People who achieve great things in their lives and then go on to share their experiences in a manner which earns them money further often come in for a lot of criticism. It’s perhaps not so much the case with bloggers or even those who go on to release a book about their success (and hopefully about how they got there), but more so the case with motivational speakers and people who generally get into markets such as life coaching or any other kind of teaching or training.

The argument is that “If your methods of success are as successful as you say they are, then why are you trying to make money by selling them to us instead of just going ahead with them and making more money in that way?”

It’s a fair enough question and criticism to be levelled, but if it can be answered convincingly then you know you’re right on top of your game.

Anyway, there are major life lessons which can be taken from the success story of one person’s journey, to be used in the journey of another, so sharing in this way is encouraged. This is especially true if it isn’t only the success story that’s been shared, but a lot of the failures which formed part of the journey to success as well. There are plenty of those too – in fact there are plenty more failures than successes…

Often it can prove to be quite the challenge trying to find something you can go with from the story of someone else’s journey and use in your own and that’s also often where the criticism and scepticism begin to arise.

If however you start looking at everything with the view that life is generally made up of watershed moments, you can learn to draw the most valuable of lessons from any success (or failure) story and use them to your advantage. If you look at any journey to success you’ll realise that there was some kind of defining moment – some major event which went on to shape the way things were going to subsequently play out.

If the subject in the success/failure story is fortunate/unfortunate then the watershed moment takes place and explicitly shapes the way forward. So for example an emerging sports star’s swansong performance might be that which sees them scoring the winning goal or something like that in the final game of the world championships – in which case they’ve instantly written themselves into the history books.

The other way in which it could go is if the watershed moment is a little more passive, setting the stage for you to capitalize. My own story is that of how the business I created became successful, but I used that success to shape my life into one which I’d be happier living every day.

Someone else’s watershed moment might be a little less glamorous, and that’s okay too, such as how they may use the services of breast augmentation NYC has on offer to launch a career which capitalizes on their newfound self-confidence.

It’s all about how you react to the watershed moments and sometimes you can even induce those watershed moments.