Rivers of knowledge

9th Specials, Health and Law Libraries Conference

Exploring the life success mechanism

J P North
Tasmanian Ambulance Service, Hobart
M C M Reiter
Psychologist (private practice), Melbourne

Introduction

This paper, which explores the Life Success Mechanism, introduces the timeless principles that form the basis of the Success: full living life skills program. Success: full living provides a model for successful life choices and empowerment, which results in greatly enhanced personal potential, balance and fulfilment. The model is simple to understand, practical and effective.

Marcella is a teacher, educational consultant, parent, author, and, psychologist in private practice. She has worked both in Australia and overseas for the past twenty years promoting best practice and enhancing individuals' ability to achieve excellence in learning and living. Marcella is passionate about empowering people to reach their true potential and living life to the fullest.

Jill is a librarian, teacher, parent, and workplace trainer, who believes we all have the capacity to live rich, full, happy and contented lives. For the past 27 years she has worked in special libraries both in Australia and overseas. She has held her current position as Librarian, Tasmanian Ambulance Service, part-time, for the past 14 years. Through her activities as a small business owner, Jill's goal is to inspire and motivate other to fulfil their unlimited potential for joyous, positive living.

About Success: full living

The Success: full living program was written and developed by Justin Belitz, a renowned author and international speaker, who has been presenting courses with this material world-wide for a past twenty-five years. Based on the latest research in psychology and parapsychology, the Success: full living program draws connections between science and philosophy, and provides the tools for its practical application to every day life.

Success: full living encourages self-awareness, positive thinking and goal setting, whilst also emphasising the need to take personal responsibility for all our thoughts and actions. It demonstrates how to build and maintain self-esteem and confidence (both of which are fundamental to all that we do in life), how you can move through life transitions successfully, overcome fears and motivate yourself. In addition, as Gerald G. Jampolsky, author of Love is letting go of fear, remarks in the forward to the Success: full living book - 'It offers us a wonderful road map to inner peace and to a balance of inner and outer peace.'

We all have virtually unlimited potential, and understanding and using the Life Success Mechanism will enable you to live your life with great zest and purpose. The Success: full living book by Justin Beltiz, distributed at this session, simply explains this practical process and how it can be used by everyone.

The life success mechanism

The control factor of the Life Success Mechanism is choice. Choice is like the steering wheel of a car - move it one way and you get a certain result; move it another way and the result is different. Whether you consciously realise it or not, you create and control your own individual life experience all day every day by your choice of goals and attitudes. It is therefore very important to consider how we make choices in these two very important areas of daily living, because it is these choices which determine the results we get in life. This is illustrated in the diagram below, on Page 25 of the Success: full living book, and in the explanation and examples, which follow:

Explanation

In the context of Success: full living, life by its very nature means change and growth, and success is defined as 'being on your way to a clearly defined goal.' Performance or action is the only measuring stick for success, and you are motivated to action by your choice of personal goals and attitudes.

Therefore, if you choose appropriate goals and positive attitudes you will motivate yourself to act in such a way as to create success in your life that is satisfying.

If, on the other hand, you choose inappropriate goals for you, or choose to develop negative attitudes, you will motivate yourself to act, but the machine will move in a different direction. You will achieve success in your life but the experience will be dissatisfying.

Clearly, your choice of goals and attitudes determines your life experience. Appropriate goals + positive attitudes = positive life experience. Goals that are not appropriate and/or negative attitudes = negative life experience. The immutable Law of Cause and Effect is at work here. That is - the cause is the choices you make, the effect is the resulting life experience, and it works the same way every time.

Example one - students

Take, for example, two groups of students who come into a General Music Class with no music background at all: some may decide to have a positive mental attitude thinking, 'I don't know anything about music, but I'm sure I can learn something in this class.' The teacher offers clearly defined and appropriate goals and these students then choose them as their own. They motivate themselves to perform in a way that creates a very satisfying life experience. These students produce an 'A,' and feeling pleased with their effort and accomplishment, build up their self-confidence and self-esteem in the process.

On the other hand, there are the other students who come into the same class with a completely different attitude thinking, 'Who needs this class?' These students are offered the same goals, but reject them and set up their own - 'I'm going to sleep in this class,' 'I'm not going to read the books or pay attention,' 'I'm going to annoy the teacher and be as disruptive as possible.' And these students, having a positive attitude to these inappropriate goals are motivated to achieve them, but the result is that they produce an 'F,' resulting in a dissatisfying life experience.

When forced to justify their choices and behaviour, these students would point to the problem as being 'out there' somewhere: 'It's a stupid course, ...a bad teacher, ...the school system, etc.' In other words, they will not take responsibility for the choices they have made. Until they are prepared to do this, they will never understand that they are in control of their lives, or how much power they have to succeed.

Example two - employees

In example two, we have the situation of the slack versus the highly valued employee, lets call them Ms Slack and Ms Diligent. Ms Slack does as little work as possible: she arrives late, makes personal phone calls at work, is last to leave the tearoom, watches the clock, takes 'sickies' whenever she can't be bothered turning up or has, what she considers, something better to do. Ms Diligent on the other hand: arrives early, offers to help others when her own work is done, is pleasant to everyone, takes on the role of 'social secretary' (collects money for gifts, organises morning teas, etc), and only takes time off when she is genuinely sick.

Both of these employees are successful because they on their way to clearly defined goals. However, Ms Diligent will have a satisfying life experience because she approaches her work with a positive attitude. In the short term Ms Slack may feel satisfied that she is 'getting away with it' but ultimately her negative approach will result in dissatisfaction. If, for example, the opportunity for promotion comes up and both these women applied for selection, Ms Diligent is most likely to have the best chance of success in this situation. Ms Slack would then be disappointed, dissatisfied, and unlikely to want to take responsibility for the outcome.

Example three - retirees

In the third example, two people from a large company are forced to take early retirement. One has for years planned for retirement making sure that everything is in place, including sound financial planning. This person now sees the opportunity as a new lease on life, new found freedom, and will be happy to walk away from the company. They have positive thoughts about themselves, the company and the future, which produces a sense of accomplishment and well-being. Their positive attitude produces a positive life experience.

The other person however, who has not planned for retirement but has lived from pay to pay, is now thrown into a situation of facing an uncertain future and a life-style that will be economically far lower than what they have experienced in the past. This person sees the company as the culprit. They think 'The company doesn't care about me,' 'They want to hire people for less money,' 'The company is not fair.' Their negative thoughts about the company produce anger and resentment, they are fearful about the future, and generally unhappy with their life situation. In this case their negative attitude and lack of planning has produced a negative life experience. They are also looking for someone to blame, rather than take responsibility for the choices they made in the past, which contributed to the current situation.

Conclusion

By relating these examples back to the Life Mechanism diagram, you can see how this mechanism works for you all day, every day, because you decide how you'll react to every life situation you face, and every person you meet: choose positive thoughts and you will have a positive life experience. Even when faced with unpleasant, difficult or painful situations, you can turn them into satisfying, meaningful, life experiences, if you choose to adopt a positive attitude and see these situations as opportunities for personal growth. Choices of your goals and attitudes do indeed create your own individual life experience, including achieving balance between professional and private life.