There is a common misconception in the community that to be successful involves an endless quest for the accumulation of a vast some of money requiring an enormous amount of sacrifice, a great deal of time, an exhausting amount of energy and in some cases a whole lot of luck.

The truth is there is a lot more to success than money alone. Truly successful people believe the exact opposite to be the case and rank money about fifth down the scale of priorities in their life behind things like health, personal growth and development, great relationships and phenomenal life experiences. Money is simply a tool used to achieve the goals above it on the list.

If there is one thing I’ve learned in my own quest for personal success it’s that the true definition of success is abundance in every area of your life, this starts with great relationships. Your level of success is largely dependant on how well you relate with other people. This is a skill to be developed like any other.

In fact if you truly want to become successful or acquire abundance in your life then there are a number of skills you have to develop first.

The first and most important is to develop the mindset of success. This means to set aside all of the thought patterns and beliefs you have been conditioned with and start with a completely open mind and clean slate. The level of success you have achieved so far is a direct result of your conditioning and if you want to change your results you have to change your actions. To change your actions you must change the way you think and make decisions.

Success is about defining what it is you truly want out of life and allowing your mind to develop the thought patterns required to achieve it.

Everyone has had experiences in their life that have left them wondering…Why has this happened to me? What did I do to deserve that? Or generally overwhelmed by feelings of anger, bitterness, betrayal, sadness and so on.

These are all natural emotions that all human beings will go through when a negative experience occurs in their life.

It is important to remember that what your mind is focused on is where most of your energy will be directed and therefore, subconsciously you will attract more of the same.

People who are constantly worried about their debts will invariably go deeper into debt. People who focus on disastrous past relationships usually end up in equally bad or worse relationships than the previous one. This is because the majority of their energy is being channeled into these negative areas of their life leaving very little surplus to focus on more positive aspects like career opportunities, new experiences and relationships.

As you hold onto all these negative emotions you automatically carry them with you in your present day life and apply them to similar situations in the future.

Your past is not your future unless you choose to drag it with you. If you are troubled by events from the past, try to look back at the situation with a clear vision unclouded by all of the emotions and try to understand why it happened without blaming anyone including yourself. When you do this you will find you will learn something about yourself which is one of the most positive things you can do.

There are positives in every situation and if you can master the skill of leaving negatives in the past and only bringing positives with you into the future your life become so fulfilling that all your negative experiences of the past will become things you will draw positive inspiration from for the future.