As we approach the end of the year, we continue on our journey about success, and we think back on this year and the next one. This episode is about revealing some of the concepts of success using The Success Maximizer framework.

The Success Maximizer

1. Reflect: Look at what has happened in the last 12 months—the good and the bad—and go back to relive it. Identify your wins and of those around you, and create a habit in your life to celebrate them as they take you to bigger victories down the road. Journal them down in ink and paper.
2. Lessons: Understand the top 10 lessons that came out of the year, and make sure to take a holistic approach to success by looking into your health, business, relationships, work and wealth. Journal these down as well so you can recap the lessons anytime.
3. Attitude: It is about the attitude you approach your year, day and moment with. Look at it and say how it was—optimistic, pessimistic, persistent, positive or negative. By reflecting on them on an ongoing basis, you can reconstruct it in all aspects of your life.
4. Gratitude: In the last 12 months, identify the things and people that you are most grateful for and celebrate them. Reach out to the people and say how thankful you are and journal it down to shift your emotions towards positivity.
5. Simplify: Find the three things that you can let go of to simplify the next year of your life. Shed the excess out of your life, so as a result, you get a little more relaxation and peace of mind.
6. Process: The thing that is more important than setting goals is the process that you design to accomplish them. Commit to such processes consciously, set it into attainable chunks and segregate them into 90 day periods.
7. Disconnect: This is the time where you reflect, rejuvenate and reconnect to bring the motion into your life. Disconnect by intentionally blocking out time on your calendar and spend it with your loved ones to give the gift of unplugging.
8. Block: Schedule your process, your 90 days while keeping it real and making sure that it is not moved around. Block it out in your life for the next 12 months and you have the roadmap to continue your journey.

— Begin Transcript —

Hey there, I’m Mel Abraham, the author of the #1 best-selling book, and the founder of Business Breakthrough Academy where we teach you how to design a business and create a life: A life of financial freedom and peace of mind.

And welcome back to this episode of The Entrepreneur’s Solution show and in this episode we’re going to continue on the theme about success, and part of this is because we’re getting close to the end of the year here. And I want us to start to think back on this year but think forward on what next year could be like.

And the process that I walk through in there and the framework, which I call: The Success Maximizer that’ll give you an opportunity to start to understand and put some things in play that will shift what your success will look like.

And so, in order to get The Success Maximizer you want to go to: MelAbraham.com/session048 or if you’re not by your computer, just text me. Text MYLEGACY one-word no-spaces to 38470 and I will send you the download link, so you can get access to the tool.

So, right after this brief introduction we’ll jump into it and we’ll talk about, The Success Maximizer. Alright, talk to you soon. See you soon. Bye.

All right, welcome back and I’m Mel Abraham. Welcome back to this episode of The Entrepreneur’s Solution show and as I said, we’re going to continue on this journey about success and some of the concepts of success. Now some of the stuff is coming from my experience as an entrepreneur, as a business person, as a father, as a parent, as a husband, as a brother, and as a son.

Some of these were lessons that I’ve learned along the way. Most of the lessons I’ve learned because I’ve stepped in a pothole, twisted my ankles, skinned my knees, stubbed my toe, broke my nose. Most of it was because of the mistakes I’ve made. We learn most of our greatest lessons out of the mistakes that we make.

Others though, are from my clients or from my mentors or successful entrepreneurs that I’ve worked with or I’m friends with. And watching them, and what are the things that they do to increase and accelerate their success and elevate their success and escalate their success at a greater rate?

What are the processes they put in place?

And so, given where we are today; considering that we are getting towards the end of the year, we’re looking at and I know what happens; at the end of the year, we start talking about New Year’s resolutions and all of that. And those New Year’s resolutions we put them in place and they last for like a day and a half or something like that.

• But how do we get something in place?
• What are the areas of focus that are going to change and shift our life for maximum success?

And I think these are the 8 levels of focus that when I look across my life and my experiences as well as:

• The entrepreneurs that I’ve worked with over the years,
• The decades that I’ve worked with them, and
• Other successful entrepreneurs that I’m friends with.

And seeing them, these are some of the things that, I think, will shift and change things over the next 12 months as you move forward.

And the first thing is really, as you sit here today is to Reflect. To look at what the last 12 months have been.

• What has happened?
• What’s transpired?

Good, bad, the ugly, the indifferent; whatever it is, go back and re-live it. And one of the things I want you to extract out of that is,

• What were your wins this year?
• What were your wins over the last 12 months?

As a society, we are brutally, brutally great at celebrating people’s losses, people’s lessons, people’s challenges, people’s problems, and we’re horrible at celebrating their successes and their wins.

And what I want to do is I want to create a habit, a habit in your life of celebrating your wins. No matter how small; no matter how small they are, to celebrate those wins because those wins are the stepping stones to bigger wins down the road. But we fail to see them in many cases.

But not only to celebrate your wins, celebrate those around you, their wins.

• Your children
• Your loved ones
• Your spouse

And find the wins in everything that come about, and celebrate those wins.

Now, what I don’t want you to do is just sit back and think about it. I want you to write it down. I want you to journal it. So, next year when you go through this process, you get a chance to see what happened the year before. So, get a journal book. I have a journal book around all the time, and I’m journaling. And if I’m not journaling, I’m writing it in my iPad and doing it.

But I think the effort, the exercise of taking an actual regular pen and that thing called paper, and writing is totally different. And I would invite you to do it the old fashion way—journal it. And allow it to just flow.

What are the wins?

• May be you lost 2 pounds this year.
• May be you put; you finally started your retirement fund this year.
• May be, you’ve changed your diet this year.
• May be you’ve got into a relationship this year.

Little things to big things, it doesn’t matter.

• May be you hit the jackpot.
• You had your product come out.

One of my wins this year clearly is my book, The Entrepreneur’s Solution. We put it out and within 2 weeks we sold over 17 thousand, 16 thousand books within two weeks at #1 on Barnes & Noble and USA TODAY best-seller. So, it is truly a win. It’s been an incredible journey but that’s one of the big wins.

But I had a lot of small wins along the way. Certainly challenges too. And so, we’re going to look at those too because in the next piece

Is really understanding what were the lessons that came out of the year?

• What were the lessons?
• What were the top 10 lessons from the past year?
• What were the things you learned?

And I’m not talking about just business. When I’m talking about success, I’m talking about a holistic approach to success. We can be really successful in business and I have some friends that are truly successful in business. They’re extremely wealthy.

I’ve got one that’s got 5 airplanes but he is miserable as hell. He’s got crappy health. He’s got crappy relationships. And he is not good to his team. He’s not good to his employees. And I look at him and I go, “That’s not success.” Maybe in his eyes it is but it’s not.

When I talk about success, I want it to be holistic. I want you to be able to look at your relationships and say, “That’s going pretty good. Now, I can make it better but it’s going pretty good.”

My health is going well.
My wealth is going well.
My work is going well.
My business is going well.

I want it to be holistic, so what are the lessons that you learned this past year, and look at the holistic view of lessons. Lessons in your relationships, lessons in …

Trust me and I am learning daily. In fact, just this morning, some lessons out of my relationship with my beautiful bride and you know, when you put people together, there’s lessons to be learned and we need to take those away so we grow as a person.

So, what were the top 10 lessons that you learned in the past, in the past year?

And write those down. Journal those into the journal also and that way those lessons don’t go unlearned. They will stay learned and you will continue to move forward. When we allow and say, “I got it”. We don’t write it down. We don’t have a chance to ever look at it again because there is plenty of times that I’ll go back to my journals. I go, “Ah! I forgot that. Ah! Yeah, I got to do that more.”

Next is your Attitude. So, and this is an interesting one but

• It’s the attitude in which you approach the year with.
• It’s the attitude in which you’re approaching today with,
• It’s the attitude in which you’re approaching the moment with.

And I’m not talking about a 100% of the time. I’m talking about the majority of the time. When you look at your attitude for the last year the majority of the time,

• Was it optimistic?
• Was it persistent?
• Was it pessimistic?
• Was it negative?
• What it positive?
• What was it?

Because that attitude is affecting your success, that attitude is affecting your results. If I’m constantly focused on pessimism and negativity and the wrongs and all of that, I’m never going to grow. It’s going to poison me in the process.

But by reflecting on the winds, by understanding the lessons, and by being aware of my attitude on an ongoing basis; now I’m not saying to ignore it but look bad stuff happens, we got to deal with it. But if we live in it and we live in the crap of the bad then that’s the life we end up with versus saying,

How can I reconstruct it?
How can I find something better?
How can I improve upon this?
What can I do to move from here?

So,

• What’s the attitude that you brought to it for the last 12 months?
• And what’s the attitude that y ou’re going to bring to it in the coming 12 months?

And again, I want you to journal this and I want you to look at all aspects and contexts of your life.

1. Health,
2. Wealth,
3. Relationships,
4. Business,
5. Team, or Leadership; if you want.

But those are the 5 aspects I would look at including may be spirituality too; let’s throw that in there, in that context also.

Then once you’ve done that now let’s look at Gratitude. What are the top 10 things that you’re most grateful for in the last 12 months? If we get a chance to celebrate the wins, what’s the things that you’re grateful for?

Now,

• What are the things that you’re grateful for?
• And what are the who’s, the people you’re grateful for?

And I’m going to invite you to do a couple of things here. I want you to journal it for certain.

What are the things that you’re grateful for?

– Because we can’t live in negativity when we’re grateful with at the same time. We can’t have both of those co-exist at the same time.

But those that you’re grateful for, that have had an impact on you, that maybe you haven’t talked to in a while or maybe you just haven’t expressed that gratitude. It’s a perfect time as you’re journaling to just pick up the phone. Reach out and say, “I’ve been journaling and reflecting on my last 12 months. I just want you to know how grateful I am to have you in my life and here is why.”

It’s not about just the gratitude. I want you to understand why you’re grateful for the things or the people that are in your lives. Journal that because you’re going to see a shift in your emotion, and you start to go up this ladder here in this process.

Now, once we’ve looked at that we’re going to cross a line. Now we’re going to start to look at what’s next year going to be like?

What do we want to look for in the next year?

And one of the first steps that I want to look at is, “What can I simplify next year? What are three things that I can let go of to simplify my life next year?”

• May be it’s getting rid of some of the technology; getting rid of the complexity in my business.
• May be it’s hiring some virtual assistant or a personal assistant to simplify the things that I’m doing so I don’t have to do all the stuff that I’m doing.

I know that I’ve got to do some simplification in my life to do it, and some of it is … might be shuttering some portions of my businesses to offshoot them and outsource them and to allow other people to run them more directly than having myself involved in it in order to simplify the things in my life.

So, what are the three things that if you could, you would simplify in your life?

That you could get rid of, let go of that will simplify your life. It’s in a sense, getting rid of the excess, if you will, that may be dragging you down or holding you up or creating complexity that just doesn’t need to exist.

I was looking at a video. Everyone once in a while these videos come up. Here’s this little boy, this little boy who got his head stuck between two rails in a railing and someone came in, and they were trying to get him out and they were trying to push his head back out the other way and they were figuring, “Well, I got to take him out the way he came in.”

And then, someone comes up and looks at it and says, “Now, wait a second.” He’s a small enough kid and instead of trying to push his head back the way it came in, they just pulled his body through the way his head came in. So, they just looked at it different. They looked at it more simplistically and solved the problem without hurting the child and giving him a way out.

So, one of the things that I want you to think about now is: What are the three things in areas of your life that you could let go of that would simplify your life and give you a little more relaxation, a little more peace of mind in doing that?

Then the next piece is this: is What’s the Process? Now everyone does, a lot of people do New Year’s resolutions; they’ll do goal setting and I truly do believe in setting goals. But what I believe more importantly is that we set a process to getting those goals. I want to commit to a process to achieving the goals versus just the goals itself.

Putting a goal out there is one thing, that’s there. It doesn’t necessarily create the process. So, I need to consciously create a process that moves me to those goals and so, the idea here is to set the goals that I want to achieve in 12 months but then build the process that it’s going to take to accomplish those and commit to the process.

And when I say, build a process—it’s really about building down, chunking down to what I call 90 day accomplishments.

What do I need to do each and every 90 days to get me to that goal in a year’s time?
What’s the process that needs to happen?

And then I break those 90 day goals into weekly projects, and focus on 1 to 3 projects a week—that’s it—to move me forward. But that’s the process that we need to commit to and not the goal. If we commit to a goal without committing to the process, we’ll never achieve the goal.

So, what I’m going to ask you to do is say, “Alright, here’s the goal I want.”

Maybe it’s: I want to increase my income.
Maybe it’s: I want to increase my vibrancy.

Whatever it is, in a year’s time, my intimacy; great, that’s the goal.

What’s the process?
What do I need to do every 90 days—during those 90 day periods—to move me closer and closer to that goal?

And then commit to the process. Again, in your journal, I want you to write this all down.

• I want you to write down what the goals are.
• I want you to put the dates there.

I want you to then say, under each goal, “Here’s the process that I need to go through. Here’s the things, the steps that I need to do. Here’s where I need to be each 90 day, at each 90 day timestamp. And here’s what I’m going to do each week in that 90 days.”

And each 90 days you’re going to reflect on it. You’re going to look at it again and say,

Am I moving?
Do I need to adjust?
Do I need to tweak?
Where am I in the process?

But commit to the process. Once you’ve committed to the process, I want to ask you to do this. Set a minimum of 3 times during the year for you to disconnect for you and your loved ones.

We need time to rejuvenate. Many of you that have heard me talk about the three R’s:

• Reflect,
• Reconnect, and
•  

This is what I’m talking about. So, what I want you to do is intentionally block out time on a calendar that says, “This is time for me, this is time for my wife, my husband, my kids, my family, my loved ones.” And you’re going to block it out and it is not movable unless there’s a death in the family. It’s not movable.

• You’ve locked it in.
• You’ve blocked it in.
• You’re not going to move it.

Give yourself the gift of disconnecting and unplugging for, anywhere from; I’m going to tell you a minimum of 3 days each time. But I’d say 3 days to a week—to give you the time to reflect and re-energize. You cannot run at breakneck pace 12 months out of the year.

You’re going to break your neck in the process. There’s a reason they call it breakneck pace. So, what we need to do is

• Stop,
• Disconnect,
• Unplug,
• Reflect,
• Rejuvenate, and
• Then re-engage in the process.

So, we’re going to set at least three time blocks throughout the year.

Now, I do it. We do it at least every 90 days. So we, in correspondence with my 90 day rule is, we do it at least every 90 days where we’ll disconnect. Now, if I get through a big event or I’m doing something that takes a tremendous; I maybe just recently testified in a trial; I’m going to do something to allow me to rejuvenate.

I’m going to block it in and make it part of my day, my week, my month, my quarter to make sure that I have the ability to operate at peak potential in that process.

And then the last piece on this: Schedule it. Schedule it. Put all your time blocks in,

• Book your process
• Book your 90 days
• Book your 13 weeks sprints
• Book your disconnect time
• Book everything in a calendar

Make it real. Book an appointment with you for your life. Block it out.

So, schedule everything in your life for the next 12 months. And now, it doesn’t mean that we’re stuck. It doesn’t mean that we’re not going to change it or shift it; except that I don’t want you to shift or disconnect the blocks because then once you start to shift that you’ll start moving it around all over the place. That’s the one thing that I’m not; I’m going to not give you a lot of latitude on.

The rest of the things, you may have some latitude on but in this process, if you take and follow these 8 levels of focus, and you do it in writing, and you do it with conscious intent to perform differently and to have this as your roadmap for the next 12 months, I promise you that when we sit here and we look at your life 12 months backwards, 12 months from today, things are going to be totally different.

• You’re going to be far more energized,
• You’re going to be far more vibrant
• You’re going to be far more successful in your mind, and in other people’s mind.
• And you’re going to be at far greater peace with yourself.

Because you know that no matter how much the struggle was, you’re on your journey and that’s what this is about.

So, that’s my success maximize. You can download it. You’ll go through and use it as part of … or just use a journal to do it but either way—do it, because it’s going to make a huge difference. This is far greater than just setting some mundane new year’s resolution or goals that are impotent, that really have no drive behind them.

So, commit to the process and use the process. It works. It’s not just something that I’ve done. It’s something that many of other entrepreneurs I’ve observed have done, and even clients and folks that I’ve worked with have done.

So, I hope you found this of value to you. And as always if you haven’t subscribed yet, Subscribe. Just click the button. Click it right now, and make sure you subscribe. And do me a favor while you’re doing that. Share it, share it with a friend. Love to get some of these tools of success and wealth and business into other people’s hands.

Listen, I believe that my purpose is here to serve and to support other people’s journeys; to allow them to bring their dreams to life. So, why don’t we share it? Go ahead and share it with some friends. And let’s get them some of this information as you move forward.

And if you have a question or a challenge that you’re dealing with in business or in success or wealth or in any aspect that you think that I can support you. Go to AskMelNow.com. Leave me your question and I’ll make sure that we answer it on one of the upcoming episodes as we go forward.

And to get The Success Maximizer, remember to go to: MelAbraham.com/session048. That’s MelAbraham.com/session048 or just text me. Text me: MYLEGACY one-word no-spaces to 38470 and I’ll make sure I send you the download link.

And so, here’s to your success and until we meet again,

May your vision be grand, your journey epic and your legacy significant!

See you soon. Cheers. Bye!

— End Transcript —
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Like this? Please share it and help a few more people bring their dreams out of the darkness and give life to them again. Cheers, Mel
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