How to create success in life!
To begin, let’s define success. What does success mean?
According to Google dictionary; Success: ‘The accomplishment of an aim or purpose’.
My personal favourite definition of success though is by Earl Nightingale; “success is the progressive realisation of a worthy ideal”.
This means that if we are working towards a predetermined goal, or purpose of OUR choosing, not uncle Bobs, or mum or dads, but our own, we are a success.
There are times when we can become discouraged by hard situations in life, I certainly do on occasion. We may think or feel that there is no real point to having goals, get complacent or feel lost. Perhaps we just never were taught the IMPORTANCE of setting and striving to achieve goals. So we must ask ourselves some questions, ‘why have goals’? Really, why? What is the point, why strive to achieve things is this thing called life?
Is it just about ‘succeeding’? Is that really meaningful?
Should we have goals simply to ‘get more’? Should we have goals to impress those around us, or simply to earn more money (how much is ‘more’ money?), are these really worthy of our time?
Do we actually NEED goals, and if so WHY do we need goals?
To answer these questions, the best way is to ask questions. Good quality questions are clarity creators in our lives.
So….. Why have goals?
In addition to Earl Nightingales’ definition, I have found on my journey that goals are not only ‘the progressive realisation of a worthy ideal’. While they are this, they are so much more! Goals are designed to do two other very important things, other than assisting us in using our limited time in a worthy and meaningful way:
Firstly, goals exist to facilitate the process of us expanding our consciousness. They do so only when we are going after something we DON’T know how to achieve yet, which PUSHES us, stretches our comfort zone (which all goals should do). Goals when we PERSIST with them literally "stretch the roof of possibility in our lives".
This expands the CHOICES of experience we can have in life, and these experiences we call OUR REALITY!!!
GROWTH IS the natural process we go through as children and for some reason many of us as adults stop growing (in body, mind and spirit). Of course we stop growing in height too, though as I have experienced, we do not necessarily stop growing in width. The new experiences we have as a result of goals and the growth they naturally help us to achieve allow as to RISE ABOVE CONFORMITY, LEST WE FALL INTO APATHY, and LIVE GROUND HOG DAY for the rest of our lives!
The late Jim Rohn when asked by a psychiatrist what he thought the former considered most damages the mind replied with this; “doing less than we are capable of doing is what most damages the mind”.
The second thing a goal is in addition to being a worthy ideal we are striving to achieve is this:
A goal is something we WANT; OR often, something which is in our lives that we no longer want. Examples of some things we want:
• To buy our first home
• Find a partner or have children
• Complete a new course to qualify us to apply for work in our dream career
• Start our own business or our current dream career (which can also change over time)
• Enter a competition in sport, art or any other field
• Additional income (multiple sources)
• Begin a new challenging hobby or craft, learn a music instrument that we have always put off learning
Examples of some things we DON’T want:
• The extra 20 kilos we are carrying and the illnesses and lack of confidence they bring with them, the loneliness that may also come with being out of shape and lacking self-love to care for ourselves
• Toxic people, jobs, or environments
• Feelings of inadequacy, fear, hopelessness AND stored emotions which create these feelings
• Bad debt, reducing our cash flow
Remember: Goals are essential for us to EXPAND and challenge ourselves.
Human beings NEED to be challenged, to be pushed, to expand. Everything is GROWING or it is DYING. NOTHING STAYS THE SAME!
If we fail to grow, we die, not an instant death, but a slow one, which is much more painful than just dying quickly. It has been said that people die at age 25, and get buried at around 70-80 (the numbers of this saying change but the message is the same). What kind of a life is one in which we are apathetic, living the same day over and over again due to failing to set goals?
It has also been said that if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.
Those poor people who when asked, “How are you” that respond with, “not bad, for a MONDAY”. Those poor souls who have allowed the day of the week to dictate their attitude, their demeanour towards the world and beings in it, and indeed, their very outlook on life!
This happens due to a LACK of goals, lack of WANTING something or to heal, rid ourselves of those things that we are carrying that HURT as, especially our painful thoughts and stored emotions.
Conformity sneaks in, and turns into apathy. Apathy turns into dis-ease; ESPECIALLY dis-ease of the MIND, the worst dis-ease, the most toxic of ailments that exist on the planet.
The dis-ease of mind manifests as dis-ease in the body. This turns into a lack of hope, and lack of desire to experience new things, fear and eventually, a life as ‘walking death’.
Turn this around and instead aim for CHALLENGE, by setting goals. Goals are literally a shopping list of what we want and are not yet AWARE of HOW we will go reaching. That doesn't matter - we don't NEED to know. We will find out along the way!
As Bob Proctor has said, ‘The FUN is in finding OUT how we are going to achieve a goal”.
Remember, goals are designed to push our boundaries, to expand what is possible for us. Most of the challenge for 1st world countries like Australia has been removed.
OUR SURVIVAL IS TAKEN CARE OF BY SOMEONE ELSE!
Do you not believe this is an accurate statement? Ask yourself, how much of your food and water do YOU supply yourself? When was the last time YOU built a shelter to live in, or made your own clothes to keep warm?
All we need to trade in order for these essential survival items aforementioned is to spend, or is most cases, WASTE, 40 hours a week in very boring, spirit dwindling conditions where we are not stimulated – CERTAINLY unchallenged. Well we are challenged, we have ‘the challenge of not dying of BOREDOM’.
We do not need to search for and gather our own food, water nor do we have to build our own shelter. In nature, every other creature must do this. Observe nature and you will see, that creatures THRIVE and the ones that don’t simply die. Most of the ones that survive spend all their time searching for food, a mate or simply, just being (not thinking about past pain and fearing the future). They live in the moment, the now.
It may seem brutal, THRIVE or DIE but this is just the way life is.
Sadly, humans have a monopoly on the planet; we rule over all other creatures and living organisms and some of us think we rule the planet, nature itself, though this is of course humans greatest folly - thinking we are ABOVE nature rather than understand how very much we are A PART OF NATURE.
This monopoly and consequent relative safety and ease of survival we experience in 1st world countries and for what of a better word, ‘enjoy’ as homo sapiens is the greatest cause of the resulting problems created in society -
namely, 'a LACK OF HAVING TO PUSH ourselves'.
Don't really want to give life a fair go? Sure just do nothing, someone else will look after you.
We don’t really need to try, once survival is taken care of.... tragically, when we don't try, when we don't focus on growing as every living thing in nature does, we lose LIFE and indeed, only survive.
Living becomes nothing more than surviving..... a most grievous thing to behold.
All we need to do is spend a certain amount of time at a job, this gives us this thing we call 'money' which we can trade for everything we need to survive. This also allows us to buy trinkets which we use to NUMB the fact that so many of us are unfulfilled with what we are doing.
Try living off the land…. Try conforming in nature, in the elements when you must find your own food, water, shelter and clothing.... It is not easy, if possible at all! Yet the satisfaction of doing so is MUCH greater than that of having someone else do everything for us. When you have to search the wilderness for food, build your own shelter and so forth, it truly is survival of the fittest!
Thanks for reading; I hope I have opened up a new perspective for you, the reader. What are you going to do with this perspective? How can it help you?
Don’t just read this and think, wow that was interesting, inspiring (whatever it has been for you).
You much change your attitude to change your life.
“My greatest discovery is that human beings can alter their lives, by altering their attitudes of mind”, William James.
Attitude is how we think, feel and most importantly how we ACT.
Here is the action step you can take RIGHT now to alter your life.
Write out TEN things that you want which you are not sure how to get. 10 goals!
Number them in order of importance – but most importantly, make sure you have your NUMBER ONE (most desired) goal CLEARLY numbered as #1 and also your second most important goal as #2. Make sure they are VERY specific and actually deeply meaningful for you. Make sure you understand EMOTIONALLY, not just logically 'WHY' you want it.
Remember the first question a child asks is WHY?
Sadly adults don't question things even 3% as much as children do. Children are happy, most adults, somber... could questioning things actually lead to happiness? Evidently questions create clarity - the better in quality they are - the MORE clarity and better answer you will receive. Ensure you ask EMPOWERING questions NOT VICTIM based ones.
Emotion will drive you much further than logic alone, and imagination is much more important than knowledge.
One of the worlds most beautiful and brilliant minds stressed this point - Einstein.
Focus 80% of your time, thoughts, feelings and actions towards ACHIEVING the top two goals, and only 20% of your time on the remaining 8 goals.
This is using the 80/20 principle created by Vilfredo Pareto. It has helped me more than most other principles. It works in almost all cases, and in a nutshell, the rule states that 80% of our results in life are created from just 20% of our efforts!! Therefor if you have 10 goals, and act with 80% of your time on the TWO goals that mean the most to you – the ones you hold DEAREST to your heart – you will be successful! You MUST be.
What we focus on EXPANDS, it GROWS. When you focus on your goals and desires, you have less time and attention to focus on the things which you DON'T want. Therefore the things you do want (goals) you begin to REALISE (make real) and those which you don't want, will diminish, until you no longer identify with that which you don't want -
the unwanted items/circumstances are no longer a part of you (they never really were)!
In addition to writing your goals CLEARLY on paper, take one step further and subscribe to my blog:
growthforsuccess.com for videos and future blogs about how you CAN create your life in such a way that each day is exciting, challenging (which is the best thing for us, challenge) and full of vital ENERGY, hope and joy.
Leave your comments and give this a like if it has touched you in one way or another.
There will always be hardships, but as this post was intended to impress upon you, it is through our challenges that we grow. It is with goals that we actually EXPAND what is possible and our consciousness reaches new levels previously unknown and which we once considered impossible.
Once you rise to new levels of consciousness, you can never be satisfied to live with the limited perspective of reality as you once had - you raise your standards, you increase the quality and quantity of your life and of those around you. In shining you give others the permission to shine.
A wonderful example is the best thing you can give to anyone, including your children, your partner, friends, family and society.