s yours. But that’s the great news – if you’re responsible for creating the crap (meaning, it wasn’t just dumb luck or circumstance, it was you’re doing), you can also create the great! Once you make this shift, you take back 100% control of your life – you are liberated from circumstances. This single shift changes the entire dynamic/power of your life. When we blame others we are powerless victims, when we take responsibility we are powerful creators. If you look closely you’ll realize that there’s always one person at the scene of the crime in your life – and that’s you! 🙂
Action Step: Challenge yourself to become aware of your blaming vs responsibility habits in very moment.
2) Influence
Nothing impacts your beliefs, habits, thoughts, actions, goals, dreams, relationships, and finances more than the people, the books, the TV, the radio, and the movies that you expose yourself to. If you truly want to be successful, happy, healthy, and fulfilled, you have to remove the toxic/negative/lack influences of all of the above and replace them with positive, healthy, successful, happy, growing, and improving people and content. Remember, we become what we expose ourselves to repeatedly.
Action Step: Become aware of all of the negative influences you expose yourself to on a daily basis through tv, fb, internet, magazines, friends, family, movies, and actually FEEL what they make you FEEL when exposed to them. Become sensitive the feeling of the negativity, and use it as guide to steer you towards healthier influences.
Bonus Action Step!: Start systematically removing negative influences and replacing them with positive ones. Nothing gives you permission to be stuck and toxic like other stuck and toxic people. Remove them.
3) Habits
What we do repeatedly is what we become. You don’t’ create your future, you create your habits, and they create your future. In many ways, success and failure are very simple: practice world-class habits consistently, and you end up with a world-class life. Practice substandard habits, and you end up with a substandard life. Success and failure aren’t created with earth-shattering breakthroughs or cataclysmic mistakes – success and failure are determined by hundreds of tiny, seemingly inconsequential choices and actions you make and take every day. You either move incrementally towards success, or incrementally towards failure – there is no neutral. Master your habits, and you master your life – let your habits get away from you, and life will master you.
Action Step: Become acutely aware of your little habits and routines and what they’re leading you towards. Remember, habits stack! One bad choice makes the next bad choice easy and the next good choice hard. One good choice makes the next good choice easy and the next bad choice hard.
Bonus Action Step!: Read The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson.
4) Mindset
A positive mindset attracts positive people and opportunities. A truly positive/healthy person (and the opportunities they can offer) will only be attracted to and want to work/associate with someone who is also positive/healthy. A negative/toxic attitude (complaining, whining, gossiping, integrity issues, character issues, narrow-mindedness, and victim mentality) will repel awesome folks and opportunities. Great people and great opportunities will gravitate towards equally great people – your job is to become someone that successful people and opportunities are attracted to. Few things are as powerful for opening doors and “magically” creating opportunities and “luck” like a great attitude and mindset.
Action Step: Become highly sensitive to both your attitude as well as others in every moment. How do you FEEL when you’re around negative people/mindsets? Do you want to spend more time with them or less? This is how others feel about you when you’re attitude is negative or toxic. Work to become someone that others feel lifted and joyful around and awesome people and opportunities will start to magically appear. This is how you become a magnet for success and happiness.
5) Prosperity Consciousness
How you feel about money will determine how much of it finds you. Ask yourself how you feel about this statement: I want as much happiness as I can get in my life. I want as much love as I can get in my life. I want as much money as I can get in my life. How do you feel about people who are rich? How do you feel about money and material things? Do you feel that what you have takes away from someone else? Are you aware of all the negative programming surrounding money and success? Have you been affected by your parents’ and society’s beliefs about money? How you feel about money, wealth, prosperity, and rich people will determine what you ultimately go after, and what you ultimately have. Money is neutral – it is neither good nor bad – it is simply a medium of exchange. Money magnifies what you already are: if you’re nasty, it will make you more nasty; if you’re generous and giving, it will make you more generous and giving. Prosperity is simply a value for value exchange – we get paid for bringing value to the marketplace. Wealth is created by adding value, solving problems and helping people.
Action Step: Start looking at money as the physical representation of value shared with others. See others with more money than you as people who have given/created more value than you have. (This one sticks in everyone’s craw! But it’s a great exercise!) View creating more money as a noble enterprise that simply signifies value you’ve created for others.
Bonus Action Step: Follow Randy Gage’s blog and books.
6) Goal Setting
If you want to be successful, you absolutely have to have goals, and they have to be written down. Clearly-defined goals pull you toward their successful completion – they have power and magnetism. They create emotional excitement and direction which motivates. This single step will massively differentiate you from the crowd, and will massively accelerate your success. Clearly-defined goals give your conscious and your subconscious mind a clear target/direction to aim for. Without this defined direction, your mind will dilute its focus, will be sidetracked often, and you will run the very real risk of ending up in a location not of your choosing and not of your liking. Your mind is simply a goal-seeking and goal achieving device – it is a super computer designed to help you achieve whatever it is you desire – your job is to furnish it with the information about what exactly it is that you want so it can get you there. Goal setting is probably the single greatest differentiator between successful people and those that struggle.
Action Step: Read Laura Morgan’s awesome post on goal setting: http://eatyourcakeandcountyourchickens.com/2013/12/31/operation-goal-set-2014/
7) Constant Learning and Growth
Make the decision and the commitment to dedicate your life to constant learning and constant growth. This principle will furnish you with the wisdom, insight, skills, awareness, and consciousness to create true success. Because all success is created in the mind, this work of expanding your consciousness is the most important work you can do for yourself and your future.
Action Step: Start a library of transformational resources (books, CDs, downloads, dvds) and set aside time daily to read, listen, and watch. Personal recommendation: Read for an hour first thing in the morning to set your day and mind off right, and listen to awesome audios whenever driving.
8) Take Action
All the greatest ideas in the world mean nothing if not acted upon. Action takes lots of work, and opens us up to risk – which is why most people avoid it. Action is the moment when thoughts and dreams move from the mental world to the world of reality. The moment you take action you have begun to change your life, and change the world. And remember, you don’t need a perfect plan to get started, you simply need the first plan. Just start wherever you are, today, right now, because that is the perfect plan.
Action Step: Take some form of action immediately! Oder a book or DVD, delete some nasty/toxic fb “friends”, read something rather than watch tv or surf the net, call someone you’ve been avoiding or putting off, share your brilliant idea with a trusted friend, take a walk instead of the couch.
9) Be Willing and Excited to Fail
Nothing gives better information and feedback than failure. The quickest way to succeed, and to break through, is to simply take more chances, dream bigger, and fail more often. Failure is not the enemy – as long as you learn form an experience, it simply moves you closer to success. The fear of failure is the single greatest block to living the life of your dreams. The quickest way to succeed is to simply fail more. Work on letting go of the societal pressure and stigma that goes along with failing. Small people stay safe, don’t risk, and never fail – except at living a big, exciting, fulfilling life. Anyone who has done anything great, life changing or valuable to others has failed…lots! Let failure be your accomplice that tells you you’re living an epic life!
Action Step: Take a chance, get of the fence, and make decision/take action about something important that you’ve been stuck on.
10) Never, Ever Give Up
The one thread you will find that runs through every successful person’s story is that no matter how many times they failed, no matter how many times they stumbled, they never gave up. They simply picked themselves up, dusted off, and got back to it. The only moment you really fail is the moment you give up.
Action Step: If there is a dream you have, or even something highly important and valuable to you that you’ve let go of, dust it off and get back to it. If it’s really important and valuable it shouldn’t be easy to achieve! Anything worth having SHOULD be hard!!
Sean’s website www.thegooddog.net
Sean’s Facebook Page
Sean’s groundbreaking do-it-yourself training video/PDF training booklet Learn to Train The Good Dog Way: The Foundation is now available for pre-order at a discounted price – click HERE to watch the new TEASER video, and find out how to to order your copy on Sean’s website!
The Good Dog Training and Rehabilitation
4867 Bellflower Ave.
North Hollywood, CA 91601
(818) 441-1837
Solid K9 Training Training Center- 25 Acorn Street, Providence, RI 02903
(401) 274 1078
Solid K9 Training Brooklyn NY Location- 210 24th Street Brooklyn NY 11232
www.solidk9training.com/brooklyn-dog-training-location
Providence Training Center Info
*********FOLLOW ME**********