The Success Principles ~ Principle 26

Following up on Principle 25

Before I get into this week's principle, I want to say something about last week's post on Principle 25, drop out of the "ain't it awful club" and surround yourself with successful people. Clearly this one is a challenging principle for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that we are sensitive, loving people who don't want to hurt others. For me, the principle is not about being insensitive to the struggles of others. Sometimes people are having a hard time and need our love and support. And sometimes people are invested in things being hard, awful and unchangeable. And they want you to agree and stay put, complaining with them so that they don't have to change. Principle 25 is about disengaging from negativity that drags you down when where you want to move is up, up, up. It's about expecting better for yourself and others, for believing in hope and change. When someone is negative, especially to the point of being hurtful to you, and you maintain the relationship, what are the messages you're sending to them and to yourself?

You deserve to be supported, loved, encouraged and believed in. There are people out there who will be that kind of friend (as so many of us have discovered through blogging), partner, loved one And yes, it can be hard to say goodbye to negative people, especially when they're family, but you are allowed to protect yourself. You are allowed to ask to be treated respectfully, to say, "It really hurts my feelings when..." instead of just suffering in silence, or "I would appreciate it if..."

May you all be surrounded by loving, wonderful, gracious people who support you in pursuing your dreams and being yourself. May all the naysayers disappear quietly, gently and easily from your environment, leaving you free to breathe and grow. May they find their way to a joyful life with negativity dissipating from their hearts.

Principle 26

Success Principle #26 is acknowledge your postive past. Wow, I can so get behind this principle. Jack Canfield points out that we generally have more experience hearing about our failures than our successes and that leads to a more intense emotional experience around the negative, which in turn means we tend to underestimate our successes. And the impact of not acknowledging our successes is that we lose out in our self-esteem. Acknowledging your success brings confidence. And you're going to need confidence as you move forward towards your dreams.

So now's the time to start acknowledging the things you've done. His first recommendation is to divide your life into 3 even time periods and to come up with 3 successes for each period. After that, if you want to really get to it, create a list of 100 of your life successes. I really hope that you'll take on this exercise and share with us all what you've achieved. I'll work on mine and share it in the next couple of days.

Once you've done that, it's a great idea to keep what Canfield calls a Victory Log, writing down your successes as you go. I do this in my journal. Every day I acknowledge what I've accomplished or am proud of that day. You can turn this into a great creative project, making a scrapbook, a photo collage, an ever-developing poem of all the things you have accomplished.

There's lots of different ways to celebrate your achievements, the important part is that you take the time to see, feel and acknowledge that you are creating successes every day! When you know that in your heart, it will be easier to make more.

Note: Today's picture is of my wonderful sister Suzie as a girl. It just took me back to that time when we felt it was okay to see ourselves as superheroe's ready to take on the world, willing to throw our arms up in the air and celebrate our strength and success, to say YAY! Look at me! Thank you, Suzie, for the beautiful reminder.