Success in life I believe is for everyone but as simple as that statement is, most people will never get to achieve or taste success. They’ll work towards it. They‘ll confess positively about it. They will even make plans to achieve it. But most of them will never experience what I term true success.
Ask me why? Because most people don’t understand the concept of success. Most people tend to equate money with success, so when you have money people think you’re successfully. To some it is winning a lottery or winning a particular competition. To some it is climbing the corporate ladder and becoming the CEO of a fortune 500 company.
Success is more than the progressive realization of a worthwhile goal. It is a daily thing. Success is hidden in your daily routine. The things you choose to do on a daily basis is a pointer to who you will become in life. Leadership expert, John C Maxwell in his book said, ”to be successful, you don’t need to be lucky or rich. But you do need to know this:
- You are what you do daily.
- You first form your habits; then your habits form you.
- It is just as easy to form habits of success as it is to form habits of failure.
Every day you live, you are in the process of becoming. Whether you are becoming better or worse depends on what you give yourself to.’’
I will add that success is predictable when you follow time tested and proven principles. If you jump from a 10 story building in Germany, you are coming down. The same thing happens when you do that from a story building in Nigeria. What is at work is the law of gravity. Is it as simple as, “Things tend to fall downward when thrown up.’’ If you want to accelerate your success rate, the best thing to do is to align yourself with success principles. Allow me to share with you five principles that will help you achieve success.
1. Be dissatisfied with the status quo
Everybody is a work in progress and that does not exclude you. Rome was not build in a day and so you cannot be all you want to be in a day. Success is not hard to come by if you keep it in view and work towards it on a daily basis. Your current state should not be a resting place. There is a better you waiting patiently to be discovered by you. We make progress in life only if we are constantly dissatisfied with our current state. Dissatisfaction produces in us a force to act, a reason to focus, and the urge to break into new frontiers to seek something better. The very fact that there is a target to aim for can drive an idea forward to early maturity.
Complacency set into our lives when we become satisfied with our present state and this brings along self-destruction. Your current state is only a transition stage, it is a journey and not a destination. Never be satisfied with where you are presently. You can be more. You can be better. The person you need to be is not who you are now, you can still be associated with excellence and achieve significant success. Believe in your untapped strengths, initiatives and keep striving for more in every area of your life. What you will discover is that success will become a friend.
Just like every company out there needs innovation to drive business, we too need to constantly re-invent ourselves and keep abreast of the changes that lie ahead. Making changes and improvements should be a natural part of our lives. The biggest room in the world is the room of self improvement. Never think that you have arrived or attained perfection, for there is always room for improvement. I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing i do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, i press towards the goal for the higher prize.
It is those who are displeased with their current position that makes progress. Richard Branson in his book Business Stripped Bare said this of Apple, ”since 1976, with design and ease-of-use its business mantra, Apple has simply kept inventing and improving. The sale of over 100 million iPods and three billion downloads from iTunes is proof of their success. While other businesses have been caught in the free fall of the record industry revolution, Apple has been able to fire up a new generation of listeners, not just with music but with podcasts, radio shows, TV shows, movies….’’ That is a powerful account of Apple’s relentless passion for innovation and progress.
You have to believe in yourself and see into the future. Aim high. Set new goals that will stretch and challenge you. Celebrate your current level of achievement move forward to something greater. Set new records. If you challenge yourself, you will experience new levels of success. It’s not always easy to reach your goals but that’s no reason to stop. Instead encourage and say to yourself, I can do it. I will go the extra mile. I’ll keep on trying until I win. There is no limit to your level of success so long as you believe in yourself, the higher powers, and work hard to expand your horizon.
As an entrepreneur, blogger and business development expert, I have never been satisfied with what I have achieved. I constantly strive for change and develop myself in the core areas have chosen to focus on. Over time, I have lived with this golden rule: today’s success will become tomorrow’s impediments if you stop striving for more achievement. I never allow my today’s success to get into my head. I daily take up new challenges and break into new territories.
Two things I couldn’t do very well were speaking and write. I always found it intimidating to stand in front of a crowd to speak as well as write essays. I hated to admit defeat but however hard I struggled, stage fright and lack of writing skills were beating me to it. This made me want to be a business leader, a job where speaking and writing is always needed. When I found out that my college local SIFE team was in need of a team leader, I volunteered and was chosen. What happened? We won the entrepreneurship award for the best creative business solution. I was more than happy and couldn’t wait to conquer more territories.
That success laid the foundation for what I’m doing now. There is nothing in this life you cannot achieve once you put your mind to it and you travel the extra mile. I have not stopped challenging myself. I think the writer and mountain climber James Ullman summed it all up when he said something like, ”challenge is the core and mainspring of all human action. If there’s an ocean, we cross it. If there’s a disease, we cure it. If there’s a wrong, we right it. If there’s a record, we break it. And if there’s a mountain, we climb it.’’
I encourage and challenge you to constantly seek a better future because there is more to life than what you’ve achieved.
I will dish out the rest principles tomorrow. Stay tuned.