We live in a fast-paced world that is often focused on short-term gain and immediate gratification. Your focus gets pulled to urgent tasks or problems to the detriment of long-term projects that help create lasting success. Distraction is a powerful force that pulls attention away from meaningful work and new creations.

Yet, long-term success is really what most of us want. We don’t want to be chasing the shiny thing and be constantly putting out fires. The awesome news is that you can create a culture of long-term success for your life and business.

The Vision of Long-Term Success

In your business or career holding the vision for yourself as a person capable of long-term success helps create the reality of long-term success. Human nature is to focus on all the things that went wrong or could go wrong. How do you counteract this? Review past events from your life and see your track record. Count every success, no matter how big or small. You will most likely see quite a bit of success.  Now, let’s build on it.

You have been successful in the past at some things, so it is likely that you will have success now and in the future. You are a person who is capable of success. When you try something new, you, then, start from a place of seeing yourself as being capable.

This vision helps counteract the fear of the “unknown” because you have already brought some “known” factors forward.

Adapt and Change. Develop a Growth Mindset

I can practically hear you thinking, “How can I know I will be successful at XYZ?  Some people do fail and not everything works out all the time.”

People who have long-term success change and adapt.  If something is not working, they tweak it or shift the vision slightly or even a lot. They keep experimenting and keep learning. They do not throw their hands up in the air and say, “I give up.”

I have failed forward many times. I have created programs where no one signed up. Not everything was an immediate success for me. What did I do when this happened? I changed and adapted. I revised and restructured what I offered and/or changed the marketing. I learned from it.

Develop Grit

Develop grit or what my mother would say, “StickToIt-iveness”. When I started my company several years ago, I noticed after about two to three years, that many of my colleagues who started their companies around the same time, had quit their businesses already. I knew I was in it for the long haul. I knew I had something great to offer and I would not quit because I saw myself as a person capable of long-term success.

Be a Long-Term Thinker

People who achieve long-term success see themselves as long term thinkers and can project forward the potential results of the action they take today. Yet, most people are short-term oriented and choose pleasure, satisfaction, and dopamine boosts right now at the expense of more rewarding gains somewhere in the future.

How can you shift away from instant gratification and achieve long term success?

Line up your present self with your future self. You can use visualization to do this. Close your eyes and visualize your future self because of your positive present-self decisions.

Become a Strategic Planner and an Action Taker

Finally, long-term success requires that you be both a strategic planner and an action taker. You need both. Most people lean toward one or the other. They plan, plan, and do more planning and very little action. Or they jump into action without plan and take a lot of action and some is misguided. Train yourself to be excellent at both planning and action.

“Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible. If you do what you have always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.  It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.” Tony Robbins

Journal prompt: What do I notice when I see myself as a person capable of long-term success?

Sheri Kaye Hoff, is a Transformational Business Coach known for inspiring, intuition, vision, and massive action, and being a catalyst for personal and business growth, joy, and profits in a way that is fun, relaxing, and fulfilling. She uses both spiritual and practical techniques to obliterate blocks and create transformational change. Sheri is a business, leadership, happiness, and inner game expert. She has overcome nearly dying and has made it her life mission to share the keys to happiness and success. Learn More About Sheri

If you liked this, you will love my Living Your Vision Course