Quick question before we start, please raise your hand if you have achieved everything you wanted to achieve in your life. Let me ask you another question … do you have a passion to succeed or to achieve something? Are you programmed to succeed? Would you like to know how?

There are many theories that have been written by experts, historians and psychologists across the world and also across time on success but the one thing every single one of them always defines as the secret to success is that you must believe you are going to succeed and that you can achieve what you want to achieve and that you are prepared to continue to have a go and keep having a go, learning each time, till you achieve what it is that you want to achieve.

If you ever get a chance to read a book by Napoleon Hill called Think and Grow Rich it is worth reading. The author, Napoleon Hill wrote this book back in 1937 and he was basically looking for a formula that anyone could follow to achieve success and in particular riches on an obscene scale. One of the 13 Secrets that he outlines in his book is that all millionaires and in this era billionaires know is the power of Autosuggestion. This was the term that was bandied around in the 1930's era and essentially autosuggestion means the reprogramming of your mind to believe something so much that your mind automatically pushes you towards success and in the case of Think and Grow Rich, obscene wealth.

In today's hip culture, the guru's of the self-help industry refer to the power of autosuggestion more as affirmations than the autosuggestion term however they are essentially the same. The bottom line is this, for you to succeed you have to believe that you can succeed and you have to train your mind to succeed and to think successfully.

Most people at this point and I are sure you are one of them, will go, yeah right what a load of hippy talk. Well maybe, but let us look at few facts. Let us look at some of the most successful people in the world and take someone who I am a great fan of Lance Armstrong and look closely at what he has achieved. Lance Armstrong is a leader and a hero in the cycling community. After being diagnosed with testicular cancer which had spread to his lungs and brain he fought this disease whole heartedly and not only beat the disease, but he used the power of his mind to go onto win the Tour de France, not once, not twice but seven times.

There is no way in the world that this man could beat such a debilitating disease unless he had programmed his mind to say, I will beat this disease and get my life back and exceed what I had achieved before. In fact, going onto win the Tour de France seven times is a feat never before achieved in the history of the race.

Knowing this information if you were faced with absolute adversity what would you do? Would you just simply stop, give up and die or would you keep fighting? Would you beat your adversity and then stop, or would you push your goals further out there to achieve more?

If you want to be successful, you must train your mind to be successful. You must have an overwhelming belief or faith in yourself that you can do it, even when everyone around you is telling you that you can not do it. The key to this success is to program you for success.

When I was doing a business course a few months ago one of the tasks that we were given was to write down ten things that we wanted to achieve. We were asked to identify specifically what those ten things are in business we wanted to achieve. The sort of items people wrote down -

1. I am going to make $200,000 cash profit this year

2. I am going to buy a new Mercedes

3. I am going to buy a jet ski

4. I am going to raise $500,000 to build an orphanage in Laos

5. I am going to buy the block Lot 4 Coral Coast Road in Townsville Australia

6. I am going to take my family to Las Vegas and have $5,000 spending money

7. I am going to raise the $4,000 to buy a Vintage Plane for the RAAF Museum

8. I am going to win the Archery at the next Commonwealth Games

9. I am going to learn to fly a plane

10. I am going to hike up Mount Kosciusko

What people were then told was to right these elements down onto a sheet of paper and put them up where you could see them every day where you can read them and remind yourself of what you are going to achieve. Essentially what they told us to do is to follow the third secret to success identified by Napoleon Hill called Autosuggestion.

However, what I noticed with all the people in course was that over a period of time, they began to give up. They did not read their ten items every day and they did not affirm that they would achieve what they wanted each day. Part of the reason this occurs is simply because the hustle, bustle and stress of everyday life and reality take over and your mind is cluttered with the stress. When the course finished they did not have the people in the course to continually speak with them to see if they were sticking to their ten things they wanted to achieve.

Look ask any educator in the world, if you are stressed when trying to learn something, you will never learn the material as well as somebody who is not stressd. Why … because a mind that is not stressed and cluttered will allow you to absorb the information more effectively than somebody who does not and this leads me to how Meditation is one of the secret tools to success.

Meditation on its own will NOT bring you success. The role of meditation in the art of success is to bring your mind to a point of calm where it can absorb all the material to help you succeed and in particular, so that you can ingrain into your mind the affirmations of what you are going to achieve.

The first step in using meditation to help you succeed is to learn to meditate to eliminate the stress. Before trying to address anything else you must learn to relax and be calm and to clear your mind. That is, your mind must be free from clutter, worry, concerns and anything else that may stop you from programming your mind to succeed.

There are many meditations that will help you in overcoming stress such as the breathing meditation technique, stillness meditation technique and the numbers meditation technique. Each of these techniques will teach you how to achieve focus and calm during your meditation session.

Once you have mastered those techniques, you can then focus on your affirmations or autosuggestions each day of what you are going to achieve. The Buddhists use sacred phrases in their meditations to help them become better people on their journey towards achieving enlightenment. You can use the affirmations or ten things you want to achieve in exactly the same way. By reflecting on the ten things you want to achieve during meditation, you are reinforcing what you want to achieve in the way of success and ingraining in a clear mind these affirmations or autosuggestions, which means you will maintain your focus to achieve these ten things even when you are challenged by what is going on in your day. When you start using this technique over a period of time, you will be amazed how your mind will say to you, "Hey, you are off focus on what you want to achieve get back on focus".

I recommend that for meditation to work effectively that you spend no less than 20 minutes in the morning and night meditating on the 10 things you must achieve. The reason that I recommend meditating twice a day is that you need to be reflecting on your affirmations for a minimum of 20 minutes a day, however most people find that it takes them about ten minutes of their meditation time before they are truly calm, when they are first starting out. You will find though as time goes on and you meditate regularly that you are able to get to a state of calm a lot quicker than when you first start out.

Look the bottom line is this, if you want to succeed, you must believe inside of yourself that you can achieve whatever success you want. It is totally up to you as to what you want to achieve and only you can do it. Remember, that every great achievement in the world started out as a single thought that one person believed in enough to what to achieve it. To stay on the path to success, meditation will help you to control the clutter and the stress the world can pile on you on a day-to-day basis in your mind.