The ultimate formula for success, according to author Tony Robbins, starts with something as simple as:
- Decide what you want or what you want to achieve.
- Start taking the actions that bring you closer to that goal. In other words, make decisions.
- Notice what works and what doesn’t.
- Keep at it, adjusting your approach, until you get there.
You can expand on each point as much as you like, but in essence these four steps perfectly capture the road to success in your career, in breaking bad habits or in business.
Put another way: identify the goal, start walking towards it, succeed or fail (and if you fail, try again), and don’t stop trying until you get there. To do that, you need the right attitude so that you don’t lose heart along the way.
In his book Awaken the Giant Within, Tony Robbins first of all clearly links failure to a lack of decision-making and, when a decision has been made, to a lack of commitment to keep pursuing the goal.
Unfortunately, though, the main problem for the vast majority of people is much simpler: they don’t know what they want or where they are heading, and if we don’t know what we want to pursue, we can’t know which decision to make.
This is what Robbins calls “the Niagara syndrome”
According to Robbins, most people experience the Niagara syndrome. Life is like the famous Niagara River, and most people jump into it without knowing where they want to go. So they don’t swim towards anything; they simply let the current of life carry them along.
Almost everyone wakes up at some point, when they catch sight of Niagara Falls and realise they are only a few metres from being swept over the edge. That is when we say: “Oh, crap!”
Some, once they see the falls, still do nothing, because at that stretch of the river the current is already too strong and swimming against it takes extra effort. They decide not to make that effort and go over the edge, to what will probably be certain death.
Others summon their courage, strength and energy and try to get out of the current that is dragging them along, grabbing onto anything they can reach and fighting to change the outcome.
Often this Niagara analogy fits an emotional fall, where problems keep piling up and trapping us, letting the current carry us towards the most dangerous part of the river until we go over the falls. Other times it is a financial fall, or a career or business one.
(See: 17 steps to survive the worst moments of your life)
We simply can’t let ourselves be carried along by the current. We need goals and objectives. We need to take specific actions so that we end up where we want to be, and not on the brink of life’s waterfalls.
Remember that today you are where the decisions you have made so far have brought you. Where you are tomorrow will depend on the decisions you start making today.
And above all, remember that it is never too late to do the things we should have done and no longer do because we think it is too late. Of course, when many things are clear from the start, the future can be much easier, because planning is essential for any kind of success.
But acting a little later doesn’t mean you can no longer achieve it; it means that, when the time comes, you will have to work much harder than someone who did it right from the beginning.
See also: 25 habits of successful people
Featured image: Hannah Clover, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
