Ruth Sanderson

Some people might think I study odd things - like success.  Every time I meet someone who’s been successful my curiosity is peaked, I want to know how they did it, the process, the context.  Then I’m looking at how that matches my current process for achieving the same thing and I play around till I get the desired results.

As you can imagine this also means I’ve worked out various ways of delaying success.  So let me share with you one very good way of putting off the success you desire and deserve.

“When I _______________ then I’ll _______________”

That’s it.  You get to fill in the blanks.

Typically it’s along the lines of when I have my goal, then I’ll act in a different way.  Now this is as close as you can get to putting the cart before the horse and not realising it.  If you had your goal and you’d either behave differently, dress differently, do something differently, then what’s stopping you from doing/being the difference now?

Several years ago I did a paper exercise.  At the top I wrote    When I’m successful I’ll….

and then I just wrote lots of different endings.  After which I looked at all these things and said so which could I be/do/have right now.

One of the endings was I’ll always have a bottle of champagne in my fridge.  So I went and bought a bottle and there it lived and every time I opened my fridge door, voila success, well the feeling of success to be precise and that’s exactly what you want, the feeling.  Then something significantly fabulous happened and I wanted to celebrate and so out came the bottle of champagne and I felt really, really, successful.  Now over the years depending on just how flush I’ve been (running a business does have some hairy moments), it’s been a bottle of cava but it was always something that enabled me to feel successful.

So make your list and see just how much success you can have in your life already.