Success Isn't An Accident

What is Success?

When you imagined success growing up, it was probably a lot like most people: lottery winnings or a dead rich uncle.

The very serious and unchanging truth is that success doesn't just happen...ever.

To know exactly what success is, you need to know what it is that you truly want.

Do you want to quit your full-time (slave) job?

Do you want to make $10,000 a month? Or would $1,000 be enough?

What do YOU want?

How would it feel when you get there?

Where Are You?

When you are looking for something in a city in which you've never been (and your Google maps are offline), you can use a paper map.

However, if you don't know where you are on the map, you will never have a point to start on the map. Even if you find what you're looking for on your map, you won't know how to get there.

Right now, you've decided the destination. You know where success is for you.

So, take a good, long, hard look at your current situation. Be completely honest with yourself (lying never helps). Write down exactly where you are in relation to YOUR success.

Map The Route

Given the above analogy, the next logical step to getting where success can be found is to figure out the route. What steps do you need to take to make it happen?

You already took a few steps by being here. You're learning a skill. You have support and training available.

Create a timeline without dates.

Let's call it a stepline.

At the points of this stepline, you will write down each milestone that will feel like progress.

Just started here at Wealthy Affiliate?

Your first step is choosing your niche, followed by creating your website, writing content, being indexed, and joining an affiliate program. All of this is in the training, which means the map is already laid out for these steps.

If you have all of this done, your next logical step is your first commission (which I just received May 31st, and it felt great). Don't expect $10,000. One dollar is more than you had the moment before.

Each step is your next target. You aren't working at $10,000 a month today. You are working at being indexed, or getting a sale, or reaching 100 Google clicks. Take it one step at a time, and it gets much easier.

Don't bite what you can't chew.

What Else Does it Take?

You have your stepline drawn out, ranging all the way through site creation, your first commission, $100 month, $1,000 month, etc.

This is entirely useless if you don't intend to use it.

I could fill another 2,500 words with success-oriented motivational cliche phrases, but all the "winners never quit, quitters never win" in the world will not do it for you.

Nike is all you need to hear.

Do it.

Sit at your desk, every single day and DO IT.

Figure out the actions you need to do every single day to get to where you need to go.

Draw up a schedule, and stick to it.

Emails in the morning to wake you up, then check Google Analytics and Search Console.

Come over to Wealthy Affiliate and answer messages, comments and other notifications.

Then WRITE.

Allocate the time you plan to write. Don't include research, if it needs to be done.

Write for as much time as you can, every single day. Just like everything else, the more you do it, the better you get. The better you get, the more people will want to read what you have to say.

Practice makes perfect.

See, cliches galore and they exist because they are TRUE.

Success is not going to knock on your door without you working VERY hard for it. Do the work. It isn't that difficult.

When you feel like quitting, work harder.

The only time period anyone can tell you when it comes to success is this:

If you quit, it will NEVER come.

What Happens When I Arrive?

Success is fluid, dynamic, never the same.

What you see as success today may be your normal in a year.

Success to you in a year may be outlandish to you now.

You can grow or regress, there is no absence of movement.

Keep moving forward.

Once you hit your "Success Goal", make a new one. There is no end to this game.

Just remember, when you reach each goal, pat yourself on the back and feel proud.

You deserve it because you didn't quit!