Success on Your Terms

Success on Your Terms

Do you consider yourself a success? If you don’t, you have lots of company. Only 5 to 10 % of Americans think they are really successful.
If you seek more success, ask yourself:

·What is success to me?

·What matters most to me?

·How can I become more successful?

To many people, success means things like

·Money
·Fame
·Love
·High status in society
·Great clothes
·A beautiful house
·A fast, luxurious brand new car
·A highly respected job
·Power over others
·Knowledge
·Making a contribution to the world around you

What’s in your picture of success? What do you really need to be a success, on your terms?

One of the best definitions that I have seen for success is “the progressive realization of worthwhile, predetermined personal goals”. Each part of this definition is very important.

Predetermined goal means you must define what you want to achieve Surveys show that only about 3% of all people go to the trouble of writing down their goals. If you take this one step, you advance much closer to the winners’ circle.

What’s a worthwhile goal? One that is important to you, and is congruent with your values, and that is not aimed at hurting others. So setting a goal that really is worthwhile requires knowing something about yourself, and some quiet reflection.

Progressive realization means that you are continually moving toward your goals, and making progress. It does not mean that you must be an overnight success. There really are no such animals. Progressive realization means that success is a process more than an end point. An athlete striving to reach the Olympics is a success even before they arrive at the stadium. The end point is not the whole story.

What can you do to increase your willingness to engage in the process? Realize that you do not have complete control over success and failure. Try as you might, success in reaching the end point of some of your goals may elude you because of events beyond your control. So focus on what you can control, not on what you cannot. And what you can control is doing and quitting. You can control doing and quitting much more than you can control the end result of your efforts.

Here’s the process:

1.Visualize the result
2.Work on the process of achievement
3.Persevere
4.Enjoy the results

A formula to remember is Vision + Process + Time = Results. (VPTR)

This formula for success is like gardening. The fruit does not immediately spring up from the earth. In January you imagine eating a juicy watermelon from your garden in the heat of the summer. Then you do the patient work of preparing the ground, planting the seed, watering, fertilizing, pulling the weeds, and keeping the pests away. If you do all those things, in good time you will be able to harvest the rich ripe fruit of your dreams.