Welcome to lesson 3 in your e-course on using the power of the mind in your marketing, where the subject is ’success’.

Success is a combination of skill and belief. By expecting the best, you free yourself from thoughts of failure. This freedom will allow you to put all of your energy into achieving everything you can dream. If you expect to fail, then you inevitably will. However, if you expect to succeed, then the sky is the limit.

Use the following guidelines to release your doubts and succeed at every endeavor you undertake.

Let go of doubt
Let go of doubt and truly expect the best outcome possible. The mind has a sneaky way of achieving what it views as fact. If you firmly believe in the best outcome, your mind will automatically lead you to achieving that outcome.

Convince yourself of the possible outcomes
Nothing works better to convince us that we can achieve whatever we want than our past accomplishments. Use your past successes to strengthen your belief in yourself and increase your confidence. If you use your past achievements as a way to increase your belief and visualize yourself obtaining the next achievement, you will automatically increase your chances of reaching your goals.

Allow yourself to dream, and then decide to dream big
Dreams are an important component of success. If you never allow yourself to dream then you will never give yourself a reason to push for achievement. Without dreams, we have no goals.

Once you believe in the importance of dreams, you need to allow yourself to dream big. After all, what good is a dream if it only gives you a mediocre future to look forward to?

Without a dream, you will be missing the road map to your future. Obviously, it is not enough just to dream of expanding your business. You need to dream about the ways in which you see yourself doing it and then turn those steps into concrete goals and plans of action.

Turn your dreams into concrete goals
Once you have a positive vision of your future successes in place, it is time to create a plan for reaching those successes. For example, if your dream involves expanding your business, you need to lay out the steps necessary to achieving that expansion.

The easiest way to do this is to work from the future backwards:

1. Start your list with the positive outcome of your goal.
2. Then, write out the steps that need to happen just before this outcome is realized.
3. Now list the steps that would need to take place before you could move onto those goals.
4. Finally, lists the steps that you need to take right now in order to begin working toward realizing your dream.

While it may seem unnatural to set your goals in reverse, this approach is important in two ways.

One, this reversal of order will allow your unconscious to believe in the goal before it has been completed. If your brain is thinking in terms of “I achieved this goal, now, how did I get there?” instead of in terms of, “I want to achieve this goal, but how do I get there?” it will be more focused on the outcome than the journey.

Don’t ever ask yourself “How can I do this?” always ask, “How did I do this?” The difference in the language seems simple, but the meaning behind the language is vastly different.

Two, the order is important because it forces you to focus on the achievement first. By beginning your focus there, you will be less likely to get caught up in the ‘maybes’ and ‘what ifs’ that can lead to quitting. If you start with success, your main questions turn from thoughts of “where do I go now?” and “Will this ever work?” to thoughts of “What steps must I have taken already?” and “That obviously worked, so this will too!”

If you are still not convinced, try making your list in the opposite order. Chances are good that you will get hung up somewhere between the immediate goals and the future outcome.

In the next lesson, we’ll be looking at how you can use mind power to make sure your marketing sells the sizzle and not the steak!