5 steps to shortcut your success

Modeling (not the ‘America’s Next Top Model‘ type!) is often called the shortcut to success, because it allows you to learn what’s worked from the best, and not have to spend as much time and effort as they did on trial and error. One way to do that is to find 3 people who are successful in the area you want to be and find out what they have in common.

The trick here is to look for patterns. A trait in 1 person might be a fluke, 2 might be a coincidence, but if it’s at least 3 you know something’s going on here. There’s where all these success principles & NLP techniques come from, they’re modeled after common beliefs and strategies of people who’ve been successful.

1) What do you want to excel in?

What’s one area in your life you want to make excellent? For example, I want to improve the way I write for this blog.

2) Find 3 people who are very successful in that area.

If you can’t find them in real life, you can find them through books, audio programs or the internet. Great sources of info would be stuff they wrote themselves, bios about them or interviews conducted with them.

For me, since I’m concerned about writing for my blog, I’d pick 3 very successful bloggers, Darren Rowse of Problogger, Steve Pavlina, and Signals vs. Noise (all very good reads)

3) Find what’s common about them.

This is where the brain-juice needs to kick in. What do they share in common? Look out for actions, beliefs, strategies, techniques.

Hmm ah…Steve’s telling us about the time he went to a Tony Robbins seminar, hmm interesting…so that’s what it’s like. OMG Darren’s poking fun at his baldiness, tee hee, I don’t know if I could ever do that (I’m not bald! I’m not bald! I’m just saying…). Wow Ryan at SvN’s sharing with us how he started his company…with actual figures! That’s pretty bold. But it makes for good reading.

Hmm, ah…what do all these things have in common? Hmm, Darren, Steve and Ryan are all sharing stuff from their own lives, they’re willing to be open and candid. Could this be it?

4) Test it out!

The most important step of all, take action on what you’ve learnt. This is the real juice behind modeling.

Perhaps I could be more open in my own blog. Focused as it is on self-development, maybe my writing would improve if I started sharing my own stories.

5) Refine

What did you learn from Step 4? What worked and what didn’t work as well for you? What could you learn from that to refine your strategy so it works even better for you?

Hmm, ah…reading back on my own post I think I still haven’t gotten the wind of this being personal thing…seems like I’m a bit long-winded Note to self: keep working on it. Use simpler language. Speak more directly like a real conversation rather than a lecture.

Avid learners do these steps naturally. You know, it’s like when there’s a new hobby or thingamajig you’re absolutely in love with. The kind of love that’ll make you go up to anybody who does what you love and ask ‘how do you do that?’, and take every opportunity to watch anybody who’s good at what you want to do with eyes and ears wide open, lapping up every little delicious tip you can find to improve your game. The difference is now you can do this consciously and in any other area of your life with directed modeling.

NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) has a great set of tools for modeling. Robert Dilts is the seminal NLP modeler, having written many great books on NLP modeling (Modeling With Nlp) and the results of modeling geniuses in their field (Strategies of Genius, Volume One, Volume Two, Volume Three, Tools for Dreamers: Strategies for Creativity, Alpha Leadership: Tools for Business Leaders Who Want More from Life).

Like I said in my Envision Success Like IBM Founder Tom Watson Sr, NLP gives you the tools that lets you know where and what you can model. You can model someone at the level of his actions (what I did with the blog writing), his skills, beliefs, identity, or even mission. If you want to go to that level, check out Robert Dilt’s stuff (he has a website at NLPU full of articles).

Written by Alvin Soon on April 2nd, 2006 under Personal Development, NLP.