Success Made Simple: Practical Steps to Attaining the Success That You Deserve

By Victor Lofinmakin

Have you ever thought that you are not living up to your full potential?  Do you ever feel that the success you deserve and that you know you can attain is somehow slipping by you?  Do you look back at your life and realize that you are not making significant progress?  

This book is specifically designed for you. It will

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lofinmakin Inc
• Release date: Oct 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9781944652173

Victor Lofinmakin

Victor Lofinmakin is a U.S. Naval Officer. He is also the founder, president and CEO of Fairdale Capital Management, LLC. Selected as "2016 top 20 under 40 rising stars in real estates by Houston Association of Realtors," Victor is a successful Real Estate Broker and a Residential Mortgage Loan Originator. Victor Lofinmakin has written several financial and success articles published on various financial websites and read in over 110 countries. He is a public speaker in the self-improvement genre. He lives in Houston, Texas with his wife, Dolly and their two daughters.

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INTRODUCTION

Success is waking up in the morning and bounding out of bed because there’s something out there that you love to do, that you believe in, that you’re good at - something that’s bigger than you are, and you can hardly wait to get at it again.

—Whit Hobbs

If there is any simple way to define success, I think Mr. Hobbs has got it just right. However, let me make it clear from the beginning that, contrary to what the title of this book might suggest to some, my intention here is not to say that the quest for success in life is an easy one. Rather, I come from the viewpoint that, success, being what all of us crave so much, can be simple but certainly not easy.

The fundamental life purpose of every human is to be successful and happy. Accordingly, Dale Carnegie once wrote that Success is getting what you want and happiness is wanting what you get. Everyone certainly wants to be relevant in his or her lifetime. This means that for the average person to feel he has lived a successful life, he must have lived with a clear mission. Living with a mission entails making the most of what we are, for the benefit of others, and ourselves. It means using your God-given talents to remain true to your true destiny.

Truly, those who choose to live with a vision are the happiest people on earth. These people map out a course for themselves and maintain an absolute resolution/ determination of purpose on that path - remaining true to their values. They go through life with genuine satisfaction. Ironically, these are the people who end up with all the wealth and social status, and this is because they subscribe to what I call the seven Cs of successful living: conception, confidence, concentration, consistency, commitment, character and a capacity to enjoy.

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Conception is a clear vision of what you want. For this, you will need clear goals and an imaginative vision.

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Confidence is faith upfront. You will need to eliminate worry, fear and anxiety.

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Concentration entails preparation, action, adjusting as you proceed, and effective networking.

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Consistency will ask you this fundamental question: Are you doing what you think is best to do, and avoiding what you think is best to avoid?

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Commitment is joining Ralph Waldo Emerson in the firm belief that nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

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Character is the moral core of personhood. It is the foundation of personality. Heraclitus said: Character equals destiny. Character also incorporates The Golden Rule, humility, integrity, honesty, courage, kindness and a strong sense of personal responsibility.

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Capacity to enjoy simply means living in the present moment. It also asks you to celebrate your successes, celebrate others’ and to create time to relax.

Tragically, however, we do not all have the courage to pursue that thing, and for most people, there are four obstacles that stand in their way:

First, we are programmed from childhood that all we want to do is either impossible, or is not appropriate for us.

Secondly, we shy away from hurting, or even offending those that have the responsibility of guiding us early in life. The tragic outcome of this tendency is that we end up living the lives that such people prescribe for us; and although they actually mean well for us, in most instances, they see us and our achievements as a mere expression of their own failed aspirations.

Thirdly, most of us fear the defeats we will inevitably encounter along the path. This is kakorrhaphiophobia, the irrational fear of failure which we will be discussing in the second chapter of this book.

The fourth obstacle is, incredibly, a deep-seated fear of the success we seek. Oscar Wilde once said, Each man kills the thing he loves. This, unfortunately, is a paradoxical truth. Most people are burdened with a subconscious guilt, and do not feel worthy of the finer things of life. This is why most people self sabotage themselves. History is rich with stories of lots of people who made or committed stupid errors when the rewards of their struggles and toilings are just within grasp and they never reach their goal.

This book will help you with insights of how some people achieve extraordinary success. Dale Beaumont, once said, If you are not green and growing, you are ripe and rotten. It will open up your mind to ‘learning.’ You can never master life completely, no one can but you can learn to love life to perfection. As you remember that success breeds success, start to challenge yourself on a daily basis. Refuse to give up. Surround yourself with great people who will encourage you to move forward. Take the contents of this book to heart, and refuse to allow them depart from you for the rest of your life.

CHAPTER ONE

THE THREE Ds OF LIFE

Create the highest, grandest vision possible for your life, because you become what you believe

—Oprah Winfrey

Every human being in his or her quest to succeed will find him or herself in one of the three Ds of life –The Drifter, The Driven, and The Directed. This chapter will help you find which of the three Ds of life you are in, and move you to the right D in life. Finding yourself in the wrong D can be one of the biggest hinderances to your success.

THE DRIFTER

To be a drifter means to simply exist in this world and be of no significance whatsoever. The drifter sets goals and plans which he typically will not execute. He fritters away his valuable time in misguided association. A schedule is totally alien to the drifter, and so he goes through life aimlessly, year in, year out; yet ironically complains to anyone who cares to listen about his inability to make real progress in life.

According to the Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, drifting is an aimless course, especially a foregoing of any attempt at direction or control. simply put, drifting is living your life without a purpose, without any direction, and without any specific goal or destination. A lack of direction or purpose in your life creates a vacuum that is easily filled with anything or anyone that can help you fritter away your precious time and life. It is the dimension of drifting that makes you sink into regret and depression every year end, wondering how an entire year has gone by without you achieving any milestone of significance, yet had perhaps dutifully attended school, or gone to work daily. Tragically, you had nothing to show for the entire year’s worth of grind.

A typical way to recognize a drifter is this. Ten years go by. Another ten come and go, and the drifter is still in the same spot. Gradually, yet surely, he is drifting through life and probably does not even realize it. The average American earns about $60,000 a year, and over 40 years work would typically have earned $2.4 million. This is the typical American. Several others earn upwards of $5 million throughout their working life. However, the typical American has less that $10,000 in savings. This is as a result of drifting through one’s career life. They drifted through life, having the best intentions for themselves, but never taking the time to live a life of purpose.

The good news is that you can change. Yes! indeed if you have identified yourself as a drifter, it is all about making a decision and executing it. Your unfortunate situation does not have to be permanent, and you can move from Drifting to Driven, and then to Directed.

In the process of writing this book, I interviewed many authors with the intention of becoming familiar with the best literary practices, in order to learn from their experiences to avoid making the mistakes they had made. I discovered that every one of these authors had drifted at some point at the initial stage of their writing career.

I spoke to Dr. Excel Ogugbue, author of two books: Decisions That Changed My Life, and Doing Better Than Your Best. He admitted to me that his first book took him over ten years to write. Well, for the sake of accuracy, let us rephrase that. While writing his first book, he drifted for over ten years. However, when he realized that he was merely drifting, he buckled up and became driven, finishing the book in just two weeks! This is a good example of how drifting can rob us of the best years of our lives. The incredible fact is that, what he could have easily accomplished in two weeks took him over ten years.

Dr. Ogugbue’s story might sound painfully familiar to you. We have all experienced the same phenomenon. When we live without purpose, we simply drift, taking far too long to accomplish even the simplest of tasks.

In 2014, I worked with a 57-year-old gentleman from Ohio. This man had one of the most compelling stories of drifting that I ever heard. He is currently living with a friend and has nothing but a pile of debts to show for his twenty-eight years of employment at a high-paying corporate job. This man had it all; since he graduated magna cum laude from Ohio State University, he obviously had a higher than average intellect. He also attended the elite Harvard Business School, in which upon graduation, he got a job with a corporate consulting company. Rapidly rising through the corporate ladder, he became an executive. He had all the trappings that come with the executive cadre.

Unfortunately, however, when the company sold off the department at which he worked, he was laid off. He went quickly from hero to zero. A man of twenty-eight years of solid, high earning employment reduced to homelessness in a matter of months is better imagined than experienced. Even though