Your Business is 200x More Effective With HOPE.

There is a famous psychological study done in the 1950s that I want to point your attention to, as it is going to have a great deal of relevance in your business. If you practice the fundamentals of this experiment, I can with certainty assure you that you are going to be very successful online (or in any business venture).

That is a pretty bold statement, but these principles are ones that I have learned personally will lead to success and ultimately failure if they are not implemented.

These are based on the principle of HOPE.

The Famous Study of Swimming Rats in a Bucket of Water.

Here is how the cruel study, conducted by Carl Richter worked. They took a series of domesticated and wild rats, and in separate tests placed them in a bucket of water. They initially wanted to determine how long a rat would remain above water, before it decide to give up and in essence, drown.

The thought was that domesticated rats would be more vulnerable to "giving up" as they were pampered, whereas wild rats would have more fight in them as they were more subject to more "fight for flight" instincts within the wild world.

Both sample groups of rats succumb to drowning within 15 minutes. There was little difference between the two.

This is when the experiment shifted to study on "hope". In the subsequent experiment, they introduced an element of hope by saving the rats and pulling them out of the water just as they gave up hope were about to drown. He saved them, held them, and then gave them some time before he put them back into the bucket.

This time they were instilled with a sense of "hope", as they had been saved before, thus they processed the idea that this was going to happen again. In this second study, the rats swam MUCH longer.
How much longer?

They lasted 40-60 hours. Yes, you read that correctly. 200 times longer than the initial experiment where the rats did not have instiled hope. Whereas a rat, new to the experiment that had yet to be saved would lose hope and drown in less than 15 minutes, one that had been saved just prior to drowning and put back in was able to swim for almost 3 entire days! It is incredible.

Although our brains function different from rats, there are many principles from this experiment that apply to business, and more specifically, YOUR business.

The HOPE Element of YOUR Business.

So how does this correlate to your business? Well over the years, I have seen more people fail than succeed. The reason has nothing to do with someones ability to create a successful business or work hard, and much more to do with the lack of hope in their business.

When you think about it, we all have a desire to succeed. We all want to achieve a higher level of success, have more wealth, health and happiness in our lives. We all have the same tools to achieve this success, we all have the same 24-hour day, and we all have the same ability to start any business we want and work as hard as we want.

The reality is though, some people succeed and some fail. But why?

Hope.

While some people have a hope system that is built internally, most of us require "carrots of hope" to keep us motivated and moving forward.
I mean, really, who can write 20 articles and spend 40-50 hours without any financial reward? The answer is those that are hopeful for success on the other end.

Some newcomers to the online entrepreneurship world will only invest 15 minutes before the completely give up (and ultimately fail), whereas some people will invest 100's of hours of trial and error and then start achieving the results....and go on to create a 7-figure online business.

The unsuccessful person is the rat in the pool that gave up right away. Perhaps they were self-defeated before even starting out after chasing many shiny objects online, and failing with several of them. Perhaps they just have very little patience, and have been receiving mixed messages online about "overnight riches" (which is not a reality), and gave up.

The successful person is the rat that was taken out, dried off and put back in. They anticipate there to be some sort of "success" eventually, and is willing to tread water until that happens.

But how exactly do you become the latter, the person willing to put forth 200x the effort in order to achieve success.

Our Direct Experience With Wealthy Affiliate.

It is easy to look at Wealthy Affiliate (as a company) and think we have endured and linear and upward growth scale. It is also easy to assume that we are consistently happy with business, and that we never feel like we are "drowning".

The reality is quite the opposite, but this is the real reason we are able to move forward and continue to grow and scale our business through even the worst of times, and downturns in the economy.

We know and appreciate what is on the other side of hard work and persistence. We have worked tirelessly on projects, with no immediate results but have then seen the byproduct of these efforts 6 months to a year later. We NOW understand that the effort you put forth in business NOW, pays off later.

It is not a "job" where you have a predictable outcome from your efforts. You don't get up in the morning when you run a business with the idea that you are going to get paid immediately for the work you do. This means that all of your effort can be done in vain, if you don't give yourself adequate time to experience the fruits of your labor.

Sometimes you have no idea if the work you put forth will ever lead to any revenue. But the law of averages comes into play with effort put forth in business. The trial and error ALWAYS point towards success if you are willing to "swim to stay alive" and will give you a huge competitive advantage.

Why?

Because most people are UNWILLING to swim to stay alive. They don't experience any sense of HOPE in the early stages of their business, so they give up and drown (FAIL).

So my message to you today is this. Retain hope, knowing that there are people JUST LIKE YOURSELF succeeding all around you. Your next article could be the breakthrough, or the next website you build.... or the next week ahead...or tomorrow Google really starts to rank your website...or the next PPC campaign will be the successful one.

It will happen.

Not to mention, you have an abundance of people here at Wealthy Affiliate within the community that have swum for 60 hours in order to achieve success and they are willing to pull you out of the water and give you hope moving forward. That is what the community is all about and what we are here for.

Now get out there and swim...and keep swimming until YOUR personal success happens.