The 2004 Olympics just ended in August. As always, it was an exciting event with its dramatic twists and turns, exhilarations, surprises, and disappointments as these great athletes performed at their peak in front of millions, if not billions, of fans for glory of representing their country and possibly receiving a gold medal.

You, too, can experience same excitement in your life. What are you doing now to achieve your “goal” medal? What are you doing to realize your goals in life?

You don’t need to be a world class athlete to achieve success in life. However, you can use many of same techniques that these athletes use to accomplish their goals.

The following are five secrets that will help you stand on winner’s platform in life:

1. Create Passion with Goal Setting Take time to write down goals that excite you. Ask yourself following questions:

* How will I feel when I achieve these goals? * What is keeping me from achieving these goals today? * What are times and dates I want to achieve these goals? * What resources do I need to accomplish these goals? * What is my plan B, or secondary route, to achieving these goals?

2. Believe in Greatness Once you have created your goals, take time to visualize your achievements. World class athletes visualize victory before it happens. Take 15-30 minutes just before you go to bed or wake up in morning and do following:

* Find a quiet place. * Quiet your mind, slowing down your breathing. * Visualize that you are already achieving whatever goal you want to accomplish. What does it look like? How does it feel?

World class athletes prepare themselves yesterday, today, and tomorrow for success through intense training and sacrifice. What are you doing to prepare yourself for your success? Do a self-analysis to find out how prepared you are today in relationship to your goals and what resources and skills you need to acquire to achieve your goals. What sacrifices are you willing to make so that you can achieve your goals? If it is a promotion, find out what skills, education, and resources are required to obtain that position. If it is a six-figure income, what sacrifices are you willing to make to realize it? Less television, more education?

I always say, “If you want something bad enough, act like you already have it.” That’s what champions do. They already believe that they will win a championship, a title, a gold medal. They have a positive, self-expecting attitude and set bar for others to try to aspire. I love tennis. One of my favorite tennis players is Roger Federer, #1 ranked player in world. When watching him play, I can see he owns court. In his quiet, yet confident manner, he says to his opponent, “I am #1, I am best!” Then he goes out and wins. With his positive attitude, he expects to win every time.

How can you apply this principle? Well, one example is if you are a manager and want to be promoted to vice president, act like a vice president today. That means dressing like a vice president, making decisions like a vice president, leading people like a vice president, etc. Also what it means is delegating certain tasks so that you can learn required skills of a vice president (Read Delegate to Accelerate Success). Do you expect to succeed at any project with which you are involved?

3. Create a Mastermind Group There is a saying, “A wise person learns from his own mistakes, a wiser person learns from other people’s mistakes.” That is what a mastermind group will do for you. Winning athletes have a mastermind group so that they will make fewer mistakes and take less time achieving their goals. A mastermind group is an assortment of people dedicated to give you best advice, feedback, training, etc., so that you can achieve your goals faster. The mastermind group also gives you encouragement when needed. In sports, this might be a coach, a trainer, a physical trainer, manager, and agent. In your situation at work, it might be following:

Having been in business a number of years, I’m amazed at number of people who don’t have slightest idea of what customer service is. Customer service is not a way of doing things – it’s an attitude.

I always love it when company’s send their people to seminars to learn about customer service. All seminars will discuss customer’s needs and expectations and orator will package these ideas as new and cutting edge when in fact these very ideas were in practice over 30 years ago!

Somewhere along line, we forgot customer in favor of bottom line. Some of this may also be attributed to different mind sets over time and how people tend to treat one another.

Let me wax poetic here a moment. When was last time you could go to a gas station and have an attendant in a white shirt and tie wait on you, check your oil, clean your windows, and fill your tires just as a way of saying thanks for your patronage?

More than likely station you went to had an attendant who’s appearance was disheveled, wearing more jewelry than you own, and here you are passing money through a bullet-proof panel!

It is said that Doctor’s make worst patients, well my friend I’m here to tell you that Customer Service people make worst consumers! With all customer service people I’ve known over years from both sides of fence there’s a real lack of wanting to “champion” cause of customer. Few people posses that trait and those that do don’t last long as they’re viewed as oddities and pushed out in favor of group consensus.

On other hand, I have also met customers who no matter what approach you used they were bound and determined to make your life miserable. These people make “fight” personal and will never be satisfied regardless of what you do.

Delivering great customer service is easy! We just need to get back to basics that were laid down decades before – what we’ll call tried and true methods.

How do you deliver great customer service?