So many times we think that there is some Secret out there that will get us to our goal. We hope to find the 5 secret steps to success, the 3 keys to internet fame, or the secrets to social media marketing. The truth is that there really is no secret out there. The fundamental howto’s are the easy part. What we are looking for isn’t out there. It’s in here.

We think our problem is that we don’t have the resources to move forward. We think we don’t have time and we don’t have the money. We believe we don’t know how, or that we don’t have the skills.

Very little of our success depends on what we know, or our skills. The rest depends on our belief in ourself, our mindsets, good support from other people, and applying ourself to the problem.

A Lesson From Software

I have fixed some very difficult to discover computer Software bugs. I have lots of experience, and I am fully confident in my debugging ability – even the toughest of problems. But I can’t give you the 5 secrets to debugging. I can teach tools to debug, yet these are woefully inadequate by themselves to solve the problem. I can’t even tell you that if you follow exactly how I solved this other problem from before, then you’ll be good. Each software problem is different. The truth is that good software debugging is an art. It’s not a fixed repeatable process. It’s combination of techniques and smarts and intuition.

There have been times when I couldn’t have solved it on my own. I needed to talk to someone else who asked the right questions. Other times I would walk into their office and say, “Hey! I need help with this weird problem I’m seeing.” They would just listen when I explained what I am seeing, and I then it comes to me and I say, “Oh! Never mind.”

The hardest problems I’ve solved, I solved by giving up. I threw up my hands after hours of testing, probing and analyzing, and only when I decided to go take a walk around the block, or just go home, did I solve it. And when the answer came, I wasn’t even thinking about the problem. The solution just intuitively emerged.

In almost every case of solving a difficult software bug, I had to challenge my assumptions. The biggest reason the problem was so difficult to solve was that my beliefs weren’t true.

Go For It

This is a great analogy to other areas of our life. Trying to repeat someone else’s success often doesn’t work. We are different people. Our situation is different. Instead, achieving our goals primarily depend on testing our beliefs and assumptions, relying on other people, opening up our intuition, and applying ourself. The solution isn’t in our resources, it’s in our resourcefulness.

So, stop looking for the answers out there. Sure, go head and read books and blogs, and take in other helpful information, but know that it’s not a magic answer. There is no secret, magic sauce. Instead, get good support that will help with your inner work – help you test your beliefs about yourself and the world, work through fears, open you up to intuition, and who will believe in you when no one else will. And then dive in.