Rerun Friday – adapted from a post originally ran on The Project in December 2011. Enjoy.

I was reminded last night that success doesn’t just come to you, and it might not necessarily be about hard work and attitude – like your Dad would always say.  To often we (the collective lot of us!) want to believe success is like the lotto – at least to often we hope to get success that way – one day you don’t have success, then the next day success somehow miraculously finds you!

Sorry. Doesn’t usually work that way.

But one thing we over look is how important success is to finding success.  Here’s what I mean:

Directions for Being Successful –

Step 1: Find a little success

Step 2: Find another little success

Step 3: Find another little success

Step 4: Repeat steps 2 and 3 each day

Step 5: You are successful

I know, directions are hard to follow for some people, so let me give you an example.  You feel like a failure at everything – job is going well (or you don’t have one), relationships suck, you’re a little soft around the middle (i.e., fat) – basically you feel like a failure, nothing is going in the right direction.  Guess what? When you wake up tomorrow you won’t magically be successful – no matter how hard you wish it, pray it, want it.  You have to find some sort of success, no matter how small.  Maybe that success is eating one less Twinkie than you did the day before – yesterday I ate 8 Twinkies – today I only ate 7!  Don’t let someone tell you that’s not a success, because tomorrow I’m only going to eat 6 and before you know it I’m going to kick this Twinkie habit!

I works with everything.  Not recruiting enough candidates for your organization, can’t get anyone to pick up the phone and talk to you – today make one more call than you did yesterday – only 1 – that is a success, because tomorrow you’re going to do that again, 1 more than the day before – small success steps until you’re just one big giant bag full of success!

People who are successful and throw it in your face suck!  They suck because they act like they’ve always been successful, but they haven’t.  It came to them a little at a time, until they could no longer feel what failure felt like.  You see success is like a drug – you need a little to want another hit, it’s addictive.  That’s why you need to feed your mind a little everyday – we can all find those little successes each day – the key is to find them every single day – don’t miss.