Section 1:

SUCCESS IS A SYSTEM, NOT A SECRET

That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.

— ABRAHAM LINCOLN

When you make the commitment to learn something new, don't you put in concerted mental and physical effort on a repeated basis to become proficient in the new task? You apply knowledge that's necessary to achieve the results that you desire. All of us have been using this kind of a system for success our entire lives.

For example, think about when you first learned to ride a bicycle. Didn't you spend hours learning how to balance and move on the bike without falling? I can recall vividly the times that I crashed and fell off my bike while learning to ride on two wheels. I spent hours practicing what I was taught over and over. I watched family and friends ride their bikes without falling. I dreamed about sailing down the street, feeling the wind through my hair as I expertly rode my bike. Every day I thought about and practiced riding. When I made progress, I expressed tremendous gratitude. Once I believed strongly that it was possible to ride my bike without falling, things shifted and I began to see more evidence of my improvement.

Can you remember learning to type? At first, the keyboard was scary: it wasn't even in alphabetical order! Now after years of practice, maybe you're one of those people who is able to type without much thought. I know some teenagers who can type as fast as they can speak. Wow!

What about reading? Didn't you learn to sound out each word with great effort? Then you had to understand the meaning of the words, relate them to a sentence, a paragraph, and a story. Years later, having read countless numbers of words, you're most likely able to simply skim pages of words with the same successful understanding of their meaning.

I hope that you're beginning to recognize that success is a system. Champion auto racer, Bobby Unser shared, "Success is where preparation and opportunity meet." As you continually prepare to be successful, you will notice more opportunities to achieve your goals. Both physical and mental repetition are key components of your preparation as part of the success system. In essence, repetition reaps rewards.

One of the best illustrations for this is the evening drive home from work. Have you ever driven home and had no awareness of large parts of the drive? This happens because you have become skilled at driving by repeating the behavior often. What was once a very conscious and deliberate effort has now become an ordinary and typical occurrence. Through repetition, you've mastered what you wanted to learn and developed a habit.

The same thing is true when using a new daily system for success to achieve more of your goals. Taking on the CSO as a new partner to help you and repetition of a daily practice with gratitude are necessary elements of your new system for success. As you incorporate and repeat the steps in your success system, you will find that it becomes easier for you to achieve more of your desired goals. Your goals can involve your health, happiness, relationships, work, finances, spiritual connection with your source, or any other achievement that you desire. It can take disciplined effort to get into a system of frequently manifesting goals, but, just like riding a bike or driving a car, it will get easier with practice. In some cases, these repetitive activities will become new habits over time.

Habits emerge through associative learning. University of Southern California professor Wendy Wood explained this in her session at the American Psychological Association's 122nd Annual Convention in 2014; "We find patterns of behavior that allow us to reach goals. We repeat what works, and when actions are repeated in a stable context, we form associations between cues and response." We can learn to repeat what works as a success system to reach our goals.

Types of Success Systems

There are a number of systems that people use to achieve success.

• In professional sports, athletes mentally and physically train every day to perform at the highest levels. The same is true for professional musicians.

• In religions and spiritual organizations, forms of prayer are used in a repetitive way along with gratitude, confidence, and faith. Prayer may include gratitude statements for achieving the outcomes desired in advance as well as the confidence that it can manifest. Repetitive chanting is often used to successfully reach a deeper level of connection with a spiritual source that can provide directions and orchestrate opportunities to achieve desired outcomes.

• In business, leaders and managers set and revisit goals regularly and measure their efforts against them. Often, they will post their goals for performance, safety, or customer satisfaction where all employees can see them. This promotes an attitude of agreement.

In the daily system for success that I describe in this book, many of the most effective elements of the success systems above are combined into an efficient daily practice for the greatest results.

Look at the world's top athletes. They are known for practicing their routines, their workouts, and their skills a million times over in training, especially before big competitions. According to sports psychologist Michael Edgar, "Three (must have) keys to success in sports are good instruction, practice, and repetition." As athletes perform a successful behavior repeatedly, they improve their chances of achieving excellence.

In many religious traditions, there are examples of repetitive prayer leading to increased confidence and desired outcomes. As we speak our prayers out loud and focus on the completed goal, whether it is a healthy body, increased financial wealth, harmonious relationships, happiness, etc., we stop the fearful mind from having any power to attract what we don't want and we enable our desires to manifest. As we focus our attention on something that we desire, our subconscious will illuminate evidence so that we notice its presence. One of my favorite new thought teachers from the 1920s, Florence Scovel Shinn, said, "We cannot always control our thoughts, but we can control our words, and repetition impresses the subconscious, and we are then master of the situation." Repetitive prayer or spiritual chanting can drown out negative thoughts and take us to a peaceful place where we are still and receptive to our ultimate spiritual advisor. As we repetitively describe a desired outcome and have confidence that our spiritual partner can help us to achieve it, we are conditioning ourselves to realize more answers to our prayers. We will recognize more opportunities to take steps to achieve what we desire.

Business people establish a course for their desired growth, profitability, sales, efficiency, and other areas within their businesses. Leaders often convey the plan for successful outcomes to their teams. Management gathers employees together to...