Who wants to be successful?  But have you ever thought about what true success would be for you?  What is it? Would it be selling more homes? Alarms? Building a million-dollar company? Having a great family?  What would success look like for you?

When I was growing up, whenever I did something wrong, my mother would say, “Who do you think you are? Do you think the world is waiting for you?”  No, I’d answer. But actually, I kinda thought it was.   All I wanted was to get married, have children, and live happily-ever-after. That was success for me.  Well, I did get married and I felt like a success. It was easy—Actually, all I had to do was be a fabulous cook, have the patience of mother Teresa with my children and Oh, be a sex goddess at night. Easy!

Well, it didn’t work out and I, like 40% of you reading this blog, got a divorce.   I wasn’t going to let failure define who I was. It wasn’t going to happen. I decided I was going to be a success—another way.  I was going to build another dream—a success. A business.

I sold the family house—It netted $50,000—that was all I had in the world. That was it. All I had to start and operate a business –a chiropractic practice. I knew a third of businesses fail in the first year—That simply was not an option. Failure was not an option.

I didn’t allow failure to define me. After three years, my chiropractic practice was grossing half a million a year.

But here’s the paradox: I felt uncomfortable with success. I didn’t know why, but I wasn’t used to it. So, what did I do? I found a financial advisor who managed to lose most of it.

It was then that I decided I was tired of working so hard for something, wanting it with all my being and then losing it.

There had to be a better way.

I started to study success. I read everything, went to seminars.

Of all the things I learned, one sentence struck a chord—

That was:  Success is a habit; it’s what we allow ourselves.

So I’m thinking a habit. So what makes a habit?

Repetition—doing the same thing over and over again so that it becomes ingrained. 90% of what we do is habit.  90% You can make success your habit.

Let me give you an example of people who are famous who identified clearly what success was to them and didn’t allow failure to define them.

There was a man who wrote a thesis about a business model which he created—a company that would compete with the US Postal Service. He was ridiculed and got a C-. Many of you probably know, he’s Ken Smith the founder of Fed EX. The first day he opened, he had 7 orders and 5 were to himself. But he had 2!

He was a success.

There was a school boy whose teacher sent him home with a note for his mother. His mother read the note to her son, explaining that his teacher said he was too smart for the class and should be home schooled. When his mother died, he found that note. “Your son is dumb. We cannot teach him.”  That was Thomas Edison.

A sixty-five-year-old man took his social security check, a fried chicken recipe, put on a white suit –a summer Santa suit, and tried to sell his recipe. Actually, he wanted to give away his recipe for a percentage of the sales. He got 1009, yes 1009 rejections. I’m speaking of course about Colonel Sanders. For him, failure wasn’t an option.

All these men had one thing in common. They were committed. They didn’t just have a goal—they persisted in the face of failure.

I know. I was committed to writing a novel. I spent 10 years, every spare moment, but I never gave up.  The book, you’ll like the title, Sex Happens, and it’s not a How to Book. It’s a novel.

My husband and I bought an RV and went across the country promoting it.

Some days, I wished I had some fried chicken to sell instead because it would have been easier. But failure wasn’t an option.

Because of that, Sex Happens became a number one Amazon best seller and a LA agent picked it up and is working to sell it as a movie. By the way—it’s a better gift than champagne, chocolates or roses!

So allow yourself to visualize your success. Turn your back on failure and be committed. And you’ll make more than you’ve ever made, have whatever you want, and most importantly, be more than you could ever imagine.

And remember, the world is waiting for you.