In the game of life, success or failure is up to you.  So many people who get caught up in making a living that they never slow down long enough to realize they could achieve their dreams by focusing on designing a life.

Every person carries within them the key that unlocks either the front door of success or the rear door of failure.

It is a matter of choice. Which do you choose?

Action must be consistent, not sporadic. The biggest mistake I see most people make is lack of action. Most people are attached to the results, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of responsibility, fear of action, and fear of the unknown…

… and this keeps them paralyzed in their past.

Many people don’t like their past, but they continue to live there because it’s not uncomfortable enough for them to change, even though change could benefit them.

Progress is made through change.

The challenge of change is the fear that often accompanies it. Uncertainty and doubt can function like brakes to slow your acceleration toward personal growth.

Vibrant learning with enthusiasm can transform uncertainty into activating curiosity as you continue to improve. It is a must that you believe you are successful or in the process of becoming successful.

On the journey to success, the road is filled with potholes and apparent dead ends. Many situations you will not be able to change. However, you can definitely change how you view the challenges. If you begin to look at each new challenge as a new learning experience, and are enthusiastic to be in the process… then you can also learn to transmute your positive energy and enthusiasm toward each encounter you experience every day.

I’m going to walk you through three primary targets for your ever-present enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is the most essential leadership quality!

Enthusiasm About People

First things first…

Your enthusiasm must be infectious!

People are much more impressed with your enthusiasm than they are with your knowledge. They don’t care what you know. They care how much you care.

Your enthusiasm rubs off on everyone you contact. You communicate your enthusiasm through your words, your voice quality, and your body language.

Would you want to be led by you?

Ask yourself that question.

Perhaps no other leadership quality is more important to building a team and becoming successful than true enthusiasm about people. You automatically seek and find the best in others, their qualities, virtues, and their potentials. Your enthusiasm acts like a magnet to draw these qualities out, assisting others to build their confidence and self-esteem.

Enthusiasm About Fundamentals

The fundamentals of success are the little things that produce big results. These are the routines that aren’t glamorous, but that done over a long period of time dramatically improve and enhance your results.

Prospecting consistently… collecting decisions, listening, learning, reading, and becoming a student of the game… practiced consistently over a long period of time will allow you to develop the skills that will ultimately produce the results you seek.

The most successful leaders emphasize fundamentals above all else in their practical routines. The challenge for leaders when it comes to fundamentals is keeping themselves and their team focused. Most people want to move on to more glamorous or complex challenges rather than continually applying themselves to the basics. Staying focused is a leadership quality you require.

People contact me on a weekly basis, saying they want to become a speaker, a trainer, or a motivational writer. This is great, but I find it alarming that almost all of these people are struggling in their various businesses.

I always ask them, “How can you train and how can you motivate on what you yourself have not accomplished?”

I paid eight years of dues figuring out the principles of success before I ever achieved any great levels of success. It took another two years before I felt I had enough life lessons and abilities to transmute what I had been through to teach it to the masses.

Life is about collecting enough life lessons so that we can teach and pass on what was effective for us. We are all teachers at different points of our lives, and the better we become at our own success, the easier it is to teach it to others or to our teammates. That is why great leaders never ask anyone to do what they haven’t done.

Enthusiasm About the Learning Process

This means developing an inherent enthusiasm for learning, growing, developing, and becoming the best you can possibly be. Progress is made through the evolution of change.

A vibrant enthusiasm about learning can transform uncertainty into faith.

If you desire to improve where you are, no quality is more important to instill than an enthusiasm for change fostered through personal growth and development. The very cultivation of thirst for knowledge fosters healthy habits to discover more and to become more… rather than living in fear and having to be right. Most often the greatest obstacle to learning the truth is the belief that you already know it all.

Over a period of time filled with many trials and tribulations, I finally got to a point where I learned I no longer had to be right all of the time. I spent the first thirty-nine years of my life with the philosophy that I was going to prove to everyone on the planet that I was right. I had a very low bank account balance with that philosophy.

I now live the motto: “You be right, I’ll be rich.”

I had a very humbling experience early in my entrepreneurial career when I abrasively approached a very successful woman involved in network marketing. I will never forget her exact words to me that my biggest problem was that…

“Your ego is bigger than your bank account,”

…and that she would not collaborate with someone with my kind of attitude.

This was the first of many turning points in my development. What she said really hit home with me. I didn’t like what she said, but it forced me to look at who I was at that point in my life.

My question to you is, “Is your ego bigger than your bank account?”

If so, are you willing to create some changes so you can become a leader, a teacher, and a role model for other people?

What’s Your Motivation?

It is essential to adopt the belief that people collaborate with you as a leader, not for you. Success comes when you and other members of your team personally take ownership of the vision of success. This includes accepting responsibility for everyone’s part in achieving goals.

Often the best teachers of success are those you lead and serve. They become the agents who apply the principles and skills you teach. Their feedback and results are invaluable in enhancing your approach to success.

The greater the enthusiasm felt by the team, the greater the action, and the greater the momentum, because the team is motivated by desire rather than fear.

Enthusiastic leadership can be expressed in many forms and varieties. It doesn’t have to be loud and flashy. It requires only that you, the leader, express enthusiasm through some form of consistent action.

Become A Connector For Life

The successful entrepreneur is someone who never plays short-term. He or she is always thinking long-term. There have been many people I partnered with for no financial gain at the time. I assisted them regardless of whether they were in my company, my organization, my team, or even in the same industry as I was. Many of these people have since purchased my products, attended my seminars, hired me as a personal success coach, and referred me to many, many customers.

Your goal is to become a great connector in life, not just in your present enterprise. Entrepreneurship is about connecting on many levels. It’s about relationships and camaraderie. I refer to what we do as relationship marketing.

You are looking for like-minded individuals you can partner with.

Entrepreneurial success is an attitude… both yours and the people around you.

Your job is to allow others to see you as someone who really projects visionary, heartfelt leadership. Once you start to master this attitude, everyone you add to your contact list will have been touched by you in one way or another.

Remember, your task is to present, not convince… to sort, not sell.

Proper marketing, networking, and connecting are definite win-win relationships.