One of the most effective concepts in personal development is modeling. Modeling simply means that you find someone who’s already getting the results you want in some area, learn what they did to get those results, and then basically just do the same thing. It’s a lot like following a recipe to re-create a meal.

As an example, years ago I met a man who had gone from earning $40K/year to earning $400K/year over a period of two years. I asked him how he did it, and he told me. One of his main ideas was to find out what has made you money in the past, and do more of it; then find out what has lost you money in the past, and do less of it. But as brain-dead simple as this idea sounds, I found that it worked really well when I looked for ways to apply it, and I doubled my income in about six months. For example, I discovered that releasing products made me money, but developing products didn’t generate income at all. So I found a way to release new products faster. Simple idea, but very effective.

But something I’ve found helpful is that the reverse concept works pretty well too: If you find someone who isn’t getting the results you want in a particular area, don’t take their advice. This is an overgeneralization of course, but I find that more often than not, it’s pretty accurate

This is a really simple concept, but it’s amazing how few people take the time to apply it. Is there some area in your life right now where you want to start getting better results? Can you find one person who has already gotten those results and spend a few minutes asking that person how s/he did it? Or maybe find a book written by an author who had achieved those results? Then just by taking the same actions (almost blindly and brainlessly), you stand a good chance of getting those results for yourself.

And regarding modeling… modeling isn’t a substitute for intelligence and good judgment — it’s simply a shortcut, a way of narrowing the search space of possible solutions. For example, while I could eventually figure out how to self-publish my own book from scratch on my own, why not learn from someone else who’s already done it, such as Dan Poynter, author of several books on the subject? By modeling his approach to writing nonfiction books, I’m a lot further along with my book than I’d be if I just tried to invent my own process from scratch. Sure I can still refine and adapt his system, but modelinggave me a head start.

Right now I have a feeling of tremendous excitement about my future in speaking because I did my best and ran right up against my limits. Many people interpret this kind of event as a failure, but I see it as just the opposite. Remember that October 17th entry about modeling? Now I’ve identified one more person I can model in speaking, Linda Bown. And I’ll be seeing her in a few hours and have a chance to learn from her and her club mates. I’m something of a Borg in that respect — I love to take advantage of opportunities to assimilate the knowledge that’s in other people’s heads. And until we have personal mind-transfer devices, there’s no better way to do it than face-to-face and belly-to-belly conversations.

So if you ever find yourself running up against your limits in some area of your life, see if you can find someone who’s already pushed past that limitation in their own life. Then invite them out to lunch. Aside from the ideas you’ll learn, just from hanging out with such a person, you’ll gain a new perspective — an infectious feeling of energy and potential — that will motivate you to action. It’s like getting your batteries recharged.