Invited firm: Francisco Alcaide Hernández
Expert in Personal Development and Management
www.franciscoalcaide.com | @falcaide
If we had to sum it up in one word, it would be self-reliance. Successful people are those who focus on ‘what am I going to’ and unsuccessful people focus on ‘what’s going to happen’. If you let your life depend on the crisis ending or certain people taking decisions, time can pass and you can still be in the same situation. There’s nothing worse than ‘passive hope’; wanting things to simply change over time.
People who are self-reliant are firmly focused on ‘solutions’ and non-self-reliant people focus firmly on ‘excuses’; and the danger of looking for excuses is that you always find them. It’s not hard to find something or someone to blame for our lives not being what we would like them to be.
People have an amazing ability to explain success as something ‘internal’ (I’m good, I’ve worked for it, I’ve been trying a long time…) and failure as something ‘external’ (the crisis, financial markets, the government, education…): a symmetrical way of looking at reality.
Why do many people blame their businesses closing on the crisis but nobody attributes their success to economic growth? Was the crisis really responsible for businesses closing or an inability to foresee where trends were heading, or excessive relaxation, or a lack of flexibility to adapt, or excess spending in good times?
The crisis is just a symptom (result) but not the cause (person). You don’t drown because you fall in the water (effect) but because you can’t swim (cause). We live in a world of causes and effects, and every effect (result) is the result of a cause (person). Here are some examples:
– The lack of money a person earns (effect = result) isn’t the problem, it is just a symptom of the real problem: their inability to generate income (cause = person).
– The lack of a person’s contacts (effect = result) isn’t the problem, it is just a symptom of the real problem: their inability to develop and strengthen relationships.
– A person’s bad health (effect = result) isn’t the problem, it is just a symptom of the real problem: their poor lifestyle habits.
In short, you are the problem but also the solution. To be successful the first thing you have to do is take responsibility for yourself. Success comes from investing in your own personal development: learning more to earn more. Your personal development is your goal. And the more you invest in yourself, the better opportunities you will have in life. The more you study, the more you train, the more you network, the more experiences you have… the better you will do. Personal development is simply increasing life options, broadening possibilities, in short, increasing your chances of being successful. According to Brian Tracy, one of the authors included in Aprendiendo de los mejores (Alienta, 7th Spanish edition): “Personal development is your springboard to personal excellence. Ongoing, continuous, it assures you that there is no limit to what you can accomplish”.
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