The Mystery of Success

Have you ever wondered about the things that separate the successful from the unsuccessful, the happy from the depressed, and the healthy from the unhealthy? I have, in fact, become obsessed with this particular wonder. Why? Well, if you want something bad enough, you tend to go after it. I'm not sure about you, but, I want to be successful. When I say successful, I'm not just speaking of making lots of money. When I focus on making money, I surely like to be successful at it! However, I'm talking about being successful in multiple areas of life. To rephrase it, I'm speaking about being successful at life.

One thing you should get into your mind is the right perception and idea of the meaning "success". Most people go straight to thinking of just money or having a high status in society or in the corporate world. Surely, these are things that accompany successful people, but, there's more to the concept. Gaining money is something that you can be successful at, but, you can be successful, as I was implying, at anything good in life. In other words, the money and the material things will never define your true success. View the money, the statuses, and other material accumulation as perks. On the other hand, view success as an umbrella under which all these things can reside under. You see, success is not determined by outcomes, results, or any accumulation of material value. It's actually determined by your performance in a given area, with your performance being a complexity of the approaches you take towards building the things you desire. The constructed outcomes are perks you get for being successful.  In addition, your success can be determined by how you protect, maintain, and nurture those perks. 

How often do you hear about famous athletes being evaluated for their performance? This is probably the majority of the time. Rarely, are they solely evaluated by the number of games they win. For one, most times, they are not in the game as a separate entity. They are in the game as a part of a team. You should start viewing yourself as a part of a team. Successful people build teams with other successful people and people who are like-minded in terms of their goals.  Just as that athlete has to take into consideration his teammates, many times it may take the help of others, or additional factors to reach a goal. Of course, you can not always have control over all of these things. That is the nature of life, but, your performance, if well, will definitely get you far. Indeed, you should strive to perform at your best. Plus, if you win, the victory is sweet.  In addition, when high performing athletes are on a winning streak, they try their best to keep it that way and give a good performance, and when the best athlete loses, they lose with dignity and grace. 
The average person who says that they want to be successful fails to just say what they really want. Therefore, they often end up stuck having little to no clues to how to get there and often stay in the dream phase or in the searching phase. They want to be able to spend more time with their family, they want to be able to provide more, they want more money, they want to be promoted at their job, they want a nice car, they want to pursue their passion, etc. If they focused on the specifics of what they really wanted, things would be clearer. If you ask someone what it takes to get these things, they could come up with an answer, plans that can be acted on. If you ask someone what it takes to be successful, they won't be able to give you a direct answer because it depends on what you want to gain from your success, what exactly you want to be successful at, and what routes you are willing to take. Success embodies the action, not the results. That's what separates people who continue to be successful from those that don't. They know this secret of success. They figure out exactly what they want, they set goals to achieve them, and the more goals they accomplish, the more their success mentality is strengthened and the more things they can put on their "wish list.” If you take everything they own away from them, they will likely take their success umbrella and continue to put things under it again and create more success driven areas of their life because they have developed an action-based success mentality.

Under this umbrella you are protecting anything in your life that you want to be successful at. These could be your relationships, your family, your health, your profession, skills, talents, etc. By the way, you want this umbrella to be the sturdy type because it's shielding all of the things you value from adversity.

You might be thinking, "Well, I'm not successful, so does that mean I don't have an umbrella?" I'm going to go ahead and say no, you don't. Now that that's out of the way, I will tell you that you can start building one whenever you like! All you have to do is decide why you want to be successful, then that should lead to you figuring out what it is you really want. Once you figure out what you want in life, you have an edge towards success, a clear vision of motivation that can drive you to be successful. Once you start taking action, the action will start to form you your own success umbrella! The good news is that you can continue throughout your life to strengthen it.

Successful people treat success as a principle and a practice, and, no adversity or any outside forces can destroy a person's principles, only that person can. Also, if success is a principle, then you can acquire it before you acquire things. Do you see where I'm going with this? What did every successful person do before they became "successful"? Once they knew what they wanted, they believed in their success instantaneously! They then practiced success, and thus, became filled with a successful attitude as they took necessary action towards the things that they wanted. They ultimately became successful, and, accordingly, manifested what they wanted.