Every time I am asked to speak, I engage the audience and ask them to raise their hands if they want to be successful. Do you know what happens?

Every hand in the room goes up!

However, the reality is, that less than 5% of the people in any given audience will ever reach any measurable type of success. The question that keeps me up at night is…”why it that?” Why is it that some people are successful and others are not? Is it luck, pedigree, or some magic potion?

Actually it is none of the above. Success in any part of your life comes from two words…

Hard Work!

Success is not just going to show up on your doorstep because you think about it all the time. You actually have to work hard to have success.

• You have to work hard to have a successful marriage
• You have to work hard to have a successful business
• You have to work hard to have a successful bank account
• You have to work hard to have successful relationships
• You have to work hard to have a successful spiritual life

In other words, there is a price that must be paid for success and only you can answer the question, “Do you want to pay the price?”

Here are 5 reasons that are keeping people from success right now and how to fix them.

1. Wrong Thinking
2. No Discipline
3. Too Many Excuses
4. No Vision
5. No Action

So how do you fix these areas? Here is my formula for success:

1. Change your thoughts
2. Decide you want success whatever the price
3. Resource yourself with the right information
4. Get a vision and write out a plan
5. Take massive action

The game never changes, only you change.

“You can never make a difference, making excuses” – Tim Davis

What challenges are you facing today? Better yet what are you doing to bust through the challenges and be an overcomer? Everyday people face challenges of all kinds, health, financial, career. You name it, everyone has challenges. The question is really not what your challenge is, but rather have you let that challenge become and excuse?

Recently I ran across a story about Butch Lumpkin. Butch was born without arms, yet today he is an accomplished athlete, father, and husband. In fact Butch can hit a golf ball 260 yards on the drive. Makes me want to go out and work on my golf game ASAP! Take a look at this video and the ask yourself this simple question…

“Have I let my challenges become my excuses?”

I have researched, read, and listened to people tell me how to find my passion and the money would follow for years. There are assessments to find your spiritual gift, your personality profile, and calling in life; however so few people really go for it!

Why is that? What s really holding you back from going for it? I was talking to a good friend today and it hit me out of the blue…

Too many of us can’t go for our dreams because we have boxed ourselves in. We have boxed ourselves into obligations and debt. We have houses, cars, credit cards, and other obligations that may suffer if we pursue our true passion.

“Many people can not enjoy life because they have trapped themselves financially”

So what do we do? Do we live a life in chains?

Recently, Angie and I made some really big life decisions. We decided to go for our dreams. We decided to create a life that we built our work around, rather than trying to get life “in” when our work allowed it. Here is where we had to start in order to build out the life we want…

1. We had to decide that life and living our passion was more important than stuff!
2. We had to decide that what we wanted, was more important than what others thought or said we needed
3. We had to get real about what we wanted. Do we really need a larger home, more gadgets, and more stuff – Or do we want to build a life around our passion?
4. We had to create a budget of what expenses we really needed and what expenses we did not need.
5. We had to find a way to make an income from our passion.

Many years ago we had taken some sound advice on saving. While we could have saved more, we did ok. That savings has helped us launch our new plan faster. If you don’t have savings, then your journey will take a little longer, but don’t give up. When you really start to take a close look at your expenses, you will start to find ways to make your new life a reality.

We will see where the journey takes us, and I will continue to share our journey with you!