Learning from Others

When you’re trying to make improvements to your life in a certain area, it can be difficult to look around and see others who have already achieved what you’re still trying to achieve. If you’re starting a business, you may feel twinges of jealousy or envy pop up when you read about someone who already owns an extremely successful business in the field you’re attempting to break into. Maybe you’re an artist and have yet to sell a painting, whereas other artists you know seem to sell their products by barely lifting a finger! Or maybe you just don’t feel as happy or energetic as you’d like, but it seems like everyone around you always has that extra spring in their step.

Here’s my advice for this: Instead of feeding into your twinges of jealousy or envy (yep, I get ‘em too!), strive to learn as much as you can about how to achieve success from that person who has already achieved success in that area. The individual who is already accomplished in what you're hoping to make happen can serve as a great resource or mentor for you along your path to success! Not to mention, if someone else has already achieved your goal, that’s a great thing for you because that is positive proof that it can be done. Hey, if they can do it, so can you!

If the person has written a book, read it! If the person lives in your area, ask to grab coffee with them and pick their brain about how they achieved their results. Don’t worry, they will be extremely flattered if you tell them why you want to meet with them. If the person is a good friend of yours, then you have no excuses not to learn from them! Even just spending time with them and observing how they treat others or how they get things done on their to-do list can teach you a lot about success. Say you have a friend who is great with relationships and you’re only so-so. The next time you hang out with your friend and her spouse, notice how she treats her spouse and see if it’s any different than the way you treat potential suitors.

My point is, it can be easy to get frustrated when you’ve hit a roadblock or two and you see others around you who seem to be sailing through their goals with flying colors. Rather than feeling despair, however, a more productive thing to do is figure out what makes the other person successful and implement those techniques in your own life. This keeps you in action (learning and implementing new strategies) rather than staying stuck and feeling sorry for yourself, which is a much lower vibration. Remember, your external world cannot change until your internal world does. Therefore, if you are carrying around thoughts and feelings of, “Poor me, I will never get anywhere…”, that is exactly what will keep happening in your life! To shift this to a more positive vibration, focus instead on the fact that someone else has succeeded and therefore, so can you. And your first step to success is observing how they have created their own success and seeing if you can replicate any of that yourself.

This is one reason why I love attending personal growth seminars put on by others who have already achieved what I’m trying to achieve. By observing how they carry themselves, how they interact with others, how they conduct their business, etc., I get a lot of great insight into how I can create similar results to them. Even if you can’t attend a seminar, visit that person’s website or sign up for their monthly newsletter to see if you can get any insights into how they have created their results. You don’t even have to replicate what they do, but just open yourself up to some of the possibilities that are out there.

I recently met someone who has achieved several of the goals that are on my vision board and I felt myself starting to get down on myself for not having already achieved the same results. Then I realized what an amazing resource this person could be for me in realizing my dreams, and I started asking her a ton of questions and arranging to be around her as much as I could. I encourage you to try the same technique in your own life and watch as your results start to soar overnight!! :-)