Your personal drive is what determines the success of your online business. You need to walk your talk as well as talk your talk and draw on your past experiences! Many motivational articles and books talk about such things as programming yourself for success by implanting powerful and motivating thoughts in your mind. Major techniques for doing this include visualization, repetition of your goals in writing and speech, repeatedly telling yourself how great you are and how much you've already achieved in your life etc.

Over many years I've practiced most of the above techniques and there's no doubt that I'm better off now than I was 20 years ago both materially and mentally, at least some of which I can attribute to these techniques. But also, a large part of my progress I'm sure is due to the maturity which comes to everyone over the years. I believe that this comes mainly from learning from your mistakes - I know this sounds negative, but I also believe that every cloud has a silver lining, which is positive.

Many of my mistakes have packed a very powerful punch which I can still feel as the mere thought of them either makes me cringe, or screw up my eyes at the images that appear or, I'm not ashamed to admit, even to groan out loud with despair at how I could have been so stupid. These are all spontaneous reactions which still affect me years afterward.

Alright, so I'm crazy - but having suffered these setbacks in the past surely it's only fair that I should get some pay-back from them, isn't it? And I'm sure I can't be the only one to have had these experiences, so why not start working on getting your own pay-back if any of what I've said applies to you?

Maybe you've told yourself you're really going to succeed in what you're doing because you've met with problems and failures before and you've survived so you must be able to overcome all the other problems as well. That's the conventional motivational thinking anyway which can make you feel confident. Maybe too confident. But on the silver lining principle, I force myself to relive the failures, to conjure up the physical feelings I had at the time and to really know for certain that I never want to get in that situation again so what have I got to do to make sure history doesn't repeat itself?

So when I was speaking about walking your talk at the start, I was also meaning feeling your talk. Most of the linguistic techniques say that when you're programming your brain to succeed, you should also create emotions or feelings to make it real. Unfortunately, I'm not a very good actor so my emotions tend to be a bit limp when I'm just repeating words to myself but I've found that by reliving past difficulties, I can make a real lasting impression on myself.

Call it 'fear of failure' if you like but it works for me especially as I found out that my brain doesn't really believe me when I tell it all the fantastic things I'm going to do. I appreciate that many people wouldn't be too keen on recalling negative things that have happened - fine - but you can't be 100% positive all the time because you risk ignoring characteristics you may have that haven't produced the results you want.

As far as I'm aware, what I've been saying doesn't appear in any books I've read but I'm sharing it in case it strikes a chord with a few people and helps them to make progress.

Don Kiddle has run a number of his own companies during the last 25 years, from a chemical processing factory to management consultancy via construction, property development and other suitably stressful, high risk businesses. While sticking with the property industry for a bit longer, he is continuing to set up his own internet company which will become his sole business as soon as possible.