John Assaraf (author/speaker) presents a short YouTube monologue arguing there is a reliable "recipe for success." He contrasts a "recipe for failure" (relying on hope, wishes, prayer, and busywork) with a stepwise recipe for success: think (clarify what you want), decide (commit), plan (map the first few steps), take action, review results, and repeat the cycle. He closes with a practical call-to-action to apply the sequence.
Chapters
I hope you're having an amazing day. This is John Asaraf, New York Times best selling author of Having it all and the Answer. And this morning I was thinking about a question that I get asked a lot. And the question was, is there a real recipe for success? And the answer is, from my experience, I think there is a real recipe for success. There's also a real recipe for failure. And maybe I'll share with you the real recipe for failure first. The real recipe for failure is using hope and wishes and prayer and doing busy work on an ongoing basis where you're repeating that as your main strategy. That's a recipe for failure. The recipe that I wrote out that guarantee success in my opinion 100% of the time is that instead of being busy doing, you stop for just a little bit of time and you think. Now there's a big difference between thinking and having thoughts. And if you thought about what it is that you really want to achieve. Because when you decide what you want to achieve, you set an intention for a, a direction or a course or an outcome that you want to achieve. And that just takes a little bit of thinking. So you ask yourself, what do I want to achieve? So you think the next step is, you decide. And what does this mean? Decision means to cut off from. So after you thought about what you want, then you decide, am I really prepared to do what it takes to achieve that? Am I prepared to learn what I need to learn? And am I prepared to overcome whatever obstacles may be in my way? And am I prepared to do what I have to do for the long haul? So think, then decide. Then the next phase, which I would say 99% of the people fail at or miss, is they don't develop plan. And so think about this. Would you ever get on an airplane with a pilot that didn't have a plan on how they're going to get from where they are to the destination or a captain of a boat? Of course not. They chart a plan. And so the third part of achieving success in a reliable, perfectionist way is to plan. What's the first step? What's the second step? What's the third step? What's the help you need? And you chart a course, even if you just start the first three or four steps, it's better than not having a plan. The fifth part is to then review the results that you've achieved. So you think, you decide and commit, you plan, you take action on that plan. And in taking the action, that's where the actual learning comes in. Did it work? Didn't work. Am I on course? Am I off course? And then once you review it, you repeat the process. You do some thinking about it. Then you make a decision what the next steps are. Then you make a decision on taking action. And then you get the results from that action and you repeat the process. It's not that difficult to do, but my friend Jim Rohn said things that aren't difficult to do are also easy to not do. So here's what I'd like you to do. Take some time today. Think about what you want. Decide whether you're committed to achieving it. Plan three or four steps towards it. Take action, see what the results are, and then repeat the process. That's a surefire way to achieve any goal you choose.
