The concept that often separates the successful, from the unsuccessful.

I stumbled across a theory the other day which was labelled as one of the biggest differences between people who naturally succeed in life, and people who struggle and consequently give up.  So get your paper and pen, and take note.

The unsuccessful person.  We'll call him Bob.  Bob has an 'ideal' that he is trying to achieve, he knows where he wants to end up.  This ideal is so specific, the brain naturally can begin to see it, smell it, feel it.  He knows exactly how it should look in his head.  So Bob starts working towards his ideal, he works for months, and then years.  Soon, five years have past and Bob takes a moment to reconsider how much closer he is to his 'ideal'.  To his disappointment, he is no closer.  How could this be? He had worked so hard for so five years, surely he must be a bit closer?  Bob begins to cry like a small girl, and decides to give up his goals and gets a job doing something he dislikes, but just manages to pay his bills.

So what happened?  Why didn't Bob get any closer to his 'ideal'?  Bobs 'ideal' was constantly evolving.  As all of our 'ideals' are.  Imagine what you wanted three years ago, and compare it to what you want now.  We evolve, and so do our concepts of our 'ideal'.  The ideal is identical to the horizon, in that if you set out one day to walk to the horizon you could be walking for months, and still be no closer.  So what could Bob have done?

Meet Rob.  The successful person.  Rob decided what his ideal was and began working towards it also.  He worked equally hard, and after five years of it decided to consider how he was doing in his journey.  This next bit is what separates Rob from Bob.  Instead of looking forward, and seeing how far he was from his end goal, his ideal, he looked backwards.  He considered where he was now to be 'B', and he looked back at 'A' (where his journey began) and considered how far he had come.  Rob put down his work, and with a huge smile on his face went for a beer to celebrate how successful he had been so far.  The next day, Rob wakes up and continues working hard on his journey to success.

So the secret is to constantly consider how far you've come, as opposed to how far you still have to go.  If your goal is to become a millionaire, by the time you've become one - you've probably already started wishing to become a billionaire.  Your ideal evolves.  Get used to it, and work with it.