In the last post I covered success category #1, Self….and for a quick reference, here is a link to the 5 categories of success post. Today, I’d like to share a bit about the second category, Family. I am sure you have all heard the common phrase: No other success can compensate for failure in the home. Family is the very first organization a child is exposed to. It is the first source of education, principle and love. If correct principles are taught in the home, those principles will be carried out and practiced throughout relationships, business decisions and the life of that child. If those principles are not taught by parents, no other success experienced outside of that can compensate for it.

Family Success – The Second Category of Success

My greatest source of happiness, sense of belonging, fulfillment and sense of accomplishment stems from my family….my wife, my children, my parents and siblings. It’s my support structure. No where else on the planet can you duplicate the result, environment and feeling of having a successful family. As parents, we have a sacred duty to make sure correct principles are taught to our children. Many of the problems in the world stem from the deterioration of the family unit and lack of proper, initial education. It’s a proven fact that those who are raised in a family that teaches correct principles, are more likely to succeed.

Why do you think that so many people search for a feeling of belonging, or a community they can feel welcome in. It’s in our instinct. We want to be loved, included and supported.

Family is always first. Everything else comes second. If I am successful at home, my life flows well. If I am not, I stress.

Now this isn’t to say that someone cannot be a success if they have failed in the home. That’s not my point at all. Many successful people have come from or have created broken homes and relationships. An example is Abraham Lincoln. Given the circumstances in his time, he had a broken home and neglected his children, yet, he was extremely successful. But, all of the success he achieved for himself and this country will never compensate for the emptiness he causes in the lives of his family. And maybe that was a sacrifice he had to make……a divided home or a divided country. Which obligation is greater? Maybe he didn’t have to choose?

So my advice to you is to choose a career that brings you closer to your family, instead of tearing you apart. If you are faced with a decision to work more hours so that you can pay for that bigger boat or spend time with your kids, spend time with your kids. Teach them what their Mom and Dad value in life. Teach them correct principles of integrity, honesty, love, compassion, boldness, ethics and faith. They don’t learn these types of things in school. It’s up to the family to build that solid foundation correctly, before they send them out into the world. If we can do that as a country, as a world, this planet will become a better place to live.

Success isn’t a status, it’s a series of events, one right after the other, that go right. The success series for a child starts at home, within their family. It’s where the ball starts rolling, or doesn’t roll at all. Let’s make sure it starts!

Before the holiday season crept up on me I wrote a post called “The 5 Categories of Success,” in which I promised to expound a bit more on each separate category. So, as “Self” is the first category, I would not be in integrity if I were to break that promise to you and to myself. But isn’t that truly where it starts? Trusting yourself and knowing that if you make a commitment, you will keep it. It’s so much easier to do, but is the most damaging in effect, when we break self promises.

Now before I get off on a tangent, allow me to break self success into a few subcategories for ease of reading. Now I don’t pretend to know everything there is about everything and am not a self proclaimed Guru. I just know that I have learned some things in my life that can assist anyone who is willing to integrate them into their own.

Self – The First Category of Success

• Integrity – I can’t tell you how much your level of achievement in this life is based on how well you stick to your core values. If you have no core values then you may be in a bit of trouble in the near or distant future. Being a religious guy, you have to wonder why the scriptures speak of how difficult it is for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of Heaven. It’s because people have a tendency to lose themselves in the pursuit of money. If you achieve all the success in the world but lose your integrity , you have gained nothing. Integrity consists of honesty, dependability, respect, virtue, truth, sound, grounded, bold and stalwart. A couple of phrases that comes to mind are “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” and “Do the right thing, even and especially when no one is watching!” The person you truly are is revealed by the things you do when no one else is around. Part of integrity is the ability to keep promises, especially to yourself.
• Physical Health – Take pride in everything of who you are. This includes your physical appearance and your body’s health. I don’t know how many of you have ever heard of this saying, “Your body is a temple?” It has been in my life since I had my first memory. Meaning, don’t desecrate it. Take care of it. Keep it clean and fine tuned. Exercise regularly and eat healthy. Think of your body as the outward expression of who you are inside. Maybe this is the wrong way to put it, but if you are fat, lazy and hairy on the inside, you’ll be fat, lazy and hairy on the outside. If the real you can’t find it’s way to the outside because of poor physical health and fitness, you may never reach your full potential. And I know, we can play the blame game. It’s a thyroid problem or genetic. All I have to say about that is don’t settle for that! Treat your body as a fine tuned earthly machine that is being operated by a more powerful and intelligent soul….because we all are heavenly beings having a human, earthly experience.
• Self Education – I once heard a quote from the late Jim Rohn that said, “Formal education will make you a living, self-education will make you a fortune. …. Don’t let school interfere with your education.” Go to college, read books and gain knowledge and wisdom from anywhere you can. Not just any knowledge, but knowledge that is praiseworthy and of good report….the kind of knowledge that compels to action by simply occupying space in your head.

These are just a few, but I think you get the point. For those of you who know what the Be-Do-Have principle is, “becoming” is the first step to any level of success. You must first be, then do, then get. It doesn’t work in any other order. Never forget that.

Success is truly an individual matter. After mastermind groups, seminars, books, lectures, college and business, it all comes down to you. Do you want it bad enough to become the person you want to become? You are the one. No one will do it for you. It’s an individual matter. It all starts with you and ends with you, but never really is about you. It’s about helping others, and finding yourself along the way!

I’d like to take time tonight, actually it’s 1:05 am here in beautiful Payson Arizona, to wish you all a very Happy and Prosperous New Year. I assume you all are as excited as I am for all the success and prosperity coming your way this year and have already set a plan of action in place to make it happen!

Tonight couldn’t have been better. Knowing that a good portion of the world was out at a party or event, Amy and I spent the evening with those we care for most….our family. We invited Amy’s parents over for games and fun. Our three girls actually managed to stay awake through midnight…..and I’m thinking it might have been all the sugar we allowed them to scarf down all evening! Either that or the opportunity to blow a New Years horn at midnight….. just too much excitement for them to miss out on! Regardless, kicking off 2010 was perfect!

So what do we call it? Twenty ten or two thousand and ten. I’m definitely torn, but whatever it is, I am gearing up for one of the best years ever!

Life is truly good my friends. We are all very blessed….and I look forward to assisting you all as much as I possibly can in reaching your goals of success this year!

Happy New Year from David and Amy Allred at CreateFinancialWealth.com!

In my eyes there are five main categories in which you can experience the greatest amount of success and in my opinion, should be the main points of focus. Being a religious person, it reminds me of a scripture, “Wherefore, do not spend money for that which is of no worth, nor your labor for that which cannot satisfy………let your soul delight in fatness.” In other words, invest your time, energy and money into something that is of worth and that brings value to your life and to the life of others. To me, true success comes from achieving things in all areas of your life. “Fatness”……meaning broad, wide, abundant, an overflow of…..not one skinny, narrow channel of success.

• Success Category #1: Self
• Success Category #2: Family
• Success Category #3: Spiritual
• Success Category #4: Financial
• Success Category #5: Recreational

If you notice, the name of each category gets larger and larger. Well, it’s pure coincidence. I didn’t plan it at all….but it does carry a degree of truth with it. Each category builds off the previous one, expanding success to a much larger spectrum of “fatness.” For better illustration, take a look at this success triangle. Now going from top to bottom, it all starts with you, your “Self.” As you get further down the triangle, your success expands, or the more success you experience.

As I said in the beginning, true success is an accumulation of several smaller successes spread across many different areas of your life. Financial success without personal success (Self) or recreational success without financial success just wouldn’t seem like much of a success at all. If you’ve ever felt like you are on top of the world, at the peek of your game, that is what I am speaking of. Instead of feeling like a gnat in the middle of an Arizona monsoon, true success is a time in your life when things are rolling for you and you feel like you are at the wheel of your life. You are in control!

During the next few posts I will expand on each category and how each one plays a vital role in the building blocks of success. Stay tuned!

You will rarely achieve any degree of significant success by sticking with the masses. Now I know this may be a difficult concept to understand for those of you who are currently in the masses. You might say, “I measure success in a different way you do.” Or, “Just because I choose to work a job doesn’t mean that I am part of someone else’s vision.” Or, “It doesn’t mean that I’m not successful because I choose to work a job.” And those are all valid points, however, there are “Degrees” of success. The success I am speaking of involves more than success in just a few areas of life, but success in ALL areas of life….family, self, business, time, community, religion and the list goes on and on.

The masses, meaning the majority of the worlds population, are living someone else’s vision. That vision includes you, not as the main role, but as an extra in their movie. To truly achieve your dreams, a higher degree of success, everyone else must be the extra in the movie you write. You are the Individual. You are the main character in your own movie. When it all comes down to it, the difference between an “A” or a “C” grate average depends on YOU. The individual.

If you think about all the different components of a car that have to work together to make it work, there are a ton. The main goal of all those car parts is to make a vehicle that works. The vehicle, the car, is it. Everything else is just part of it. I mean, if you want to be the rim, the gas pedal, the steering shaft or the radiator, you can fit into that position very nicely and will probably do a great JOB in making that car work…….but you’ll never be the car. When you get into your car, you don’t say, “Man, I love the radiator, the gas pedal and the rims that make up this car.” No! You say, “Man I love this car!” The car is the thing that exists, and as a component of the car, when you break, you are replaced with a better working part. The car still exists. It was always about the car, not the parts.

Are you getting my point here? Sometimes I feel like I get too thick in the analogies, but I think that’s how my brain understands best. And since my brain works that way, so should yours, right!?

You must, and I say MUST, separate yourself from the actions that seem most common in order to get uncommon results in your life. And the uncommon results, are the successful ones. Very few people ever get the joy of truly accomplishing their goals. Very few people ever live out their dreams. But the people that do, have learned to single themselves out as individuals and have created their own path to follow, their own movie and their own car.

Point blank, individuals succeed. Masses do what they are told!

What is one of the main causes of discouragement for an entrepreneur? Rejection is. Throughout the process of creating success in any given business opportunity lies opportunities for rejection. When you apply for a business loan, you may get rejected. When you out in a quote for a job, they may reject your offer. When you make your sales calls, most likely, you will get rejected before you make a sale. Heck, you will probably get rejected over and over again.

Rejection is not personal

Rejection is a natural part of the process of success in any venture, even in a job setting as well as an entrepreneurial venture. How many job applications and interviews does a person have to go through to find the perfect job? How many “No’s” does an entrepreneur have to sort through to find the yes? That’s the key! The more “no’s,” or rejections you get, the closer you are to the “Yes’s!” In addition to a thought out business plan, a great location, a proven system and a customer base, that’s all business is. It’s the process of sorting through the “no’s” until you find the “Yes.”

Discouragement from rejection comes to entrepreneurs who don’t have a strong enough goal, or vision for where they are headed. Rejection can get monotonous, repetitive and quite annoying. It’s easy to look at rejection as failure. Failure brings a lack of motivation, poor mindset and very little progress. It’s grounds to think about the forbidden “Q” word. QUITTING! Which is why it takes a lot of self motivation and ambition to succeed as an entrepreneur. It’s all on your shoulders, success and failure.

What you have to realize is that rejection is not personal. The person on the other end of the phone line, directly in front of you, behind the application, looking at your product or whatever it may be, may reject your offer because of them, not you. Rejection is something that happens when a person doesn’t understand the value of your product or service in their life. That’s it! They don’t say no because of who you are. It’s not a personal attack. It’s just the process of sorting. Success happens when your product or service finds customers who can see it’s value in their own life. That’s who you are sorting for.

So the more “No’s” you get, the better. You can’t treat every potential customer like they are the only potential buyer you will ever see, as you drool with dollar signs in your eyes. That’s insane. They are either a no or a yes. That’s it. As long as your presentation, display, product or service provides value and is presented properly, you will make the sale. Don’t read into it too deeply. Don’t get your feelings hurt when you encounter rejection because it will happen. Learn from it and move forward until you find that “Yes,” again and again and again. If you can do that, then welcome to Entrepreneurship!