Knowing that you are a success in your life will make a profound difference in every aspect of your life, including relationships, health, wealth, general wellbeing, and achieving what is important to you. It allows you to stand strong, confident in yourself and in all that you do. In business and as a leader, you also want everyone in your business to be such a success.
Active Knowledge Question:
What percentage of the people who work within and with your business do you believe are living a life of success?
Why Is Success Important?
As an individual, achieving success in your life on an enduring basis is vital. As a business leader enabling everyone – yes, everyone – in your business to achieve such success in their life is also vital.
What are you doing to make this a reality? And why is success so vital?
Success enables you to bring your full potential to the forefront in everything you do in life and reap the joy which comes with that.
Success is the fuel of life. It energies and enlivens us. Without success, our lives can become dull and then dead.
Without success as a catalyst in our lives, we will not and cannot reach our potential. Striving for success is an enabler. It draws our best to the surface and allows us to see what we are really capable of achieving.
Success comes from within. Only we can make ourselves successful through our beliefs, thoughts and actions. Success cannot be given to us by others.
Success is a renewable resource. We can generate it every moment of every day and can bring an abundance to our lives that we never thought possible.
Enduring success is a prize that anyone can claim, but it does not come through chance. It’s earned through hard work and is your reward for the thought and effort you put in.
As an individual, do not surrender until you have achieved the success which is possible.
And in business, it is a prize every leader should ensure is available to everyone within their business.
Don’t Play Their Game
Success is often defined by others. It can be highly competitive and elusive for many, no matter how hard they try.
Age and time do not necessarily yield success, and there is a tipping point where many abandon all hope of ever being successful. And they accept a lesser life and all that can come with that surrender.
Today, maybe more so than ever, life for many is about quick riches and chasing the dollar. Success is almost exclusively defined by wealth, and the game is to get as much wealth as you can, as quickly as you can, with the least effort.
It seems for many that work is what you must do so you don’t have to work anymore. The dream is to be able to retire and only then can life commence.
Success is reflected in wealth, position and power as only through these can you be free to do as you want, to surround yourself with the possessions and experiences you desire, to create the life you dream of.
This is a game you do not want to play – it is designed so you cannot win. Success has absolutely nothing to do with what others think of you or measuring your achievements against theirs. Two reasons why:
- Firstly, they are not you. What is important in your life and brings your strengths to the fore is unlikely to be the same as someone else’s. By looking to others for affirmation, to the goalposts they have set, is only setting yourself up for failure. That affirmation is theirs alone to give, and the goalposts can readily change.
- Secondly, you do not win by watching someone else. You do not win by focusing on the score or watching your competitors and trying to outcompete them. You win by focusing on your goals and what you must do to achieve them.
Winning and goal setting is about process and performance, not about beating someone else. Step out in fulfilment of your goals rather than watching someone else. Leave them behind and not bothering to look back – now you’re talking about success.
Removing Barriers To Success
There are many barriers that can prevent you from seeding success in your life, including:
- We have been actively encouraged throughout our lives not to try, not to chase, to not expect and not to seek to achieve.
- To believe first in our own inability, not capability.
- We have been burnt and have seen others burnt through failure and now hesitate.
- Settling for average is often the path of least resistance and the complaint choice.
- We simply do not have the self-confidence to try, and there is no one around us to encourage us forward.
- Our obligations, duties and responsibilities as providers do not allow us to pursue what we would really like to do.
- If you grow too tall, you will be cut down – tall poppy syndrome.
- We lack imagination and the passion that it brings and simply do not know where to start.
All of these barriers are within you and can be removed. The starting point is attitude, and attitude is everything.
Attitude is how you view yourself and the world around you. It is a reflection of your self-image – the picture created in your subconscious that influences your entire world and all that happens in it.
Put simply, if your head is not in the right place, there is no way you will be able to be successful and enjoy it. You will continuously pull yourself down every time you recognise you are about to make it.
What success looks like, what it means to you, where you look for success and how you acknowledge it are all critical to building a life to enduring success. They are all reflective of your attitude to life and to success.
Next week, we will delve into these themes …
If you want to compete against someone truly worthy, compete against yourself. That’s right: compete against yourself. Adopt the mantra of ‘better every day’, and no matter how good you did yesterday, you are going to do better today and better again tomorrow. Just imagine the compound effect if you improved every day. Before you know it, your achievements will be beyond your wildest dreams.
An entirely new level of performance.
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All the best in the success of your business,
Richard Shrapnel
