I have a mission in life.

It is to help everyone I meet be successful and happy (their definition), and then to use their new-found success and happiness to make others successful and happy.

It is a lofty goal. It is also one that I am firmly committed to and fully believe that I can achieve.

I start each day with an affirmation in the form of a question: “Who can I help today to be successful and happy, and who can help me?”

That simple question opens up a plethora of possibilities, and puts me in a positive state of mind for the entire day.

I am actually LOOKING for people to help and ways to help them.

This approach has helped me build my consulting, marketing and product brokerage businesses.

Now, how does this mindset work for others?

There is an abundance of information out there in books, magazines, journals, and on the Web that tell us how to make our fortune, how to be wildly successful, and how to have the life we dream of.

Unfortunately, most of this information is vague and misleading.

However, there are a few characteristics successful people share:

• Individuals must have a vision for ongoing and future success.
• A set of strategies and tactics to get them there.
• A belief in themselves and what they are doing.
• The willingness and ability to persist even in the face of adversity.
• A desire for lifelong learning.

These characteristics have been the subject of research in positive psychology and are included as foundational elements for achieving success.

Here is a thought activity that will help bring this point home:

The next time you pick up a newspaper or magazine, read it more closely than normal and look for the words the people who are quoted in the articles use.

See if they are:

• Positive or Negative
• Looking Up or looking Down
• Standing Upwards or Slouched Downwards
• Powerful or Weak
• Present, Past, or Future Tense

Reading for this level of understanding will help you figure out whether or not these people have actually prepared their minds for success.

• People who use words like try and hope in relation to a performance are actually giving themselves permission to fail.
• They have already created the conditions under which failure is acceptable.
• They can always say (and usually in a lowered or dejected tone), “At least I tried.”
• The truth is that the outcome would have been different if they really had done their best.

If you try to do your best in sports, it might not be good enough if the opponent is able to be so much better.

But if the talent levels are fairly equal, then you really didn’t do your best if you “just tried.”

Here is another thought activity:

Look in the business section of your newspaper or business journal to see if the people who are interviewed speak like athletes.

Here are some of the things you will hear or see:

• “I tried to do my best, but it just didn’t work out for me.”
• “All you can do is hope for the best.”
• “I would rather not have had to do that.”
• “I wasn’t mentally prepared to do the job (to play tonight, to complete the task).”
• “I was mentally tired (drained, fatigued, worn-out).”

You get the idea. The words we use reveal what is going on in our heads and also affect our ability to perform.

Our words can actually make us strong, or weak; they have an instant effect on our body and mind.

So be extremely conscious of the self-talk conversations that we have with ourselves.  Make them empowering and achieve a level of success that is truly mind-boggling.

Michael Daras