How do I achieve success?

If you ever ask yourself, How do I achieve success? ...

How do I achieve success?
photo courtesy of Chovee's photostream at Flickr

... you need to understand that there are millions of ways to become successful and it would be impossible to include all of the answers in one website article.

However, I’m anxious to help, and I have some information that will help you along the way to finding an answer that is specific to you.

First off – take a good piece of advice from Stephen Covey, author of “The 7 habits of highly effective people”.

Begin with the end in mind.

In other words, know what the nature of the success you seek is.

Specifically, know what success would mean for you.

I don’t mean a definition of success, what I mean is;

how would you recognise that you had achieved success?

It’s very easy when you’re focussed on your own success to believe that everyone else sees success in the same way as you. It would be a mistake to continue to believe that. Success is very different for different people. Some people want money, some people want better health, some people want friendships, some people want status, some people want… well, maybe you get the picture.

Further than that, it’s highly likely that you may want a combination of those things. Success for you may mean; “money and power”, or “friends and status” or an even more complex combination such as “money, status and power”.

The thing about knowing the sort of success you seek – apart from helping you answer "How do I achieve success?" – is that it helps focus your emotions and your thinking.

Those are important.

Your emotions are at the root of why you do things. You do those things that ultimately make you feel better. Your thinking process is what starts to take you to those better feelings.

In short, get your emotions right and get your thinking right and automatically your actions lead to being successful.

You may wish to think about that.

John Harricharan, author of "When You Can Walk on Water, Take the Boat" suggests that people generally seek three things in their search for success; Money, Health or Friendship. He may be right – and in the end it’s a matter of personal opinion rather than absolute fact. For me though, I think that there are generally six areas where people recognise their own success.

My six areas to help you answer "How do I achieve success":

Wealth:
Material riches such as houses, homes or properties and real estate, cars and vehicles, large bank deposits or cash, investments such as stocks, shares, mutual funds.
Power:
The ability to express yourself effectively or to have the world respond in a way that you approve. Power can be used or enjoyed in may forms and could include coercive power, financial power, physical power, intellectual power, political power, influential power, spiritual power.
Relationship:
The ability to relate effectively and meaningfully with others. Relationships can be very close and intimate such as in self-knowing, romantic love, and sexual love or they may be wider ranging as in platonic relationships or wider still such as with the love of humanity.
Health:
We go through life inhabiting a physical body that performs many wondrous functions for us. At peak performance, we enjoy physical health so that all the parts of our body work efficiently and correctly. We enjoy mental health so that our thinking processes lead us where we want to go. We enjoy emotional health so that we enjoy and use appropriate feelings.
Status:
Status is about knowing and recognising your position in the world and especially society. It’s not about class nor is it about creating limitations or ceilings or barriers. It’s about fitting into the world and ‘meshing’ with your fellow humans in a comfortable and desired way.
Drive
Sometimes we do things just because they are there to be done. We enjoy the challenge. This challenge, this spirit of adventure, can be a highly motivating reason and defining purpose behind human life. Frequently, humans can gain nothing from an experience other than the fact that the challenge has been fully met, and that, is more than enough. It’s what drives Olympic gold medallists; it’s what drove the conquerors of Everest, the holders of speed records. It’s the thrill of the chase!

N.B. Follow-on articles to "How do I achieve success?" will be posted shortly!