Helping You Achieve Success and Happiness!

Excellence can be obtained if you care more than others think is wise,
risk more than others think is safe, dream more than others think is practical,
expect more than others think is possible
- Claude Bissell

In the eyes of the average person, there is something snobby in striving for excellence. For some people, possibly for most, excellence is pure luck, almost a luxurious state of living that you are either born with or not. It is no coincidence that those who think this way do not excel at many things in life.

There is a paradox in the search for excellence, because it is the result of an attitude, a habit you need to have in the first place in order to achieve it. There is something frustrating in understating what T. Alan Armstrong said, "Champions do not become champions when they win the event, but in the hours, weeks, months and years they spend preparing for it. The victorious performance itself is merely the demonstration of their championship act". It is frustrating, because it makes you think that excelling is hard work.

Excellence goes together with extraordinary success that is higher than all standards. It is frustrating because you cannot reach excellence without succeeding big time.

There are many misconceptions about excellence that keep most people in "the average zone". With excellence, much like in the world of finance, you can divide people into 4 categories, the "poor" failing people, the "average" unsuccessful people, the "rich" successful people and the "super rich" - those who excel (and drive the economy).

The "poor" people are those who are in a state of constant failure, hardly surviving each day. If you check their "success tank", it contains small successes they cannot even recognize.

The "average" people are those who think success has something to do with luck - it is too hard and unachievable. Their "success tank" contains more successes than the "poor" people's do, but they cannot repeat them, because they do not recognize the link between action and success.

The "rich" people are those who strive for success, set goals and complete action steps to achieve it. They believe that they deserve success and that achieving it is within their power. Their "success tank" is pretty full and helps build their confidence.

The "super rich" are those who do not settle for success. For them, having one more success is not enough. They have built their confidence from succeeding so many times it becomes their baseline. Their "success tank" is bigger and keeps expanding, because it needs more space to accumulate their enormous successes.

The choice of which of these 4 types we want to be is obvious, although the "poor" and the "average" people will not agree with me. In their defense, they will say they cannot really choose and again, Mr Luck steals the show. With them, together with millions of hungry and abused kids around the world, I will have to agree that there is some luck involved as being born to the "right" parents, in the right country and growing up with the "right" attitude are factors of luck, but using luck as an excuse can only get you so far.

I was not that lucky in that sense, because I grew up in a poor family that later on became average. Yet, I have proven that despite the poor mentality, it is possible to get yourself out of emotional poverty and excel.

When I was 16, I realized that my excuses for not succeeding were directly related to my failure. I did not fail because I was not good at something. I did not succeed because I was poor, I did not believe I could and I supported this belief with millions of excuses.

Try asking yourself, "Why am I not succeeding?" and your answers will reveal your demons. At a very early stage of my life, I realized that everyone has the power to excel but not everyone is using the power.

Growing up in a "poor" family, I had to develop this attitude myself and become a business woman (more like a business child) at the age of 25, right after finishing my education studies. The mentality of my family and most people around me was "You do not have enough money to open an early childhood center", "Most businesses close down within the first year", "First you have to find customers", "It's too risky" and "Do not open a business with a family member". Despite all that poor- and average-people talk, I succeeded. Having had 9 years of success, some of which even touched excellence, I knew in my mind that "Doing no more than the average is what brings the average down" and that if I kept improving the quality of what I had to offer, I would excel. I succeeded big time.

Excuses for poverty

Unsuccessful (poor and average) people invent and adopt beliefs and ideas about successful people to help them justify their unsuccessful state of mind. When they hear or meet those who excel, their creativity is even greater. Here are just some of the beliefs that will guarantee you will not excel.

1. "She was so lucky"
2. "This was an overnight success"
3. "It's too hard" or " I don't stand a chance"
4. "I don't have the skills" or "It's just not for me"
5. "It's not worth it"
6. "The risk is too high" or "The sacrifice if greater than the achievement"
7. "I won't be able to handle success"
8. "He is so miserable"
9. "It's not fair"

The list of the beliefs of unsuccessful people is huge. In coaching, I ask my clients to write them down so we know what we are working against. I could make a never-ending list of their examples. I believe every person should find his or her demons as they are an obstacle to any success. Tony Robbins said, "If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten". The road to success and excellence requires you to do something differently.

Demon-finding questions

If you want to find the beliefs that stop you from succeeding and excelling, answer these questions:

1. Why am I not succeeding?
2. Why did I not get what I wanted?
3. Find a person you think is excelling and ask: What makes him/her successful?
4. What scares me about being successful?
5. What do people who excel give up?

Finding the thing that blocks you from believing you can succeed and deserve success is very important on your journey towards success. People who excel think they can succeed and deserve success.

The first time I discovered I could succeed was when I was kicked out of school in 10 th Grade (for a good reason - I had failed too many subjects). The excellence act was when I took the courage to go to the school counselor and ask to stay.

She said to me, "Ronit, we allow only one summer make-up exam and you have failed 3 subjects. When I went to visit her, I had not anticipated she would say that, but there was something inside of me that said, "I will sit for 3 summer exams".

She looked at me and said, "But we do not allow anyone to sit for more than one summer exam". I told her, "You will allow me , because I will be the first one to pass all 3 of them".

And I did. Big time!

For 10 years of schooling, all my scores had been failures or passes. I was happy to take some sport or arts & crafts classes to see just some average grades, but after that courageous act of declaring, "I can and I will!" for the first time in my life, all my 11 th Grade report card was A's and B's and I received a scholarship for excellence.

Every excellence starts with the belief you can!

Join me next week for some beliefs people who excel have that everyone who wants to succeed and excel can (and should) adopt.

Winning the lottery

Life is like a play. It is not the length but the excellence of the acting that matters
- Seneca

You see, luck has nothing to do with success and all the successful people will tell you that most of their success did not fall from the sky but there was some opportunity they were able to recognize. Developing the attitude to recognize opportunities is mistaken for some mystical luck similar to winning the lottery.

When my son was preparing for a competition, I told him the lottery story. This story is a ticket out of poverty. Take every opportunity to use it.

Every Friday, the archangel Gabriel went down to the Wailing Wall to pick up the notes of requests people stuck on the wall during the week. Every week, he read all the notes and organized them before presenting them to God.

One day, Gabriel want to God and said, "Dear God, there is this old man who comes here every week, rain or shine, for 25 years. Every week, he begs you to let him win the lottery. He is a good, religious man and never asks for anything else. Please God, I have read his requests every week for 25 years and it breaks my heart. Can you please grant the poor man his wish?"

God said, "I would do it gladly, if only he bought a ticket".

Winning the lottery requires luck, but it will never happen if you do not get into the game. If you complain about not succeeding, if you are jealous of other people's success, if you have a huge list but do nothing to achieve it, God is waiting for you to buy a ticket.

Successful people do not just wish. They buy tickets.

Persistence is king

Persistence is the twin sister of excellence.
One is a matter of quality, the other, a matter of time
- Marabel Morgan

You will never hear any successful person telling you their success happened overnight. Unsuccessful people come up with that idea because they do not want to recognize the dedication of those who strive for excellence.

My son Tsoof has been playing music since he was 4 years old. In the last 3 years, he has won prizes for percussion, singing and composition, but his "overnight success" had actually taken 8-11 years, a lot of learning and a lot of practice.

Successful people have the Thomas Edison mentality. Whenever they see an obstacle, they ask themselves, "How can I climb over it to get to my destination?" They will try again and again, even if others say they are lunatics. There is a beautiful saying, "Fall seven times, get up eight" and that is the main difference between successful and unsuccessful people. It is not in how many times they fall but in the number of times they get up.

Every master of excellence will tell you stories of failure to explain his or her motivation. Every master of excellence has risen from pain and failure by persistence, which is the opposite of giving up. None of them have sat at home, waiting for love, friendship, a profession, financial freedom and health to come knocking on the door over one mythical night.

With practice, every hard becomes easy

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act but a habit
- Aristotle

When they cannot claim overnight success, "poor" people say, "It's too hard". Now, I agree excellence is hard, but I disagree it is too hard. My son's (11-year) "overnight" success required lots of dedication and lots of persistence, but most of it was pure joy.

Therefore, it is important to distinguish between "too hard" and "too long". Yes, it may take a long time to find the right love, the right friendship, the right job and financial freedom, but telling yourself stories of how unachievable success is for you only means you have given up on going for it.

The difference between excellence, success and failure is in the stories you tell yourself before you start your journey. If you keep telling yourself that your chance of winning the lottery of life is so slim you do not even try, you have lost already.

Excellence is when your doctor tells you after 10 days of not breastfeeding your baby straight after birth (because of high fever) that you do not have any more milk and you will not be able to breastfeed, yet you persist and end up breastfeeding for 7 months.

Excellence is when you are told (like my daughter Eden was) that no one can study full time at the university and work full time as well and you prove you can even get the Dean's Award for your studies and be promoted at work.

Excellence happens when you do not settle for the stories others tell you but come up with your own stories of big success. It happens when you are willing to take a long ride to get there. With practice, every hard thing becomes easy and turns into a habit.

Excellence happens when you focus on the full part of the glass, even when it is just a few drops, and build big hopes from it. It happens when the demons remind you what you do not have, but you chase them away by focusing on the good and by being grateful and appreciative.

Here is a trick to chase the demons of poverty away. Whenever you are unsuccessful, remind yourself you have not found the solution yet!

Success is not a chance but a choice

When you are born, you cannot choose your parents or your place of birth, but you can choose what to do with them later. Every situation in life, even the toughest one, can be used to be a whiner or a winner.

Byron Katie writes in her book "Love What Is" that the misery in life is that we have attachments to the bad stories we tell ourselves. Sadly, most of the stories were told to us by others when our storytelling abilities were not strong enough and we developed attachments to "I can't", "I don't know" and "It's beyond my control". When we were "given" those stories, we did not have sophisticated filters and we did not question them. Even when we start questioning them, they are deeply rooted and hard to change.

When I had an early childhood center, I developed a program to turn all children into gifted ones with my sister (we happened to be in the same profession). I have run this program in 5 different centers around the world. In every one of the centers, parents told me, "Having a gifted child is not for me". They told me stories of people they knew that were disadvantaged by being smart and special. Every new mother, whose child stands up early, talks early or even starts drawing early, wonders if this is better or worse. Every teacher of gifted children ends up watching amazingly talented, smart and creative kids being held back by their parents.

No one on Earth can convince me that an 18-month-old child who tells his mom, "No mom, I told you I don't want water. I want juice" will have a harder life than a child who pushes his water bottle away, points at the refrigerator and cries (both kids are real).

This is the difference between parents who say, "If there is something I can do to make sure my son expresses himself clearly at 18 months, I will do it", and parents who say, "It's not for me" or "18-month-old babies can't talk". The first kind set their child up to be a winner, while the second sets him up to be a whiner. The first kind of parents makes sure their child's success tank will be full from a very early age, because every time Mom or Dad understands him, he wins, while the second kind increases his frustration level and reduces his chances for success later on.

Spend your time with winners, not whiners! Because you're worth it!

Risk is the price we must pay for personal growth

Risk is the name a poor person gives an opportunity
- Ronit Baras

There is a beautiful story about 2 sales people of a shoe company sent to a deserted African country to examine business potential. The whiner calls his boss and says, "People here walk barefoot. They do not wear shoes at all. Our sales potential is zero". The winner calls his boss and says, "People here walk barefoot. They do not wear shoes at all. We have no competition. The whole market is ours for the taking".

Every success involves risk. It may sound funny, but the greater the risk, the greater the achievement. Poor people consider risk takers foolish, but those who excel will tell you that no achievement is ever accomplished by staying in your comfort zone.

The "comfort zone" is a very dangerous place, because it repels creativity and success. The comfort zone is the place where you welcome your fears with open arms and keep them company. There is nothing wrong with relaxing from time to time and resting before climbing the next mountain, but when we get too comfortable, out choices are eventually limited to getting up or drowning.

You have to risk going too far to discover just how far you can really go
- Jim Rohn

At the age of 26, about 2 years after graduating from university, Gal and I were a very successful couple - we owned our home, we had a car, we had a child, I had a successful business and Gal had an awesome job. But life was too comfortable and without growth.

I remember the year we made the choice to start travelling. I had 30 kids on a waiting list for my early childhood center, but there was nothing exciting about it anymore. After 2 years of operation, I knew I could take a group of littlies and make them gifted. As soon as it became easy, it also became boring. No challenge, no growth.

The choice to take ourselves away from our families, from our hometown, from our country and from our language involved many/big risks, but the rewards were going to be greater.

Every person has their own comfort zone and whatever is comfortable for one is not necessarily comfortable for another. Find the range of your comfort zone. Boredom is a sign you are stepping into that zone. This is true in your relationships, in your job or career and on your journey to success. A victorious thrill of riding your bike at the age of 4 is gone when you are 14 and have been riding bikes for 10 years.

When you start saying, "This is too easy" or "It's boring", when you find out you no longer get up in the morning with excitement, you may be in your comfort zone. Think of it like swimming. If you always swim in the shallow water, you do not practice your swimming abilities or building your muscles. If you go into a river, you are at the mercy of the stream and you are going to drown. If you find yourself at the top of a waterfall, you will not be able to swim against the current and to save yourself. Practicing the hard stuff gives you more options.

Many people take risks when they have to, but then it is too late, because learning to swim during a flood or a strong tide may cost you your life. Make sure you choose risks you can handle, when you can always go back to the comfort zone of solid ground and not let the tide and circumstances choose your risks for you.

When you have found your comfort zone, start stretching yourself gradually. Risk letting go of some comfort and explore different parts of the stream of life. When it gets too much, you can always go back, recover and start again. Every time you go out of this zone, you grow a bit bigger, you accumulate small successes to add to your success tank and build your confidence further.

Success is the road and happiness is the reward

Losing a game is heartbreaking. Losing your sense of excellence or worth is a tragedy
- Joe Paterno

Poor people feel very sorry for successful people. To help themselves stay in that poor state, they watch successful people and only recognize what those who excel miss. Some of them say this is what happens when people succeed too much.

The first time Eden ever got an 80% score on a text in one of her university courses (that she really loved and wanted to succeed), she was upset for a week. Do you feel sorry for her? Some people asked me if it was worth it. They said Eden was upset because she was too used to getting high scores.

That really annoyed me. I wondered if they thought it was my job as her parent to teach her to get used to getting lower grades to avoid occasional disappointment. If you are feeling sorry for Eden, you can stop right now! Gal and I would rather her feel upset for a week in her life and learn to move on than suffer continuous humiliation, self doubt, fear of failure and low self confidence from having low standards and being used to failing (and 80% is hardly a failure).

Those who excel are not without feelings and they are sad when they do not reach their goals, but what seems to poor people a painful bleeding wound is barely a scratch on the surface for those who excel. I wish all the children in the world would get their first lowest score of 80% at the age of 21 and be sad for a week. And to all the parents, I wish they would teach their kids to "get used" to succeeding big time!

It is a myth that those who excel do not face challenges and difficulties, heartbreaks and even failures, but they are happier, because they are more capable, because they possess the greatest belief of all - "I can do it" - and with it, they can pick themselves up over and over again. They can use their accumulated success to bring more joy into their life. "Rich" people are happier!

The true currency of life is happiness and happy people can "buy" more of what life has to offer. Your success can be easily translated into comfort, relaxation, more time for fun, vacations to recharge your batteries and more. When you have enough money, you can go on a short vacation that will bring you a lot of joy and happiness and recharge your batteries to fight the challenges of the year. When you are rich, you can go on a longer vacation that will bring you greater joy and happiness and recharge your batteries even longer. If you are super rich, you can spend most of your life on vacation and be happy most of your time every year.

When we lived in Thailand for a year and a half and realized that travelling in our car, living in simple, authentic Thai places, eating real Thai food in remote places that foreigners never set foot in was a pure joy, we spent every spare day doing it. Out of a year and a half in Thailand, we travelled for half a year and our "batteries" were full for years later.

There is no speed limit on the road to excellence
- David W. Johnson

2011 is starting now and it was the Be Happy in LIFE vision to help more and more people move into the success zone and from there to the excellence zone. We believe that everyone deserves to be successful even if circumstances have gotten them to a "poor" environment.

We believe that success is not a single victory but an attitude towards life and that as easily as we "get used" to mediocrity, we can "get used" to excellence.

Gal's uncle always says, "It's better to be young, rich and healthy than old, poor and sick". We believe life is easier in the excellence zone and there are no limits to how much good you can have in your life. We believe that each success brings many happy moments and the happiness of big success lasts even longer.

May 2011 be full of successful and happy moments!

 

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