Ask anyone what they want in life and at the heart of it the answer will be – ‘I want to be successful’ – it’s a generally accepted fact of the human condition. No one wants to fail. However, success means different things to different people and there are also different levels of success.
There’s the success of achieving that big business goal that you’ve had on your agenda for a while, or there’s the success around something to do with the family and home.
Whatever it is for you, it’s important to define it and measure it because in most cases it’s not really success that people are chasing, it’s merely settling. They reach a point where it’s ‘good enough’ rather than striving for what would be the absolute best. They tell themselves that it’s okay to stop there. To settle. It’s enough.
Now if you’re happy with this level of thinking then go for it, settle all you like. But if you want to be the best, have the best and know that you’ve done everything possible to achieve the great things you know you’re capable of, then make sure you really know what success looks like. Make sure that you know what second best looks like and then take steps to go beyond that.
Define your success so that you can actually have it.
So how can we define our success?
- Work out what success would look like for you. Is it financial freedom and the feeling that comes with it? Is it owning your own home and feeling more secure? Is it becoming fitter and stronger and looking better?
- Don’t just make success about material things. If you do this then everything you set out to achieve will have an emptiness to it and you will be continually chasing different ‘things’ and then wondering why you are not happy.
- Write all of these success ‘KPI’s’ down and refer to them constantly to remind yourself of what you’re after.
- Remember to look back occasionally to see how far you’ve come.
In life we tend to get what we are searching for. If success (whatever that looks like for you) is one of those things and you have it clearly defined, then you will get what you are after because that’s the way the Universe works.