While relaxing at home on Sunday, do you ever take some time out to think about the big life questions? But before we do that, let me take you back to my article titled: “Find Your Why?” published on July 11th this year. The following questions are an extension of that very article.
- What are my goals in life?
- Have I been able to reach them yet?
- How valuable is my life?
- Am I really loved by someone?
- Is life making sense anyway?
- Does my life matter?
- What will my future look like?
- And what happens after death?
These are not really easy questions to answer. Today we all are challenged to think about our lives and our future. Remember, success means different to every person: like beauty, it exists in the eye of the beholder. It is our responsibility to determine what success means for us, and how we go about breeding success in our lives.
Despite this, there are definitely hindrances to success. These drawbacks are ubiquitous in their ability to deter our success. But let’s not fret because if we seek success, and we fear, our actions are blocking our desire to succeed. We have the power and control to overcome the following obstacles.
1. Stop Making Excuses
Let’s stop blaming others for why we don’t get what we want. Also, let’s stop refusing to accept responsibility for our own mistakes. Remember, we make our own choices and we make our own mistakes. Let’s stop justifying our poor choices and stop attributing our lack of success to things outside of our control. Successful people don’t do this.
We will make mistakes in life, we will mess up, we are going to fail. When this inevitably occurs, let’s look within, in a non-judgmental manner, and figure out what we can do better next time.
Don’t waste time looking externally by creating excuses for why we didn’t succeed.
2. Stop Focusing on the Negatives
There will be negative circumstances in life that we have no control over. There are also plenty of positive experiences in our lives. I bet we all have more positives in our lives than negatives. We are capable of living with a positive perspective. If we want to succeed in our lives then we need to concentrate on all the good around us. Remember the movie 3 IdiotsMantra? “All is Well”
In fact, one shouldn’t learn to ignore the negatives as there is always something to learn from. Even if we reach a level of ostensible success, our continued focus on the negatives will prevent us from relishing our accomplishments.
3. Stop Fearing Failures
As previously mentioned, we will have turbulent rides in our lives, we will make mistakes, we will face difficulties and we will fail but we don’t have to fear failures. Rather, we should learn to embrace all these. Learn from them, and ultimately improve upon them. Failures could be another name of learning from our mistakes.
When we become successful, we know we have tried our best. And when we fail, it is not a reflection of us as people; we are not flawed individuals. View failure as an opportunity to grow, not as something to be afraid of.
4. Stop Beating Yourself Up
Of course, we wouldn’t ever beat ourselves up physically so why would we do it emotionally or mentally? Learning how to skillfully deal with our thought processes and emotions when we are facing adverse situations is crucial to being successful.
There is no harm in getting upset over things. Let’s express our emotions in an appropriate manner. Be unhappy. It is going to happen. But don’t ruminate over unpleasant memories and beat yourself up over things that have already occurred. Too much time and energy spent on this diverts our attention away from more productive endeavors like getting closer to our goals.
5. Stop Being Ungrateful
The best way to establish more contentment in our lives is to be more grateful. If we want to push away happiness, joy, and bliss then be ungrateful. Gratitude breeds happiness and it also breeds success. If we are grateful for our lives and everything that we are blessed with, we are going to have fewer complications in attaining wealth and accomplishing our goals.
I don’t just mean financial wealth because wealth includes all kinds of precious relations that we are blessed with. It also doesn’t mean that all financially wealthy people are grateful, and therefore, successful, or that all financially poor people are ungrateful and therefore unsuccessful. Being ungrateful is not congruent with getting ahead in life. If we crave success then observe everything we are grateful for. Our gratitude will serve as a compass for our lives. It will guide our decision-making, and lead us to success.
Wrap Up
Precisely, to be successful we tend to equate it with the amount of achievements we have acquired through the capabilities we possess and being at the right place and at the right time. However, success digs deeper into the meaning it has for us. As Winston Churchill once said that: “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm”.
Let us also focus on why successful people consistently achieve success and how they achieve it. The best one is to acknowledge the roadblocks that would hinder them from achieving their dreams. Regardless, the fundamental backbone of success is trying our best. If we put forth our best efforts, without harming others in the process, then we become successful people. This can apply to work, family, friends, relationships, hobbies, etc. I think that sums it up beautifully.
Very interesting article and shareable in content.
In personal growth we often talk about the concept that doing your best is enough. Each of us acts based on his own level of awareness and knowledge that he has at that moment and, from this interpretation, it is unquestionable that we do our best with what we know.
From my personal experience, however, I have also found that doing your best is not always enough. First you have to know what to do, then do your best. First learn new behavioral strategies or develop new resources and then, of course, train ourselves to do our best to apply them as we progress in that direction.
So I think it’s appropriate to do our best with what we have and, at the same time, let’s inform ourselves, read, attend courses and always look for new resources and strategies to continue to improve ourselves and our behaviors.