Everyone wants to learn the secrets of being successful in life. There are many people who have achieved success in this world. Success does not come to those who wait... and it does not wait for anyone to come to it. Most successful men have not achieved their destination by having some new talent or opportunity presented to them. They have developed the opportunity that was at hand. The difference between failure and success is doing things nearly right and doing a thing exactly right. Nobody is born a success, they create it. Success is not an accident or found in a lottery ticket, you need to create it. Knowing the secrets of success and correctly implementing them would certainly help one to achieve success in life.
What is success?
Success is achieving one’s chosen goal. The goals that one aspires for and has worked for, whatever they might be. It is favourable outcome of our endeavour. Ongoing string of accomplishments when put together, add up to a major obtainment in life, is known as success. Success has a different meaning for each one of us. The meaning of success comes in many forms, and many definitions. It all depends on what you are searching for in life. Success is a journey, not a destination, you have to move ahead. Climbing the ladder of success is like climbing a mountain. Every peak is a destination, and you climb one peak at a time. Reaching every destination is a challenge well met. A musician may see success as a number one hit, a doctor may see success as a surgery that went well, for a politician it may be attainment of power, and for a scientist, the invention or discovery of something new. It basically depends on the prospective of life you have.
Define success
Always remember you are your own captain of your ship. Meaning of success changes from person to person. Success does not come to you... you go to it. Each individual’s own definition of success would be influenced by the following factors:
l Success is subject to individual interpretation based on upbringing, past experiences, role models, personal motivations and goals. Carefully contemplate your definition of success based on your values.
l When you achieve success, it is sometimes measurable and sometimes not.
l Very few people achieve success accidentally. Most people who achieve success first defined it then planned for it; they set a goal to achieve it.
One has to spend some time to critically analyse and decide accordingly his/her own definition of success. This would help to formulate the next course of actions to be drawn and followed to attain success. The word success is well-defined by;
l “S” for solo focus
l “U” for unlocked imagination
l “C” for crystal clear path
l “C” for connection to the heart
l “E” for extraordinary energy
l “S” for skill set
l “S” for stop at nothing
Secrets of successful people
The great successful men of the world have used their imagination... they think ahead and create their mental picture in all its details, filling in here, adding a little there, altering this a bit and that a bit, but steadily building. Some of the secrets of highly successful people are:
1. Successful people are good at using their dominant skills in doing what they love to do and in what they really excel. They are good at evaluating their own strength and weakness and accordingly they built their own temple of success.
2. They tried to actualise their strength and minimise the effect of their weaknesses.
3. They have a clear vision and mission of what they want to do.
4. They are highly confident and never let setbacks and failures dent their confidence.
5. They have identified the power of subconscious mind. Conscious minds are clumsy and limited in capacity. Subconscious mind is much larger in potential and capability than the conscious mind. Successful persons know how to use it successfully to realise their goals and dreams.
6. They are highly consistent and believe in, “doing well is not enough, giving the best in each of the undertaking is more important”.
7. A goal well remembered is well achieved. Having created goals, successful people remain focused on them, and never doubting their ability to accomplish them.
8. The courage to take calculated risks is a big factor in their success.
Successful persons have three traits in common;
I. They know where they are.
II. They know where they want to be.
III. They have a plan for getting there.
You are your own success maker
The reasons why you are your own success makers can be summarised as follows;
l You decide - the decision to achieve success has to be done by you. You make that conscious decisions based on your own evaluation and judgment. It is entirely up to you to define and decide what that success is.
l You do - you are responsible to make the success happen for you, even though coaches are there and mentors are there. Their main role is restricted to guiding and motivating you in this regard. The perfect technique to achieve success has to be formulated by you only. You have to act upon your plan in order to achieve your success.
l You prepare a plan - it is rightly told that, “failing to plan is planning to fail”. Some people who fail gives the excuse that they do not have the luck to succeed. You have to prepare the plan for achieving success in your own way.
l You overcome the challenges - the top of the ladder is never crowded, but the road to success is full of challenges. These challenges have to be overcome by you only. You have to find out the solutions to these challenges and transforming these challenges to opportunities.
Phases of success
There are three phases of success;
1. Struggle phase
2. Achieved phase
3. Maintenance phase
Struggle phase is the time when you have not tested success. You do not know how to recognise what your heart desires, how to work towards fulfilling your dreams, and how to achieve your goal. This stage basically leads to most of the time frustration and finally accepting whatever comes in the way. This may lead you to drift from your goal. Careful attention must be given to finding out new and innovative techniques to motivate you and keep you going under the most adverse conditions. Gold attains its luster and purity only under intense heat and fire. So keep your head strong and have the courage and conviction to face all type of challenges that would come in this stage.
In the achieved stage you have achieved what you desired and have got what you wanted. This phase is very critical and must be handled delicately. You need to visualise the road ahead to your success. Once you are able to build your dreams, dream your desires and plan your goals around these reasons, then you would find and clearly see the road ahead. It would help you to pass from one success to another, because success is a journey, not a destination. There are some examples of people to hang on the success and forget to move the tempo of continuing the success factor further. It leads to no further development in their life.
In the maintenance phase, you have to learn how to transform your desires and dreams into realities. You have to find out what motivates you and this would be helpful to you to recover from the temporary lapses very fast.
Critical success factors
There are distinctively principles of success that must be followed if you have to achieve success in your life. It is proven that the majority of things do not matter, but what does matter is your attitude towards them. These attitudes or seeds begin in childhood and grow and develop into your adulthood. The steps to be followed or the secrets of success are as follows:
1. Single-mindedness
Single-mindedness is all powerful. When you connect to the source of all power, you can alter the pulls of the fate. Fate is your probable life path, that is, established related thoughts and belief about your reality. By setting priorities and concentrating single-mindedly, you can accomplish anything in life.
2. Will power
If you want to create anything, it is not enough to imagine. You must use your will power. Using the will is simply a matter of focusing your intent. The difference between the champion runner and the one who come second place is not so much a matter of leg power; rather it is higher amount of willful intent that wins the race. The more intent you are, the more you would succeed.
3. Purpose
Do things on purpose. When you allow yourself to act accordingly to your intentions and do things on purpose, you would find yourself getting more and more of what exactly it is you want. Keep your primary focus in mind and not lose track of what you want.
4. Focus
The secret of success is focus. It is the one secret that ties everything together. According to the law of attraction, what you focus on is what you get. The success of anything you do begins with focus. Focus is an act of will which is the faculty that rules everything. When you focus on the work at hand, you would start to thoughts about it that you can work on. You attract all the parts of the work together simply by using the power of focus. The lack of focus is the reason for failure. If you want to achieve maximum and fastest results, keep your eye on the ball. He who does not rule himself is not a success.
5. Persuasion
The secret of universe is the power of persuasion. It is about moving consciousness, and when one can move consciousness, he/ she can move anything in this universe. Persuasion is about changing the perception of people in order to change their reality. All successful persons are masters of persuasions.
6. Goal setting
Clearly determine what the goal is. Be specific. Once you have defined what it means to achieve success for yourself, your next step is to set goals that would lead you to your definition of success. There are five golden rules of goal setting:
l Make sure your goal is valuable
l Make sure your goal is an absolute necessity
l Achieving goal is a process, not just a result
l Set SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time bound)
l Set goals in writing and make an action plan
7. Planning
Planning is an essential stepping stone to success. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail! Although in today’s fast moving world, change is the order of the day, this simple pearl of wisdom has stood the test of time. Planning is the process of putting together a blueprint to achieve your goals. Trying to achieve a goal without a plan, is like driving a car without a steering wheel, trying to get somewhere with no control of your direction. Planning is an ongoing process. A plan is like a map. When you follow a plan, you can always see how much you have progressed towards your project goal and how far you are from your destination. Planning is preparing a sequence of action steps to achieve some specific goal. If you do it effectively, you can reduce much the necessary time and effort of achieving the goal. To be effective, planning needs to take at several levels:
l Strategic level - here you have to set the overall direction to achieve success by mapping out the medium to long term future of your success.
l Operational level - planning at this level aims to ensure that the day-to-day activities you have identified as being essential to the successful operation are carried out effectively.
8. Take baby steps
To successfully start your plan, divide your goals into smaller workable steps. Make the first step the easiest to accomplish. This would build your confidence and give you an incentive to keep going.
9. Time management
Time is one of the most important resources for everyone, and sometimes most valuable. A sense of time can motivate, focus efforts, and get more done per hour. Successful time management is important for achieving success in time.
10. Use of systems
If you want to become successful in life, you must develop and use a system that enables you to produce the best result. One has to discover and refine particular ways of doing things that gets the best results. It is related to a particular way that works best for you every time you use it. The entire universe is a system of systems.
11. Discipline
One of the main reasons why people fail is that there is no discipline in their action. Disciplines ensure that you can be persistent, especially when faced with challenges.
12. Think big
Think big is an essential trait to achieve success. Thinking big is when you see in your mind’s eye a goal that is bigger than you are. Thinking big is having a dream and working at making that dream come true.
Conclusion
People generally search for the secrets of achieving success in their life. For achieving success some join classes, and others opt for the path of hard work in their lives. Though the definition and meaning of success varies from person to person, but still it is the dominant factor in our society. There is no place for unsuccessful persons or losers on this earth. We are the best creature of god on earth, and to live the life to the fullest, one must be successful in life. By following the above mentioned secrets one can achieve sure success in time, with the available resources and the surrounding conditions. Tomorrow never exists without the presence of today, but the wise person acts on every moment rather than today. It is never too late, start visualising your form of success and act right now on the same. Wishing you the very best for your path to success.
(The author is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Printing Technology, Guru Jambheshwar University of Science & Technology, Hisar, Haryana)