How to be successful this year?

Happy Chinese New Year of the Rooster!!!!!!

As with every new year, there are changes that come into our lives.

This year, we have a new leader of the nation. There are a lot of noise about what he may or may not do.

But at the end of the day, no one can change your life. Only you can change your life.

Where you are today has nothing to do with your boss, your spouse, boyfriend or girlfriend and least of all a new government. You are where you are because that is where you want to be.

This may not make any sense to you.

You may not be happy with your job, your relationship, your business may be stagnant, your kids don't listen to you.

You are where you are because you are letting others dictate what you have and how you behave. It is time to  stop blaming everyone else and take back control of your life. So here is how to be successful for the new year:

Patience: have patience in everything you do, nothing happens over night, but nothing will happen if you do nothing at all!
Alert: always be on the lookout for opportunities around you. There is opportunities happening around us all the time, we are just not looking for them and then when someone seizes an opportunity, we say they are just lucky. They are not lucky, they are just more alert and see opportunities before you do.
Effort: Peoples always complaining about problems at home, or their business is not growing, their teams are not listening to them. You need to make and effort and show them how’s its done and be a leader. If you don’t make an effort, don’t expect any returns. This applies to everything in your life, work, relationships, health and business.
Balance: we believe it’s all about balance. People is usually all in in their work life or their personal life. This leads to an unbalanced and unfulfilling life. We need to learn to balance both our personal and professional lives to enjoy both success at work and happiness at home.
Hard work: this one goes hand in hand with effort. If you going to make an effort , put your back behind it and do your best work. I hear too often how people brag about how little work they do in their workplace and then they wonder why they were passed on their raise or advancement.
Perseverance: if you believe in something, persevere. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do it. Most of the time they are uncomfortable with where you may end up and want you stuck with where they are. It’s all about comfort zones, so you need to weather storms to get to where you really want to be.
Passion: this is a big one for us. If you are not passionate about something. It is really hard to do, day in and day out.
         We love this passage that Steve Jobs said at a 2007 D5: All Things Digital Conference.

“People say you have to have a lot of passion for what you’re doing and it’s totally true. And the reason is because it’s so hard that if you don’t, any rational person would give up. It’s really hard. And you have to do it over a sustained period of time. So if you don’t love it, if you’re not having fun doing it, you don’t really love it, you’re going to give up. And that’s what happens to most people, actually. If you really look at the ones that ended up, you know, being “successful” in the eyes of society and the ones that didn’t, oftentimes, it’s the ones [who] were successful loved what they did so they could persevere, you know, when it got really tough. And the ones that didn’t love it quit because they’re sane, right? Who would want to put up with this stuff if you don’t love it?
So it’s a lot of hard work and it’s a lot of worrying constantly and if you don’t love it, you’re going to fail. So you’ve got to love it and you’ve got to have passion and I think that’s the high-order bit.”

8. Serenity- with all the things that bombard us all day, emails, text messages, phone calls, social updates and worst of all the news. We need to learn to turn those off at least once a day and just relax and zone out. To meditate or just have a quiet time all to yourself. You will notice a inner peace that will give you the strength to tackle anything.

This year of the Fire Rooster. How will you behave? Who will you become? It's up to you to decide and take action.

-The Foolish Couple