Wednesday, July 11, 2018

6 Ways to Embrace an Abundance Mindset

6 Ways to Embrace an Abundance Mindset



 

April 5, 2017

Her name is Nikki Bollerman and she teaches third grade at an inner-city Boston charter school. Bollerman’s students don’t come from houses stocked with books, so in 2014 she applied for a contest called the #WishForOthers campaign. She wanted to be able to buy a book for each of them to practice reading over the holiday break.


She won. The sponsor, Capital One, funded three books for each child and also awarded her one of the grand prizes: $150,000.

If you’re in your 20s like Bollerman—or recall being in your 20s—you remember how tight the budget can be in those years. I don’t know Bollerman’s personal situation, but I’m guessing she wasn’t rolling in cash. Still, she donated the winnings to the school.

“To me,” she later told reporters, “there was no other real option. I mean, I wished for it for the kids. Where else would it go other than them?”

Bollerman is a prime example of one of my favorite topics: Abundance.

People with an abundance mindset believe there is plenty of money, power and recognition to share with others. They are the opposite of those operating from a scarcity mindset, who hoard everything from financial resources to credit for a job well done.

Related: True Success Begins the Second You Start Giving Back

As much as we love and respect wealthy and generous people such as Bill and Melinda Gates, it’s people on the lower end of the financial spectrum who are the biggest givers. There’s been a lot of research on this lately. In 2011 Americans in the top 20 percent of the income spectrum contributed 1.3 percent of their income to charity. The people in the bottom 20 percent donated 3.2 percent. University of California, Berkeley researcher Paul Piff suggests that the people most frequently exposed to others in distress are far more in tune with the needs of their fellow man.

If the less able among us freely offer help, then we of greater means have no excuse.

When I talk about abundance, I’m not just talking about financial generosity. I’m talking about sharing your whole self: your talents, ideas, creativity, compassion and, yes, if you can, your wealth. But I didn’t always think this way.

My first job took me to Hillham, Indiana, a tiny town of 11 houses and one grocery store. I was charged with pastoring a church and I directed all of my energy to that task, growing it so much we had to expand into a larger building. A few years later, when my denomination offered me a job at a larger church in Lancaster, Ohio, I was determined to make similar strides. By 1975 our church had the fastest-growing Sunday School in the state.

I was excited. I was proud. I was also obsessed with comparing my results to those of my fellow pastors. I scrutinized our denomination’s annual report. Where do I rank? How am I doing? How do I stand out now? Do you think I was about to share the secrets of my success with my colleagues? Hardly.

After realizing my errors and acknowledging my selfishness, I promised to dedicate my career to training other leaders, to sharing whatever knowledge I picked up along the way so others could add it to their own, magnify it and hand it to someone else.

Related: The Power of Sharing What You Know

Thinking abundantly is a first step toward adding value to others. And when you add value to others, your significance grows. It’s an upward cycle.

So how do we learn to ditch scarcity and embrace abundance?

1. Strive for personal success.

Discover your gifts. What do you have to offer the world? What’s uniquely yours to give? Amass your wealth (and remember, I’m not just talking about money) so you can dole it out to others.

2. Share your accomplishments.

If you achieve a victory at work, will you claim the glory or recognize others who have contributed toward the goal? If you discover a more efficient procedure, a better way of doing business or a new strategy, will you keep it under wraps or shout it out to others on your team?

3. Offer encouragement.

A kind word is a gift. Sometimes we feel like we have nothing to give, but we can always conjure up a statement of support. Who knows? Your words might inspire someone to take the next step in his or her journey.

4. Stay connected.

There’s nothing wrong with working your way to the corner office. In fact, I encourage your aspirations. But as you sit at the top, don’t lose sight of the pressures and challenges that people on different levels of the economic ladder face. What can you give to them?

5. Think like a servant.

We’re wired from the time we’re kids to protect our own self-interests—to be the best athlete, the top scholar, the class president, whatever. Rarely do we think about being the team player or the teacher—someone like Bollerman—who sacrifices his or her wants, needs, fame or fortune so that someone else might excel.

6. Consider the ocean.

 

When you stand on the beach and watch the waves hit the shore, do you think there’s any end to the water? That’s how the abundance mindset works.


 

When you stand on the beach and watch the waves hit the shore, do you think there’s any end to the water? There is, of course, but we can’t comprehend it, so we think seawater is endlessly abundant. You would never deny a bucketful to a child building a sand castle because you can refill that bucket again and again. That’s how the abundance mindset works. You give away praise, recognition, ideas, knowledge and money because you know there’s plenty to go around. What you give away will come back to you a thousand times over. I guarantee it.

Related: How to Make Others Feel Significant

 

Tuesday, July 10, 2018

3 Reasons Productive Passion Is the Tool You Need to Succeed

3 Reasons Productive Passion Is the Tool You Need to Succeed

 
November 7, 2017
3 Reasons Productive Passion Is the Tool You Need to Succeed
No startup magically pops up out of thin air—each one stems from an idea, a dream, a passion. But an entrepreneur’s passion alone isn’t enough to build a successful company. That passion has to fuel a deep, all-consuming fire that keeps him or her working constantly toward success.
I know how important a productive passion is from my own track record. People have told me that I make my career as an entrepreneur and executive look easy, but what they don’t see is the effort I put in day after day.
My passion didn’t just create one good idea and make my company flourish overnight; passion is what made it possible for me to put in the necessary work.

Keeping Passion Productive

Sometimes having the drive to keep going after your dream no matter what obstacle gets thrown your way can make all the difference. Engagement is hard to come by: In the U.S., businesses shell out $1 billion each year to achieve it and another $100 billion on developing employees’ skill sets.
Despite that price tag, only 13 percent of the American workforce attests to having the right type of passion—the kind that drives you to seek out challenges and develop the skills to push past them.
This type of “do what you love” attitude being the difference between a successful startup and failure might sound like old news, but being emotionally invested in your workplace not only helps your company grow, but might even improve your health, too. A study conducted in Denmark found that out of 5,000 Danish workers, those with the highest commitment to their employers slept better and got sick less often.
If those are the benefits for employees, imagine the difference productive passion makes for entrepreneurs. An emotional connection is needed to execute successfully. In fact, studies show that objects to which people have emotional attachments  appear larger and are easier for us to spot. It’s no wonder that a major life goal such as startup success looms large in our minds.
Coupling your passion with visualization techniques to help prioritize your goals each and every day can keep you honest about the steps you’re taking to achieve your dreams. Here are three other ways productive passion can act as your own secret weapon:

1. Let it drive your self-belief.

You’re never passionate about something you think will fail. Let that determination burn at full force and drive your trust in your ability to succeed. If you believe that your dream is achievable, you will act accordingly. Use your passion to keep your daily and monthly goals for yourself and your company within reach. The confidence you hold in your future will trickle down to anyone helping you work toward your startup’s success.
Steve Jobs was another big proponent of letting passion fuel your belief in yourself. In a commencement speech he delivered to Stanford graduates in 2005, he said, “You’ve got to find what you love. The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” Keep that love of your work with you, and trust that you will put in the hours needed to see it through.

2. Let it motivate you.

It’s clear that goals we are emotionally attached to seem more prominent to us. So harness that feeling and let your passion motivate you. Emotional attachment to an idea will motivate you to answer those emails, reach out to those connections you made at a networking event or stay up all night to troubleshoot that nagging tech issue.
If your startup is truly important to you, getting up early and powering through the day to meet with investors is a non-issue. Perfecting your product design for the zillionth time is just a necessary step in the process. When it seems overwhelming, let your passion for what you are doing remind you of why you started this journey in the first place and then push you to keep on keeping on.

3. Let it give you an energy boost.

It’s easy for people who have never started their own businesses to misjudge the kind of endurance it requires. But use your productive passion to fuel you through the long hours and emotionally taxing setbacks. My grandfather always told me that everything will take twice as long and cost twice as much as you think it will. That’s never more true than in business.
Use your emotional connection with your startup to keep your enthusiasm and energy high, even when times get tough. Visualization techniques can help, as can reminding yourself to take short breaks to have coffee with a supportive friend, run to your favorite motivational song or do some meditation when you are really feeling overwhelmed.
Starting your own business is difficult—there’s no way to get around that. But if you’re passionate about your dream, there is nothing you can’t do. Let your passion fuel your productivity and persistence, and it will become the best secret weapon in your arsenal.

How to Execute and Make Things Happen

How to Execute and Make Things Happen

   |   
October 26, 2017
SUCCESS Live Kim Perell How to Execute and Get Things Done
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“The execution factor, it doesn’t sound very sexy…”  says Kim Perell, entrepreneur and CEO of global technology company Amobee. “But I’m here to tell you how to master this one skill that will drive your success more than anything else.” That’s because execution is a skill that can be learned, she says. There are five essential traits to master the skill of execution and take something from idea to reality. 

Vision

Vision is about a having a North Star. It's about having a compass from where you are today to success. “People who write down their goals are nine times as likely to be successful over their lifetime as people that don't,” Perell says. “Nine times! Why wouldn’t you do this?”

Passion

What is something you're so passionate about that you would gladly suffer for?  “When I was 11, I had a passion for horses,” Perell says. “So I went to the barn and asked them if I could work at the stable to get a riding lesson, and they gave me seven hours of cleaning up the stables for a one-hour ride. I thought that was an incredible deal. Looking back I think they got a better deal on that one, but I would have done anything to ride that horse.” It’s passion that’ll keep you going when initial enthusiasm wears off.

Action

Ask yourself what is one action that you will take to accomplish your vision. Just a simple one, Perell says. Start small and write that down. You have to be willing to take that first step.

Resilience

“I think Rocky is the best example of resilience,” Perell says. “He gets knocked down all the time but he always gets back up.” This is the ability to adapt and overcome obstacles and rollbacks and thrive in change.

Relationships

“Nobody is successful alone; I haven't been," Perell says. It's important to build healthy, inspiring, supportive relationships. The most significant factor in any person's life is the people you surround yourself with.

"Passion comes from the Latin word for pain. What is something you're so passionate about that you would gladly suffer for?" —Kim Perell

     Related: Watch more powerful SUCCESS Live videos here.

It Takes a Positive Attitude to Achieve Positive Results

It Takes a Positive Attitude to Achieve Positive Results

Realize that YOU are in control of how you think and feel.
 
January 12, 2016
It Takes a Positive Attitude to Achieve Positive Results
Your attitude determines the state of the world you live in. It is the foundation for every successand every failure you have had and will have. It will make you or break you.
Your attitude controls your life. But the good news? You control your attitude.
Attitude creates the way you feel about people and situations. Your actions are a result of your attitude—which in turn creates a reaction from others.
It is your attitude toward others and the universe that determines the resulting attitude toward you. Have a positive, joyful attitude and you’ll have positive, joyful results. Put out a bad, negative attitude and you’ve failed before you begin.
I know it sounds simple, but, the truth is, it is:

Where do negative attitudes come from?

Negative attitudes come from thinking negative thoughts over and over until they become part of your subconscious, part of your personality—they become habitual. You may not even realize you have a negative attitude because it’s been with you for so long. Once you have a bad attitude, you expect failure and disaster. And that expectation turns you into a magnet for failure and disaster.
Then it becomes a vicious cycle: You expect the worst, so you get the worst. Your negative beliefs are reinforced. So you expect the worst, and you get the worst.

So, how do you shift your thoughts and create a positive attitude?

It takes work, but creating anything of value takes work. In order to have a new attitude, you have to change your subconscious thinking. How? By analyzing every thought you have until positive thinking becomes habit. You’re merely replacing an old habit with a healthy habit, much like replacing smoking with exercise.
You can’t just stop being negative—you have to replace those negative thoughts with positive ones.
Some people would say, “But negative situations are a reality. They just show up in everyday life.”
This is absolutely not true. Situations are a reality, yes. They do show up, yes. It is your attitude that makes a situation positive or negative. It’s time for you to realize that you are in control of how you think and feel—no one else on earth has this power unless you give it away.
Take control of your attitude, your state of mind, and you take control of your results.

‘What You Think, You Become’

‘What You Think, You Become’

Why a growth mindset matters
 
July 2, 2015
‘What You Think, You Become’
“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve,” Napoleon Hill once said. “The mind is everything. What you think, you become,” Buddha taught. You’ve heard high-minded quotes like these all your life. Now science has caught up. We can finally quantify and track how beliefs can shape outcomes.
Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck found that some people have a “fixed mindset” and believe that they cannot change their capabilities. Other people have a “growth mindset.” The growers believe they can work toward improving themselves. Dweck and her colleagues studied 373 students and tracked their academic performance from the beginning of seventh grade through the end of the eighth. They found that those with a growth mindset think-I-can-think-I-can’d themselves to a rise in grade point average, while those with a fixed mindset remained the same.
It’s also been shown that if, before taking an IQ test, people read an article saying that IQ is changeable instead of fixed based on genes, their IQ scores improve.
This is one of the biggest tenets of my book The Happiness Advantage: Simply believingchange is possible makes change possible.
What areas of your life do you need to move from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset?

A Simple Formula for Success: Execution Over IQ

A Simple Formula for Success: Execution Over IQ

Entrepreneur Kim Perell believes you need more than a high IQ to find success. You need to be driven toward results.

June 27, 2018
A Simple Formula for Success: Execution Over IQ

Kim Perell is never far from the ocean. An avid traveler, Perell has been to more than 70 countries, finding inspiration in the great blue.
“I just feel the power,” she says. “It’s a reminder of how life is full of amazing opportunity.”
Born to entrepreneurial parents, Perell grew up listening to discussions about growth strategies and smart budget cuts at the family dinner table in Portland, Oregon. Now the 40-year-old serial entrepreneur shares a home in San Diego with her husband and their 3-year-old fraternal twins, yet a new tropical getaway is always on the horizon.
As enviable as her adventures look on paper, Perell’s life wasn’t always cushioned. Her father, a real estate developer, took a strict no-BS stance on life, often telling her: “Eight hours? That’s a half-day. Go back to work.” She spent hours visiting his job sites and appointing Meyers-Briggs labels to staff files with her mother, an organizational behavioral consultant. Witnessing the stressful and financially uncertain roller coaster of business taught Perell resilience, passion and a strong work ethic.
“It was their purpose as opposed to a job because they owned it and ran it,” Perell says. “They lived it and breathed it. If you’re doing it because you love it, eight hours turns into 16 very fast.”
Armed with experience, Perell has been building and navigating her way through the highly competitive digital startup industry, most recently as CEO of digital marketing firm Amobee, valued at an estimated $100 million. Now she’s ready to share the blueprint of more than a decade of experience with other entrepreneurs in her upcoming book The Execution Factor, through McGraw-Hill.
* * *
In some ways, Perell was groomed for the entrepreneurial life. Taught to create her own opportunities, she collected aluminum cans from neighbors to recycle for spending money. Interested in horseback riding, she cleaned stables for seven hours in exchange for a one-hour lesson. She worked at a pizza shop and sold men’s suits to fund a car at 16. As a full-time student at Pepperdine, she worked two jobs at an investment bank and a direct marketing company.

“You can’t put a price on experience. I love being an entrepreneur. I love ideas. But you have to be realistic and you have to live.” 


She found failure just as quickly as success. A fresh-faced college graduate, she eagerly joined the dot-com boom as director of marketing and sales for internet startup Xdrive Technology, a Dropbox forerunner. Despite her lack of experience, Perell acquired 10 million members and generated more than $9 million in advertising revenue to become the only division in the company making money. But like so many others in the dot-com bubble, Xdrive fueled its rapid growth at the expense of cash flow and profitability. Over the next two years, the company plummeted, and by 2001, Perell was firing dozens of her friends before being laid off herself.
“That was probably the worst thing that ever happened to me, but looking back, it created such an incredible opportunity,” Perell says.
Less than a year later, Perell was launching her first startup, Frontline Direct, a performance marketing company, from the kitchen table of her in-laws’ home in Hawaii. She funded it with the remaining $10,000 in her bank account and any available credit card balances. Still reeling from the devastating rise and fall of Xdrive, Perell was determined not to repeat the company’s mistakes. She and her husband worked tirelessly to stay in contact with clients on the East Coast. Their hard work paid off, bringing in nearly double revenue year after year, reaching $100 million by 2010 with 380 customers and 74 employees.
“If I didn’t believe or wasn’t passionate about it, I just wouldn’t do it,” Perell says. “It wouldn’t be worth the day.”
But growth doesn’t come without a cost. Perell’s parents divorced when she was a teenager. Just as she learned from her experience with Xdrive, she also learned from watching how the stress of entrepreneurship strains relationships.
“I prioritized my business and then my personal life, making sure I had adequate time and finances to support both of those needs and be successful.” she says. “You can’t put a price on experience. I love being an entrepreneur. I love ideas. But you have to be realistic and you have to live.”
In 2008 Frontline merged with a Europe-based marketing firm in a $30 million deal to become Adconion Direct, with Perell named CEO. She brought the same simple lessons she learned all those years ago: Focus on the bottom line and be cautious about taking outside funding. Adconion saw a 70 percent year-on-year increase due to ad sales.
In 2014 Amobee, a unit of Asian telecom behemoth Singtel, bought Adconion Direct for $235 million, and Perell once again took the lead as CEO, charged with building one of the largest independent marketing companies in the world. With 20 offices around the globe and 550 employees under her in the heart of Silicon Valley, she sticks to a simple formula: execution over IQ.
“You could be a great visionary, but if you don’t pair vision with action, it’s just your head in the clouds,” she says.
* * *
Perell is the kind of person you instantly like and respect. She’s both blunt and charismatic, confident and gracious, direct and kind. She knows what she wants, but she doesn’t trample on others to get there—certainly a redeeming leadership quality. But you don’t become the CEO of a massively successful company without making some difficult decisions.
Perell’s friends have a running joke: Who makes the annual audit list? Not unlike a financial audit or holiday nice and naughty list, she sits down to analyze which relationships are improving her life and which ones are dragging her down.

“If I didn’t believe or wasn’t passionate about it, I just wouldn’t do it. It wouldn’t be worth the day.”


“It’s very intentional,” Perell says. “At some point you have to make decisions. If it’s not pushing you forward, it’s holding you back.
“I can only handle so much bandwidth and noise. Having really meaningful relationships is so key to success, so why add unmeaningful or shallow conversations?”
* * *
In 2005 Frontline Direct’s entire client and internal database was erased accidentally. Unable to afford a backup server, the data was unrecoverable. Perell remembers standing in an Ikea, considering where to run away and hide from the problem. Rather than cowering, she took action, reaching out to each client, explaining the situation individually, and working together to rebuild the database. Not a single client left the company.
“High IQ doesn’t always equal success,” Perell says. “It takes much more than a good idea to be successful, and I think I’m living proof of that.”
It’s the same honesty and integrity that has made Perell a savvy angel investor to more than 70 startups, 12 of which have since been acquired by some of the largest Fortune 500 companies. As a leader and investor, she’s learned a lot about people. Namely that they don’t like to be told what to do. She doesn’t care how her team gets from goal to execution, as long as they achieve the desired outcome.
“I believe in collective thought,” she says. “I like input. I don’t think it’s my way or the highway because I love having a lot of intelligent individuals around the table who all have different points of view. As a leader, that has made me more open to accepting new ideas.”

How a Brain Dump Can Unlock Your Creativity

How a Brain Dump Can Unlock Your Creativity

Trying to process less allows us to be more.

May 3, 2018
How a Brain Dump Can Unlock Your Creativity
For knowledge workers, entrepreneurs and creatives, generating new ideas isn’t just nice; it’s an economic necessity. Ironically, though, making more content, posting new materials, reading and processing more information isn’t always the answer to achieving deeper creativity. Anyone who has struggled to fall asleep at night as the train of too many ideas chugged through the brain, or who has had the experience of sitting down to write only to feel pulled in a million different directions knows this intuitively.
And the science bears this out. As researchers Shira Baror and Moshe Bar from Bar-Ilan University’s Brain Research Center have found, individuals with a lot on their minds tend to be less creative. To arrive at this finding, the experimenters ran a word association test, while also giving some participants a list of very long numbers to remember at the beginning of the experiment and others very short numerical lists. What they found was that overwhelmingly the people given lots to keep track of before undertaking the creative word association task came up with the most common responses. Whereas the people given little to keep track of tended to have the most innovative and diverse word associations. Put simply, less cognitive load meant more creativity.
So, what can we do about cognitive load? We all live in the world, don’t we? The good news is that with practice, we may be able to reduce the creativity-sucking load on our working memories. As recent neurological research demonstrates, with practice, we can intentionally clear out our minds, thereby freeing up our creative juices. Specifically, meditation allows practitioners to engage what University of Florida’s Dr. Deshmukh calls a “cognitive pause and unload” (CPU) technique that frees attentional space for greater creativity.
Put in simpler, non-neuroscience terms, CPU is meditation. This is not necessarily clear-your-mind-of-all-thought meditation—though if you can achieve that, great!—but more so focusing so intensely on the present and consistently redirecting your attention to the present that you start retraining your brain to release all the built-up ruminations on the past while you focus on the moment at hand.
If you’re a meditation and mindfulness skeptic, it may be worth reviewing the growing number of high profile meditators in fields ranging from hip-hop to stand-up comedy, acting to newscasting. One of the film industry’s most famous meditators, the wildly creative David Lynch offers a useful metaphor of liquid flowing to help explain the effects clearing the mind can have on creativity. He says, “Ideas flow through a conduit. Stress squeezes that conduit. Tension, depression, hate, anger squeezes it.” Similarly, the patron saint of entrepreneurship and self-reinvention Oprah Winfrey has written about the importance of unplugging and letting go to her work: “Now when I begin to feel exhausted, I pull back. If I’m at work and people are lined up at my desk with one request after another, I literally go sit in my closet and refuel.” Neither of these figures could be described as a slouch, and a look at Lynch’s filmography or Oprah’s many business ventures offers a suggestive hint of the kind of openness to possibility that may be accessible when we let go a bit. Perhaps counterintuitively, trying to process less allows us to be more. And who wouldn’t want that?
If you think you are meditation averse or resistant, the good news is that there are many choices about the present-moment experience you can focus on: For many meditators, focusing intently on the breath moving in and out may be useful; others focus on a candle flame. But if you’re just starting, you might do something as simple as focusing intently for a few minutes on massaging scented lotion into your skin, redirecting your attention to the smell and sensation whenever your mind starts to wander.
As important as the ability to focus may be, a big part of what makes meditation a useful way to refresh the brain for creative work comes from its emphasis on disengaging attention from what’s not helpful (in this case, all the built-up material in your working memory). 
Now, what if you’re not in a position to sit and meditate on a flame? Facing co-workers’ funny looks may not be conducive to meditation as a technique for clutter-clearing your mind.  A number of other workplace-friendly possibilities are still available:
First, if at all possible, do your most creative work first thing in the day before other information creeps in, cluttering your attention.
Second, you might write down a brain dump in a notebook, letting all that’s on your mind flow freely onto the page. At the end of your dump, write a note to yourself about the main focus for your day. Take a big breath in and out and say, this is my creative task for the day.
Third, a similar technique involves capturing rogue thoughts on a sticky note or scrap paper in your workplace, thus assuring yourself that you aren’t losing track of the thoughts that pop up, but without full directing your attention to them.
Finally, once you do clear your head, don’t rush to fill it back up with junk. Try to stay off social media and news sites while doing your creative work. Remind yourself that sometimes having more ideas means taking in less information.

10 Steps to Achieve Any Goal

10 Steps to Achieve Any Goal

Accountability powers you toward your goals, and these guidelines for unleashing its power will get you over the rainbow to what you want.

June 8, 2018
10 Steps to Achieve Any Goal
Heart. Intelligence. Courage.
They’re all valuable traits, but they pale in comparison to what each of us needs most in the quest to total life success: Personal accountability is No. 1.
We first introduced our powerful accountability philosophy to the world over two decades ago in a New York Times best-seller, The Oz Principle. Since then, millions of people have come to know us as “the Oz guys.”
Why Oz? As it turns out, the perfect metaphoric backdrop for our timeless principles is a timeless story, one that we both loved as kids.
Surely you will recall meeting Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion from the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz, based on L. Frank Baum’s classic children’s novel. All of the main characters are thrust into despairing circumstances beyond their control. A tornado rips Dorothy from her Kansas farm and hurls her against her will to a strange fantasy world. The Scarecrow lives a stagnant life amid corn and crows because his creator skimped on brains. The Tin Man is rusted in place, unable to act because he lacks the heart to move. And the lovable Cowardly Lion? He lacks courage and nerve, and therefore lives a life well below his potential.

 Don’t let your circumstances define who you are and what you do.

Feeling victimized by shortcomings and circumstances, the characters believe they cannot possibly change things on their own, so they set off on the yellow brick road to the Land of Oz in hopes of finding an all-powerful wizard who will solve all of life’s problems for them.
At the heart of their message and ours lies this one simple principle: Don’t let your circumstances define who you are and what you do.
In other words, don’t place the hope of future success in the hands of some wizard’s wand. Relying on someone or something to save you only brings a sense of victimization that paralyzes your ability to think clearly, creatively and quickly. Instead, take charge of shaping your own circumstances, and good, positive, game-changing things will begin to happen.
Whether you’re looking to make wholesale changes in your life or just want to fine-tune it a little, here are 10 guidelines—highlights from our newest book, The Wisdom of Oz—that will help you unleash the power of personal accountability to take ownership for your actions, decisions, successes and failures.

1) Redefine accountability. 

Does the mere mention of the word accountability make you shudder? The negative (and uninspiring) view of accountability is reinforced in the common dictionary definition: “Subject to having to report, explain or justify; being answerable, responsible.”
Staying true to yourself and your goals should not be drudgery. You must view your accountability as a gift to yourself, a voluntary mindset to ensure success, not something you’re force-feeding yourself even though you hate it.

2) Think as if your life depended on it. 

When you shift to a determined, creative mindset, you begin to discover solutions for challenges that you may have believed were out of your control. If your life depended on it, would you come up with a new idea or strategy to save yourself? Absolutely.
The goal you want to achieve or the problem you want to solve probably is not a life-or-death scenario, but many creative solutions come when you put everything on the line. While your life may not be at risk, your happiness and success are.

3) When you can’t control your circumstances, don’t let your circumstances control you. 

On March 22, 2012, the state army of Mali stormed the presidential palace, overthrowing the western African country’s 20-year-old democracy. In the turmoil, Islamic militants took control of two-thirds of the country and crushed the upcoming democratic elections.
It was a tragic moment when the coup happened, says Yeah Samake, mayor of the small town of Ouélessébougou, located approximately 40 miles from the chaos. “I came into my living room and completely collapsed on the couch. My wife came and kicked me. I couldn’t believe it. I told her, ‘I am looking for sympathy here. Why are you kicking me?’ She only said, ‘Get out there and go do something.’ ”
Whether you get off the couch on your own or require a little nudge from somewhere else, the point is to get out there and do something.

4) You’ve got to want it more than you don’t want it.

 Everything will exact a certain price from you—energy, effort, patience, resources. It’s natural to want the good things in life without paying the price: You want to lose weight but don’t want to exercise or sacrifice your favorite foods. You want a promotion but don’t want to put in the extra hours. Success comes when you hit a tipping point and begin to desire your goal more than you dread the cost of reaching it.

5) Don’t let gravity pull you down. 

Just as massive planets produce gravity—drawing everything toward them—it seems that tough problems and challenging obstacles have enough mass to pull you away from getting what you want. This force gets bigger and stronger as the challenges get larger and tougher. Don’t give in.

6) Every breakthrough requires a bold stroke.

Actor Jim Carrey grew up so poor that his family lived in a van after his father lost his job; at one point the Carreys slept in a tent on a relative’s lawn. But Carrey believed in his own future and in the things that he wanted to accomplish in his life.
As the story goes, one night early in Carrey’s struggling comic career, he drove his beat-up Toyota to the Hollywood Hills and, while overlooking Los Angeles, pulled out his checkbook and wrote himself a check for $10 million. He scribbled in the notation line “For acting services rendered” and stuck it in his wallet. In that moment, Carrey cemented his personal resolve. Over the next five years, Carrey’s promise to himself led to worldwide fame. At the peak of his career, his per-film paycheck reached $20 million.
When you discover your own internal power, you see that you have the right, the ability, even the obligation, to create your own best reality.

7) Ask for feedback. 

Soliciting advice and criticism from others creates accountability.
For this to work, you will need to convince the mentor, friend, colleague or significant other whom you’re appealing to that you want to know what he really thinks. The evaluator needs to know that he won’t suffer any blowback if he is totally honest. Feedback is key to overcoming blind spots and achieving better results.

8) Ask yourself, Am I a renter or an owner?

 We care more for the things we own than for the things we rent because we don’t have as much invested in things that are temporary; there’s not as much at stake. Have you ever washed a rental car? Of course not.
When you own something—whether it’s a car, a work assignment or a relationship—you make an investment, usually involving some degree of sacrifice. When you rent, you can walk away without losing anything. If you’re really committed to achieving your goal, go all in.

9) Prepare to move a lot of dirt.

 Finding solutions is just like digging for gold. Have you seen the Discovery Channel reality show Gold Rush? It follows the lives of modern-day miners as they compete against time, one another and nature in hopes of striking it rich. First the miners must remove a top layer of 6 to 12 feet of dirt and rocks before the real mining even starts. Below this seemingly worthless and painful 6 to 12 feet, they hit pay dirt. The more pay dirt the miners process, the more gold they potentially find. In the end, they must move several tons of dirt to find just 1 ounce of gold. It’s hard work, but it yields rich rewards.
Their bottom-line secret to success: Keep digging.

10) Make it happen! 

How do you do that? How do you really make personal accountability work for you? Wouldn’t it be easy if there were just some switch you could flip? An Easy Button you could push? Maybe an app you could use? Well, there really is a flipping magical switch-app-button. It’s called making a choice and acting on it.
You have the choice to fulfill your aspirations or wallow in the blame game and victim cycle.
True success doesn’t come from the outside but from within. There is no wizard. Taking greater personal accountability is the key to succeeding in everything you do.