Most successful people or companies are seen as being more creative, more daring, more willing to take risks, and more able to produce things that others wouldn’t.

Creativity is what usually makes the difference between success and failure/ mediocrity. Being creative means to improve quality, reduce costs, increase usability and functionality, and improve design by doing connections and using methods that others don’t.

Contrary to popular beliefs, success is not the fuel of creativity, but the other way around. Success comes as a result of creative initiatives.  Most successful companies and people have understood that in order to make yourself noticed and to get attention you have to stand out from the crowd.

Don’t wait to be successful first and think that you will be able to let your creativity loose afterwards. Creativity will bring success, not the other way around.

People are afraid of assuming responsibility. They don’t want to be in the spotlight because they are afraid of making mistakes and failing, even if they would like to have the benefits that come with it, fame and success.

Being the centre of attention will start a natural response of fear. It’s our natural response because having all eyes on you means being in the center of attention which can lead to mistakes being spotted, to flaws being detected, and to criticism arising. People are more afraid of speaking in public than they are of death.

As networking, awareness, and branding are becoming corner stones of success, getting attention and being memorable is one of the best things you can do in order to succeed. But you can’t obtain this without assuming responsibility and being in the spotlight. This means that people need to know about you, to find out about the person behind the product or the project.

The simplest way to achieve this is to put your name on everything you do. What this will do is redirect attention to you while putting pressure on you to be responsible for what you create and deliver. By doing so there is no way around it. You will have to commit, do the work and deliver.

Personal branding is created by having things pointing to you, things that show what you can and have done.

Evolution has taught us that energy is precious, hard to get and easy to deplete. During our existence food has never been easy to acquire nor has it been sufficient to provide us all the energy that we needed. That’s why humans have the tendency to be lazy.

Our body is designed to make as little effort as possible and that’s how the human brain works as well. It tends to go on intuitive (automatic) mode each time it can in order to save energy for when it’s most needed.

While our intuitive mode is perfectly capable to sustain us in our day to day life and activities, it does not have initiatives that break routine, it doesn’t try to overcome fear, it won’t deliver and it won’t do meaningful work.

If you want to do something memorable, to be remarkable, to succeed, you will have to go against your very nature and make an effort, do the work, make commitments, and deliver.

At first this will be extremely hard, but since our body is a constantly adapting organism it will adjust to the new situation and in time it won’t be as hard as it was in the beginning. What is most important is to start, to make that initial effort and break the habit.

The greater the resistance you will have to fight to achieve something, the greater the satisfaction you will have once you have done it.

Understanding how your brain works will help you make better decisions, be more motivated, achieve the things you want, and be happier.

Your brain is divided into two parts; the intuitive (automatic) system and the cognitive part. You are only aware of your cognitive part of your brain, but most decisions are made by your intuitive part of the brain.

The intuitive part controls the way you walk, breathe, eat, but it also makes decisions regarding problems you have already solved in other situations like adding 1 to 1 and it also sends impulses to your conscious part when making decisions. Being an automatic system, it does not require a lot of effort to work, you never even realize it’s working.

The cognitive part is in charge of solving problems, making decisions for the first time, feelings and consciousness. It’s your cognitive part which involves awareness and the self consciousness. This is your voluntary system, the one that you control, but since it requires your control and attention to run, it also uses a lot of energy.

In this hierarchy, the cognitive system is the one in charge, the one capable to over-ride your automatic system and able to make decisions. The problem is that doing so requires a lot of energy and most of times your brain will rather save that energy and just go with the impulses received from your automatic system.

Living your life by instinct might sound like a good idea, but your automatic system is prone to make certain mistakes, to answer a question it has no answer for with the answer from another similar question, and to make false connections.

Without thinking really hard, give the first answer that comes into mind to the following problem: “A ball and a bat cost 1.10$. How much does the ball cost if you know the bat is 1$ more expensive?”. More than half of people will respond 0.10$. This is a classic case of mistakes your brain will do while working only in automatic mode.

Your automatic system, even if efficient in many cases, has its limitations. A constant moderate control from your conscious system can prevent some unwanted mistakes.

This kind of things and many more you will hear from almost all the people who achieved their goals, succeeded in business, became famous or anything else they set their mind to do. It’s the kind of things you hear at seminaries, public speeches and other public appearances.

• It’s all up to you.
• There is no “I can’t”, only “I don’t want to”.
• Once success is as important as breathing to you, then you will get it.
• Failure is a great lesson that you need to take advantage of.
• You can choose what you want to be.
• If you don’t feel like saying “Hell, yes!” then say “No”.

It’s hard to believe that everything is as simple as this.

The fact is that it’s all true. Everyone who succeeded knew it, they felt it. This is what led them to do the great things they have done. Their desire was greater than any fear, any responsibility they had to take, any decision they had to make, any hard work they had to do.

Motivation is what keeps you going when others have stopped and makes you get what others only dream of.