To Be Successful In Life You Have To Get Off The Bench

How much does a football player or back-up actor contribute to the success of a given game or production?

Very little right?

I mean sure, it’s great to have them around “in case” they are needed – but 9-times out of 10 they are not and so they actually contribute near nothing to the outcome.

Now that’s a game, what about your life?

We heave heard from thousands of people who have worked through Attracting Greatness only to discover that they were the equivalent to the player or actor sitting on the bench…only in this case it involved everything from their relationships and personal improvement through their career, finances and health.

I’m sure you will agree, the stakes are a little higher when it comes to the critical areas of your life than a Sunday afternoon game or a Saturday night show.

One way we use to describe this to people is “To be successful in life you have to get off the bench”

In other words, you need to put yourself out there, get involved, take chances, be action oriented.

These are exactly the traits that you will find in anyone who has achieved success in life.  It’s good to know that these can all be learned, many of the most successful people today were previously “bench sitters” themselves.

Here are 6 things you need to do to make sure you move from sitting on the bench to being a key player in your own life.

1.  Find What You Love And Do It

If you are passionate enough about your desired outcome,  if you have a big enough reason then you will come off the bench and take action.  You know how much energy, adrenaline and desire you have when you are doing something that you love.  Put that energy and power to work for you. That first step, for many, is the all that it took to change their life from passive consumer of life to active initiator and success in life.

2. Have a BIG Reason Why

It’s fine to know what you are passionate about, but you really want to dig into WHY you have this passion?  Be crystal clear about how your life and the lives of those around you will change dramatically when you take action.  Know that you will achieve your desired result.

3. Lay Out a Game Plan

You don’t want to have to think about your plan each day, you want to visualize your result and then take action toward reaching your end result.  Having a daily, weekly and annual game plan of clear, concise goals and steps toward achieving those goals takes the thinking, doubt, and lack of focus away from each day so you can focus on accomplishment

4. Don’t Let Fear Or Doubt Stop You

What stops most of us from entering the game and keeps us sitting on the bench?  Fear.  Fear is natural, any successful person will tell you they have just as much fear as the next person, but what you can do is learn to put your fear into perspective.  Most of us enhance fear by focusing only on unrealistic images of how bad things could be when we instead need to be seeing things more objectively and balancing the bad with what could go right

5. Have Unwavering, Total Belief In The Outcome

When we learned how to ride a bike, we knew we would eventually learn to ride a bike because we were told by our parents and saw our friend riding their bikes.  Despite falling down and struggling we had an unwavering belief that it was going to happen.  Being successful in life depends on having an unwavering, certain belief that you will achieve your desired outcome.  Once fear is out of the way, you can have that total belief in yourself and that you WILL achieve your desired outcome.

6. Fake It Until You Make It

Put another way,  every success started with taking that first step even though you may have lingering doubts or fear.  The closer you get to action the more outside voices and your inner voice may be screaming at you to stop, not take the risk, to abort the mission.  That first step is critical to gaining early confidence and momentum though…once momentum starts it is pretty hard to stop.  So jump in and just do it.  Equally as important as the first step are those times during your journey when you hit bumps in the road, once again you need to take action in faith that you will succeed.

To be successful in life you need to get in the game and that often means finding your game, being internally motivated, freeing yourself from distraction, overcoming fear and taking action, especially when it seems that things are at a standstill.

Are you stuck in life and can you identify one of these steps that you find especially challenging?  Leave a comment.