“The 6 Success Strategies for Winning at Life, Love & Business” by Wolf J. Rinke, PhD

Part two of a two-part interview with Wolf J. Rinke, PhD, author of The 6 Success Strategies for Winning at Life, Love & Business

Before embarking on a successful journey, says management consultant and professional speaker Dr. Wolf Rinke, one needs to follow a roadmap; the same is true for our journey through life. In this conclusion of our interview, Dr. Rinke points to the steps along the road that can lead to a winning life.

When is fear helpful and when is it destructive?
Fear is wonderfully helpful if you’re sitting in a movie theater and someone screams “Fire!” You don’t exactly want to be calm and think about what to do; you want to get yourself out of there. And in that respect, fear is helpful. In just about every other aspect in our lives, though, fear stands in the way of doing what you really want to do. We all fear failure but we also fear success. One is as powerful as and as much of a hindrance as the other. We may fear success because even though we think we desire success, we don’t like change. There’s a saying: “The only things that like change are diapered babies and cashiers.”

The fear of failure is something that will keep holding you back simply because no one likes to fail. But in my personal lexicon, the word failure doesn’t exist. What I mean by that is, when I do something I get results – either I get the results I want, or I get the results I don’t want, but there is no failure. And it’s simple: If you get the results you want, keep doing it. If you get a different result from the one you want, quit doing it. People keep making the same mistake over and over again. So do something different and you’ll get different results. There’s a wonderful saying: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’re always going to get what you always got.”

What are some suggestions for stamping out the fear?
We all paint terrible pictures in our imaginations and those pictures get in the way of our doing what we need to do. Some people have a fear of flying, for example, but the way to overcome that is to get yourself on a plane. Get yourself to do what you’re fearful of doing. Do the thing you fear, and what you fear will be gone.

How can we turn failure into opportunity?
Just about every time I’ve had a setback in my life, it’s caused me to succeed faster. For example, one of my early books was a niche market book and the publisher told us it would be a best-seller. But nine months later he called to say they were discontinuing it. I had retained the copyright on that book so I reworked it – it became one of the forerunners of a continuing education business. That book was a “failure” but we turned it around and made it a successful business. And it all started because the publisher said “I don’t want to print your book anymore.” It’s true that every cloud has a silver lining, but you have to look for that lining – look for the opportunity. And the reality is, if you look for an opportunity you’re going to find it.

What are the three types of optimists?
The first type is the unrealistic optimist. This is a person who is a dreamer but never wants to pay the price to transform the dreams into reality. The second type is the eternal optimist. This type is best illustrated by the phrase “Don’t worry; be happy.” His thought is, “Just don’t worry about anything and everything will work out.” But my experience is no, it won’t. You have to do something if you want things to work out. Bad stuff happens to good people, so you have to do something when bad stuff happens.

You want to become the third type of optimist – the pragmatic optimist, This is what I recommend you work toward. The pragmatic optimist accepts setbacks and tragedy and disaster as the normal order of life. Somehow, we have an illusion that everything is supposed to work out. But if you look at the world and at nature, that’s not how it goes. Tragedies are built into the system. So you and I need to accept it as being the way it is and recognize that life is tough – and then establish systems for finding the good in the bad. That’s a selective process. We all have the ability to find that good.

For example, I had a friend who invested all his savings in real estate deal, which eventually went belly up. But he said, “It’s not all that bad. My life was boring, and I needed the challenge.” It’s not what happens to you; it’s what you do about it.

What’s the most important strategy for success?
It’s really two things. One is perseverance. I use the “rule of seven”; – that is, don’t accept the word “no” until you hear it from the horse’s mouth at least seven times. Pursue your dream; keep going after it, and don’t accept no as an answer. “No” is just a negotiating position. It’s something to talk about. Focus your mental energy.

The second one is right on par with perseverance: Take action. I’m always amazed by how many people know how to do something right, but cease to take action. The reality is, if you know what to do and you don’t do it, it won’t do you any good. To win at life, love and business you need perseverance and a willingness to take action.

"The 6 Success Strategies for Winning at Life, Love & Business" by Wolf J. Rinke, PhD

Part one of a two-part interview with Wolf J. Rinke, PhD, author of The 6 Success Strategies for Winning at Life, Love & Business

As an author, management consultant, associate professor and professional speaker, Dr. Wolf Rinke understands what it takes to be successful. At age 14 he began working full time onboard a ship, and it was there he first developed the principles that guide him along his life’s journey. In this first part of our interview, Dr. Rinke discusses the scientifically validated principles that can help anyone develop an attitude for success.

What’s your definition of success?
I like the definition I borrowed from Earl Nightingale: “Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal.” And the reason I like that definition is because it has two important components. The first one is that the goal must be progressive. In other words, once you get there something else needs to take the place of the original goal, because that’s basically what pulls us along this journey of life. The second component is that it needs to be a worthy goal.

My own definition of success is “anything that accomplishes what you want, as long as it enriches someone else.” That’s success in my book. It took me about 26 years to figure out there is a universal law – and I don’t use that term lightly – and universal law says that if you want something, you first have to give it. It must enrich someone else.

What are some of the action steps to attain success?
What I’ve outlined in “The 6 Success Strategies” are six specific things that we need to work on if we want to achieve success in all aspects of our lives. I call it the double-PEP formula. What that acronym stands for is:

Positive self-esteem
This really has to do with taking care of Number One. If you don’t feel good about yourself, certainly you’re not going to be able to give that away. Everything you do in life has to start with yourself. If you’re not becoming the best you can be, then certainly you can’t help other people become the best they can be.

Purpose
What are you here to do on this short journey? What’s your purpose? Why are you here? I believe that all of us have a purpose; there’s something we are meant to do while we’re on his short journey. That’s what purpose is all about – finding out what that something is.

Energy
Energy has to do with getting “high” without getting stoned. There’s an overwhelming body of evidence that shows we can turn ourselves on. We don’t need drugs to do it. The drugs are already resident in our bodies. Energy has to do with figuring out how to turn yourself on without having to resort to anything external.

Education
This has to do with becoming a voracious lifelong learner. As a management consultant I am consistently overwhelmed with the fact that the only way you get personal lifetime job security in today’s wide global economy is to invest in the most important resource you own – yourself. This is about you. What are you doing to be the best you can be?

Positive attitude
Find the good in the bad. Prof. Marty Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania led a psychology movement that exemplifies this concept of finding the good in the bad. He calls it “developing a positive explanatory style,” which simply means that bad stuff happens to all of us. But it’s not what happens to you; it’s what you do with it that really counts. That’s a real important take-away. Because once you figure that out, you no longer play the blame game, and when you no longer play the blame game, the quality of your life improves.

Perseverance
Unfortunately, although we all want it on a silver platter, at the counter of success you always have to pay full price and you always have to pay in advance. People are fond of pointing fingers at those who somehow find a shortcut to success. But that’s so rare – it’s analagous to winning the lottery – so you don’t want to bet your life on that. You have to hang in there and you have to pay the price. If it’s worth going for, then you must pay for it. And I mean pay in effort, initiative, and time -- all those rare things we don’t want to give up. If you do that consistently and you’re willing to pursue your purpose, sooner or later you’ll get what some people call lucky. I like this saying: “The harder I work the luckier I get.”

Do you feel dreams and goals are important?
I think dreams are critical. As a professional speaker I take people through a process that helps them dream a big dream. Somewhere on our journey we’re often taught not to dream. People are told to get real or to get their heads out of the clouds. I think it’s important to dream a big dream but there has to be more than just dreaming.

Once you figure out what your dream is, you have to step it down. You want to take the dream and step down into very specific goals and objectives -- what I call baby steps, the little things you know you can do. The reality is that people dream the big dream but then think it’s way too hard, so what you want to do is get it down to where it isn’t simply “not hard,” but where it’s really easy. Once you accomplish a bunch of small objectives, you get your goal accomplished. And once you accomplish a bunch of goals, you get your dream accomplished.

One more little trick: You have to fool yourself. Paying the price is a pain. Who wants to do that? In order to pay the price and do it willingly, you have to fool yourself. You have to extend a reward that’s so big, you’re willing to pay the price of doing what it takes right now to get to where you want to go. Establish external carrots that motivate you to do the things you don’t really feel like doing.

What are the four steps for turning dreams into reality?
This ties in with what I’ve previously mentioned:

1. Dream the big dream and get very clear on what that dream is.
2. Step the dream down into specific goals.
3. Step the goals into specific objectives.
4. Write it all down.

Read part two of this interview with Wolf J. Rinke, PhD, in the next post.