Secrets of Success from the Story of Bill Gates - Part 2

Persistence

Never give up there is always a way out. Do what you are supposed to do; it will lead to bigger opportunities along the way.

If you can make up your mind that you will not settle for less, you will not settle for less. You will keep right on going and you will achieve your goals and dreams. If you convince yourself nothing is impossible, nothing will be impossible for you.

Don't concentrate on how hard it is but focus on the reward and satisfaction you get by achieving your goals.

Always focus on the final outcome from the start, never lose that ability to focus. As the road gets harder, you get harder; as the road gets tougher, you get tougher; as the journey becomes difficult and seems like it’s impossible, just continue to focus and keep going and watch what will happen. The only true failure is when you give up and you stop moving on.

Reward your progress when you reach a milestone.

Bring your best to every situation; you may never know when your breakthrough opportunity presents it to you. Persistence always pays off. Don't take rejections to heart or personally, it’s only a normal process of taking out what is not good for you. Persistence takes action.

The most successful people in life are always persistent. Persistent people are often accused of being cold and heartless, but a careful re-evaluation shows this is not the case at all, they are simply singled minded in their pursuit of their own personal destiny.

A burning desire to succeed will propel you to do whatever it takes to get it; you will become focused and persistent. The end result of this success is inevitable.

Just because we don’t see immediate results doesn’t necessarily mean there is no growth happening.

You can only become persistent enough to succeed when your desire to reach your goal exceeds the pain you have to go through trying to achieve it. The pain of living without your dream should simply exceed the pain of paying the price to accomplish your goal.

Persistent people seem to have an instinctive understanding that defeat is only temporary and will eventually turn into victory with enough tenacity.

Most people have settled for a life of mediocrity because they have surrendered to temporary defeat and setbacks. A few have reached their full potential by refusing to accept defeat and in the end they overcame all negative circumstances in their path to success.

Napoleon Hill wrote down what he believes are the four main steps vital for success in every walk of life:

1. A definite purpose accompanied by a burning desire for its fulfilment
2. A definite plan explicit in continuous action.
3. A mind closed tightly against all negative and discouraging influences, including negative suggestions from relatives, friends, and acquaintances.
4. A friendly alliance with one or more persons who will encourage you to follow through with both plan and purpose.

Don’t take rejection personally and don’t buy into false illusion that rejection means you are incompetent.

Some people can tolerate rejection if the source of rejections is their close friends, they are persistent enough to stand firm despite the rejections, but when they are told they are wrong by one or two experts their dreams would be instantly shattered. Sylvester Stallone was not rejected by 50 traffic wardens but he was rejected by fifty film producers who are the bright minds in the film industry nonetheless he went on to prove all of them wrong.

Persistence helps an individual to break the negatives around him to achieve his dreams and goals. Nothing can stop you, in fact you are unstoppable. You will achieve your dreams or goals you will accomplish your purpose, you will reach your destiny.

Creativity

If you have ideas, but don’t act on them, you are imaginative but not creative. So creativity requires action, commitment and passion to bring something new into being. 

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesise new things. To change your life and achieve your goals you have to be creative.

For creativity and innovation to flourish, corporations and organisations must create a conducive environment that nurtures creativity; putting together multi-talented people who work together – exchanging ideas and knowledge, and shaping the direction of the organisation for the future

Empower People

The formula is, meet the needs of your employees and they will go out of their way to meet the needs of your customers or clients and your business will be more profitable.

The vision is really about empowering workers, giving them all the information about what’s going on so they can do a lot more than they’ve done in the past. Bill Gates

Employees who believe that management is concerned about them as a whole person – not just an employee – are more productive, more satisfied, more fulfilled. Satisfied employees mean satisfied customers, which leads to profitability. Employees are a company’s greatest asset – they’re your competitive advantage. You want to attract and retain the best; provide them with encouragement, stimulus, and make them feel that they are an integral part of the company’s mission. Anne M. Mulcahy

Bill Gates had a grip on this principle and he paid his employees well and invested in their future. Most of the people he worked with have become wealthy through working for Gates. Gates is an effective communicator. He kept his employees motivated and encouraged to do their work with a positive outlook.

Gates believed in sharing his vision with his team at Microsoft so that they were all on the same page. This finally paid off when Windows 95TM was launched, it was not only an operating software it came ready loaded with Internet ExplorerTM, which became one of the world’s most popular internet browser.

Give back more than what you’ve taken from the community, your life then will then be a true success.

Surround yourself with people who believe in you.When you surround yourself with the right people they will help you to grow. Surrounding yourself with the right people, does not necessarily mean talking to them in person, it could be through their books, speeches, materials and resources.

Filter the negative out of your life, it’s toxic. Positive people will also make you feel positive; there is always positive energy around them.

Learn from failures

The people that have failed the most are usually the most successful people.

Successful people have learned the wisdom of failure so they will not judge or laugh at you when you fail because they have been there already and they know the lessons you can learn from failure.

It is better to aim at perfection and miss it than to aim at imperfection and hit it. Do not allow the fear of failure to get in your way of achieving the impossible.

You have to know that failure is only feedback and should be used as a learning curve to help you improve and work on yourself and your ideas.

Change The World

Bill Gates is a visionary who makes things happen by creating systems bigger than himself and inspiring people to join him on his epic adventures to make maximum impact on the World.

Bill Gates believes in making maximum impact in the world.

The size of the contribution does not matter, what is important is the heart to do it. In fact you can start now to make a difference in the world. You can share your love, money, skills, and clothing with the world. Little efforts count. To receive you must give. Let us give love and share happiness with the world and then we will receive more of it.