The Ingredients of Success

What are the basic ingredients that are required, for a person to be successful?

Now, aside from limiting social factors, and financial difficulties, if an individual wanted to set his mind to succeed, no matter in what aspect he/she wants to succeed be it financially, academically, or even socially, what kind of a mindset should he/she have?Let's first get the definition of Success correct. In contemporary parlance, Success means Financial security in a massive scale, fame and other glitz and glam associated with a famous person.

But that doesn't necessarily be the only definition of Success.

If you try to mend a broken relationship, or even set yourself a goal and want to attain it, then if you end up accomplishing it, it can also be translated as Success. It's all dependent on your mindset. Remember, Business principles need not always apply to business ventures. They can also be applied with resounding outcomes to everyday events in daily life. And the same goes for everyday experience being applied to succeed in business.

That said, its time to begin analyzing What is Required of you to begin succeeding in whatever you do.

Goals and a Burning Passion

Now before you set a goal for yourself, you should first have a faint vision of what you want to achieve. Be it delivering a simple speech before your colleagues, or a new project at work, only if you have a clear picture of what your end result should be, you can work towards it.

Why has the word "Goal" become associated with setting objectives?

In Soccer, the ball has to be kicked inside the goal post after having been tacitly passed around the enemy's defenses, and the goalkeeper, for the kick to count as a goal.

Picture the defensive players as the obstacles in what you're setting out to achieve, and the goalkeeper as Yourself, the one person you should have complete control over, in order to succeed.

Now why should you have control over yourself? Doesn't that sound ridiculous? Aren't we sane, steady thinking human beings? Yes, we indeed are. But, the Human mind is a complex organism unto itself.

Temptation is anybody's prima donna enemy. Temptation can be in the form of alluring casual activities, those that provide instant gratification, or temptation can be in the form of Slumber itself, giving way to procrastination, another great foe in working towards your goals.

So only if you have control over yourself, you can allay temptation, and therefore master procrastination and instant gratification compulsions.

How can you have control over yourself?

This question can have a lot of different answers for different people.

Its not easy for people to control themselves after they cross a particular threshold in their lives. It may be easier in the case of youngsters, but for those people who have seen a lot of emotional stress and other travails today's world has to offer, it is indeed a mammoth task.

So how can self control be inculcated when it cannot be done by self?

You can resort to a lot of mind-soothing activities. Meditation. Yoga. Breath Exercises. But, there's a catch.

The only person who can cure yourself is you, and yourself alone.

Medication doesn't help. Counseling doesn't help. They do, but what they ultimately do is activate your conscience and ultimately open your reasoning eyes.

So why go to the extent of so many long hours of counseling and medication that might run into thousands of dollars when you, after a few days of self pondering can counsel yourself and set things right?

You can argue with me that self counseling sounds good on paper but is not practically possible. But what if you had the willingness to actually change yourself, have you not heard of the proverb : Where there is a will there is a way?

All these will help in granting you a firmer determined self with which you can set achievable goals and work towards achieving them.

Passion

How can you define passion?

I'll try to explain it in a easy way. Have you seen the look on the faces of Olympic Athletes when they win a Gold medal? That's real satisfaction. How were they able to achieve real gratification?

They achieved something that was an extraordinary thing to do. They set in tremendous mind boggling hours into what they wanted to accomplish. They were determined, didn't swagger from their path towards their goal.

And when they finally outlast tons of competitors from all the other countries in the world and stand on the podium and have the medals hung over their necks, the look on their faces betrays whatever turmoils they underwent, to achieve their objective.

Instant Gratification is not satisfaction. It is a hurdle actually. By gratifying your ego for an instant everyday, you actually diminish your desire and your passion for working towards your goal. Your resolve gets weakened. Your Passion for life also gets weakened. Scoff at me, but this is the truth. By delaying instant gratification for prolonged periods of time, far greater gratification can be obtained.

Gratification is permanent satisfaction, and gives contentedness of the soul.

I have just given a glimpse into what Passion really means. It is just the tip of the iceberg.

So, Having seen how Goals and a Burning passion make a few of the ingredients of success, its time for everyone of us to sit down and ponder whether we're giving fuel for long term satisfaction or instant gratification.

How to be Different

Great things were done not by following the norms and rules that exist in society, but by actually creating a new pathway to do a particular thing. Tons of examples can be done to reiterate this fact. Your success may lie with your genius as much as your willingness to experiment,
And your willingness to experiment will only arise when you're willing to be different.


Being Different


Being different is nothing special. Its not some inherent quality. Its not a quality that's present only in intelligent people.

It is possible for every normal person to reach out to the world and be different in what he does.

And, Society, even though it firmly directs you to abide by its rules, ALWAYS APPRECIATES PEOPLE WHO DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY.

You might've read the expression: Winners do things differently. How to set about doing things differently?

The first thing you should do is, whatever the thing that you're doing, you should get to know all there's to do about it. Learn it. Read about it. See how the thing is done by others.

One of the basic stepping stones to success is, your familiarity with what you're setting out to do.

Only if the Teacher is well versed in his subject, he can teach effectively right?

So, You , like the teacher, only after getting to know something very well, can do it effectively right?

The first step, therefore lies in knowledge. By knowledge, I don't mean textual, factual knowledge. Its just the basic Know how of doing a thing.

After you make yourself extremely familiar with what you're doing, you'll find yourself that you naturally develop a flair for it. Once you develop a flair for doing stuff, automatically, you'll get involved with doing it.

Once Involvement arises in an activity, then all the rooms are laid bare for Innovation.

With Innovation, there comes doing things differently.

You'll find yourself Asking the question:

"Hm, What if, This was done the other way around?"

There, you try to innovate. When you try to innovate, you improvise, and when you improvise, you perfect yourself, and by perfecting yourself step by step, at the end, you end up being different than others.

Its a cycle, its like:

Familiarity ->
Flair ->
Consistency->
Satisfaction->
Thirst for more-->
Innovation
Improvisation
Perfection
Difference

This IS NOT A BUSINESS PRINCIPLE.

This does sound like one, but this is actually what happens when people try to be different.

BEING DIFFERENT IS NOT A SKILL OR TALENT.

Being different is just a NEED, a PERSONAL DESIRE. It only arises after a person gets INVOLVED with what they're upto.

Without Involvement, there cannot be satisfaction. Without satisfaction, there cannot be perfection, and without perfection, there won't be any difference, it will only fall short.

You can also see how Thinking Differently helps you out, and also about Positive Thinking.

Thinking Positively

The world has lots of success stories. Some made it from, literally, Nothing. Rags to riches tales, heard of them? There are stories of Orphans making it to the highest Government offices. Not in novels, but in real life. What made these people achieve what they set out to do?
Was it just Opportunity, right decisions at the right time, or mere luck?

Not withstanding all the external influences and advantages they might've encountered, there is one very important attribute one has to consider. They thought. They kept thinking they could do it.

They kept telling themselves they HAVE to do it, they WANT to do it. They wanted it, they craved for it, they thought about it every second in each day, they made it their obsession to achieve their dreams.

This is what made them successful, to an extent.

Think of You and your aspirations in this situation.

You have lots of ideas, lots of thoughts, lots of concepts, lots of new brainwaves every day. But, do you actually see them through? Do you work on them, and do you translate them into reality?

Why aren't you doing it?

There can be a lot of factors.

a)You might be occupied with something else.

b)You might have other responsibilities. (Family, Girlfriend, Work etc.)

c)You might be lazy. (Sounds funny, but isn't it true?)

Okay, there are hurdles towards you achieving your goal. But, imagine if No one had any hurdle in their lives, NO PROBLEMO with nothing, then, will not the world be a peaceful happy place where everyone achieved what they wanted?

Yes, the world isn't a perfect place. So, its replete with obstacles. Success isn't a one day story.

Failure is just the first step, Success is the final step.

In order for you to succeed in any venture, be it a multi million dollar investment, or a simple negotiation for more play hours from your mother, you have to firmly believe in one thing: Tell Yourself you can do it, you will do it.

What are you doing here?

You're simply thinking positively.

By merely thinking positively, you automatically open yourself to positive ways to achieve your goal.

Picture this. You think that a venture of yours will fail. Now, even if it isn't supposed to fail, it will fail, because you KEPT THINKING it would. You unknowingly do things that will make you fail.

Having seen what a negative attitude does to you, should you not henceforth think positive and stay positive, to actually materialise your desire and ambition into reality?

It is possible. Every one, notwithstanding their social status, economic limitations, age, gender, can become anyone, amass any amount of wealth, be famous.

What counts is: THEIR DESIRE TO ACHIEVE WHAT THEY DESIRE. Their thinking that they will do it.

Start Thinking, Start transforming your dreams into reality. The world might be a hard place, but nothing is impossible, yet.