“Don’t limit yourself,” said Mary Kay Ash. “Many women limit themselves to what they think they can do. You can go as far as your mind lets you. What you believe, remember, you can achieve.”

What you think you can do — what you focus on — will become reality! You don’t need special equipment or a lot of money to succeed in life…but you do need some basic tools. Read Simple Acts of Moving Forward: 60 Suggestions for Getting Unstuck for practical ways to let go of whatever is holding you back. And, check out these ten ways to get unstuck…

10 Ways to Get Unstuck and Move Forward – Mary Kay Ash

1. Figure out what’s holding you back. Maybe you’re depressed because of a business failure, health issue, financial problem, or relationship breakup. Or, maybe you can’t seem to improve your self-confidence or maintain a happy, positive mood.  The first step to lgetting unstuck is to identify what’s stopping you from moving forward.

2. Be objective about sources and solutions. Whatever the source of your rut is, remember that there are ways to overcome it! Different problems have different solutions, but there are some general rules for getting unstuck. For instance, don’t focus on what you lack (eg, someone to love, or a business of your own). Instead, focus on what you want more of in your life (love, success, acceptance, freedom). Be specific about what you want, and try not to get caught up in negative or critical emotions. Take a step back and look at your life with objective eyes.

3. Look for the possibilities in your problems. In Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell writes, “Sometimes constraints actually create success. Not being able to swim made me run. And running taught me the discipline I needed as a writer.” What are you learning from the obstacles in your life? Are your problems — job stress, relationship breakups – leading you in an unexpected direction? The sooner you accept the lessons, the faster you’ll overcome your obstacles and move forward in life.

4. Work with your personal advantages. I’m a big fan of “to do” lists and I love checking off each task when I accomplish it. That’s one of my personal advantages, and I use it to make my business successful. For instance, one of my goals is to earn $50,000 a year as a blogger. Part of achieving that goal involves writing two blog posts a day. To stay motivated to write every day, I make a list of the blog posts I need to write at the beginning of each week…and the satisfaction of checking off those “articles to write” makes me feel happy and motivated enough to do it again and again and again! What are your strengths or personal advantages? Put them to work for you!

5. Ask for help moving forward in life. What do you need to do to get unstuck? Ask your family, friends, and colleagues for help. Do you need financial advice? Time? Resources? Motivation? Support? Be specific about what you need, identify who can help you, and be clear about what you’d like them to do. Mary Kay Ash said, “Honesty is the cornerstone of all success, without which confidence and ability to perform shall cease to exist.” Be honest about what you need.

6. Surround yourself with successful women. Who do you admire? Which family member, friend, or colleague is in the position you’d like to be in? To soak up the habits of highly successful women, stay connected to women who achieved their goals — even if you don’t know them personally, even if they aren’t alive! The attitudes, values, habits, and thoughts of women who soar will rub off on you. Also, stay away from people who hold you back or aren’t supportive.

7. Focus on one step at a time. If your number one goal is to start your own homebased business, don’t move towards a competing goal. For instance, you can’t put all your energy towards working from home while you’re planning a vacation that involves traveling around the world for a year! You can’t move ahead in two directions at once. Focus on “unsticking yourself” from one thing at a time. “So many women just don’t know how great they really are,” said Mary Kay Ash. “They come to us all vogue outside and vague on the inside.” Be concrete and specific about what you want out of life, and how you’ll get it.

8. Expect to do a little work. Bill Gates programmed computers at university for 10,000 hours before he started his own company. Gates is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in recent history (perhaps of all time) — but he spent 10,000 hours practicing before he took the leap! That’s 416 days of working around the clock. This tip for letting go of what’s holding you back is from Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, and involves practicing your craft. “…[successful people]…simply put in more hours than anyone else,” writes Gladwell.

9. Stay  connected to yourself. No matter how you’re planning on getting unstuck, stay open to revising as you go. For instance, you may decide to stop focusing on moving forward in your relationship, and start focusing on moving ahead in your career. That’s okay! Take your nose off the grindstone every so often…look around…and make sure you’re still on the right track. Let yourself make revisions whenever you need.

10. Help other women move forward their lives. When you encourage, educate, and connect with other women, you increase your own dedication, determination, and self-discipline! You feel good about yourself, which increases your motivation and gives you the self-confidence you need to move forward in life. It feels great to help women move towards their dreams, and it’s good karma!

“Those who are blessed with the most talent don’t necessarily outperform everyone else,” said Mary Kay Ash. “It’s the women with follow-through who excel.”

If you have any thoughts or questions on these ten ways to get unstuck, please comment below…

Related posts:

1. How to Make Mistakes and Move On – Brenda Ueland
2. 7 Ways to Overcome Procrastination at Work – Sarah Ban Breathnach
3. Living With Diabetes for Women – Mary Tyler Moore

In The Key to Success for Female Entrepreneurs – Coco Chanel, I described how finding your personal advantage or strength can set you apart from the masses of entrepreneurs or career women. Here, I share examples of innate advantages or personal strengths so you can see what I (and Garrison Wynn!) am talking about.

“Lots of people ignore their innate advantages because they can’t see how it delivers a professional edge,” writes Wynn in The Real Truth about Success:  What the Top 1% Do Differently, Why They Won’t Tell You, and How You Can Do It Anyway! “An innate advantage is anything that you possess naturally that can help you succeed.”

Click on his book to learn more about how to succeed in business and relationships. And, read on for several examples of personal advantages that will make your business successful…

Types of Personal Strengths or Advantages

The willingness to be honest and vulnerable. Oprah Winfrey is a hugely successful female entrepreneur who shares most aspects of her life, from her struggles with her weight to her difficult relationships with her family members. Her millions of viewers and fans relate to who she is because she’s real. Her honesty and vulnerability makes her likeable. But not every businesswoman can – or wants to be – that open with their clients or customers. 

The ability to connect with people. I admire those female entrepreneurs who can connect easily with others (aka “networking”) – because it really is who you know that helps your business succeed. “The people you need to help you make your dream come true are everywhere, and within your reach,” says motivational speaker Marcia Weider. If you think you can’t network, read Networking Tips for Introverts – you’d be surprised at how easy it can be!

Physical stamina and determination. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell says that hugely successful people put in 10,000 hours of practice before they hit the big time. Bill Gates logged thousands of hours as a computer programmer, the Beatles sung in dozens of dingy nightclubs, and Stephen King wrote legions of bad stories – and they all became wildly successful. A key to their success was the ability and willingness to keep practicing even when they were tired or felt like giving up. For more keys to success from Outliers, read Tips for Achieving Your Goals.

Access to resources: time, money, institutions. Family wealth or fame is a personal advantage that can make your business successful – and there’s nothing wrong with tapping into it! Perhaps that’s part of Maria Shriver’s success. I don’t have access to family wealth, but I can afford to focus on building my freelance writing and blogging career from scratch without worrying about money because my husband makes enough to support us. At first, this made me feel uncomfortable – but not anymore! Now, I am grateful for this opportunity to build my business. I now see it as a personal advantage that I’d be foolish to ignore.

“The idea that we all have to be a certain way or equally gifted or equipped is ridiculous,” writes Wynn in The Real Truth about Success. “Certain jobs or roles require a dominant set of skills or attitudes balanced by almost a complete absence of another set.”

There are many, many more innate abilities that will help you succeed! If you want to read another article with more examples, please let me know below.  I’d be happy to.

If you have any examples of how personal advantages can make your business successful – or questions - please comment below…

Related posts:

1. When You’re Starting Your Own Business – What Successful Businesswomen Know
2. From Hobbies to Careers – 5 Ideas for Turning a Hobby Into a Successful Business
3. For Female Entrepreneurs – Martha Stewart’s 10 Rules for Starting a Business

Coco Chanel – who created Chanel No. 5 perfume, bell bottoms, and the little black dress – was a successful businesswoman who had her own formula for success. Here’s what she said:

“The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.” – Coco Chanel.

She thought for herself, and she wasn’t afraid to say what she thought. And she probably said the wrong thing occasionally. She was human. But she also forgave herself (if she didn’t, she wouldn’t have succeeded the way she did!).

This key to success for female entrepreneurs are based on The Real Truth about Success:  What the Top 1% Do Differently, Why They Won’t Tell You, and How You Can Do It Anyway! Click the cover for details – Wynn is a funny, smart writer – and read on for tips businesswomen…

The Key to Success for Female Entrepreneurs – Coco Chanel

“We’ve been fed ideas about what it takes to succeed our entire lives, and we’ve eaten them up,” writes Wynn. “In many cases, though, we would be better off chewing them up and spitting them out.”

I won’t go into the wrong keys to success (though if you want me to, I will! Wynn’s wrong ways to succeed are very interesting…just comment below if you’d like me to write about them).

Instead of the usual keys to success, Wynn describes the key to success.

“Although wildly successful, the use of a personal advantage as a get-ahead tactic remains relatively unexploited by average U.S. businesspeople,” he writes. “And yet top performers are nothing more than average businesspeople who have discovered their secret advantage and leveraged it to reach new heights.”

The key to success for female entrepreneurs (and other successful women) is to find your personal advantage.

An example of using this key to success:

Paris Hilton decided she wanted to be more than a rich girl; she wanted to be famous. So, she hired paparazzi to follow her, snap photos, and publish those pictures of her. She used her personal advantages – money, appearance, love of the spotlight, shamelessness – to become a household name.

I’m not saying we should aspire to be like Paris Hilton, my friends. Nor am I saying we need money or elaborate exploits to get ahead. We just need to identify what our personal advantages are – our strengths – and use them.

Paris Hilton used what she had to become a highly successful woman on her own terms. And, her definition of a highly successful woman is different than my definition of a highly successful woman – but she achieved her goals. You gotta admire that.

Coco Chanel’s Personal Advantage

Coco was into fashion, clothing, elegance, and long-term style. Her key to success as a female entrepreneur was her focus on classic wear. Her designs had staying power. Her personal advantage was her tendency towards comfortable, casual, easy clothes – like the little black dress, which is still popular today.

“I don’t understand how a woman can leave the house without fixing herself up a little – if only out of politeness,” she said. “And then, you never know, maybe that’s the day she has a date with destiny. And it’s best to be as pretty as possible for destiny.”

Coco Chanel’s personal advantage was that she cared about her appearance, and she wanted other women to look and smell good. (Hmmm…is this a personal advantage, or is it just a passion?)

What’s Your Personal Advantage?

What sets you apart from the crowd? Think outside the box: what qualities do you have that other people don’t?  Think of things like how you once turned failure to success or how you changed careers. Your personal advantage is your key to success; you need only find and nurture it.

My next article here on See Jane Soar will list examples of personal advantages – some of them will surprise you – and describe how to nourish and use them.

What do you think of this key to success for female entrepreneurs? I welcome your comments below…

Related posts:

1. Turning Failure to Success for Female Entrepreneurs – Maya Angelou
2. For Female Entrepreneurs – Martha Stewart’s 10 Rules for Starting a Business
3. How to Make Your Business Successful: Find Your Personal Advantage