Success in life is difficult without the correct upbringing and opportunities. 

Some are born into this type of environment, so they will have great success in life just by living in their parent’s home.  While I’m not sure if it’s good to be raised in such an environment (sometimes, it seems stressful), I do know that many of those kids will grow up to be the very successful.

While I had an excellent childhood for learning about frugality and the dangers and proper uses of credit cards, the drive for being successful was lacking.  Perhaps it was because my family was too busy running a business.  I would spend a lot of time with babysitters, and was even shipped off to Delaware in the summer to spend time with my aunt and uncle. 

While overall, my experience growing up was good, it didn’t really help me develop that killer instinct that is so critical in being a successful entrepeneur and employee.  Nor did it teach me to really stick to one thing, everything was in a constant state of change for me.

So as you can imagine, when I started college I didn’t have the training I really needed to excel.  so what did I do?

I tricked myself (really a form of brainwashing) into being successful!

In computer science, after I got past the freshman and sophomore years of college, the classes got very hard (actually all of the computer classes were difficult, with the failing rate as high as 80 to 90% for some classes).

So when I knew all my friends were out partying, I would get depressed trying to read complex programming textbooks.  Many times, I would want to say “forget this” and go out with my buddies.  So I had to develop some coping mechanisms which I will outline below.

Here is what I would do:

• I would imagine that I was in prison and there was nothing else going on.  This was easy when I lived in a bachelor’s pad.
• I would mimic the voice of friends that were foreigners in my classes just to encourage a different perspective and pronunciation.  Hey, it works!!!
• I would take resting breaks where I would lay in my bed and close my eyes and let the solutions come to me.  This was much better than beating my brains all during the day, and then only to figure it out after I went to sleep that night.
• I would implement a crude reward system.  For example, if I finished writing  a computer program, then I would go out with friends for the evening (or later that week).

Later, after getting my foot in the door at my various employers, I would use similar tricks.  But this time, I would focus on the work and ways to make it more enjoyable.  So at work, I viewed each problem and project as a puzzle or I would pretend that I’m the only one that could figure the issue out (like in a detective). 

It just takes little changes on the way you view the task at hand, to make that task enjoyable.

These are just some of the techniques that I use to create a sense of motivation for myself.

Readers, do you use any special tricks that make you more of a success in life?

-MR