What Does Success Mean?

If I asked you whether you want to be successful, I guess you would answer with a resounding "yes!"

But what exactly does success mean?  What is success?

This might seem like a question with an obvious answer.  But think again.  It is not obvious.

Let me ask it another way.  What does success mean to you?

That is the key question, and only you can answer it.  But I can perhaps put you on the right track to finding your own answer.

Almost certainly, success does not mean lots of money.  Money is only a tool which may allow you to do the things you want in life, and simply getting more money does not make you successful.

Let me explain this a little further.  When a client says "I want more money!" I probe deeper with the question "Why do you want more money?"  Maybe the answer is "I want to buy a luxury villa somewhere on a South Sea island!"  OK, already we are getting past "money" - we now have a villa.  The next question is "why do you want to buy a luxury villa somewhere on a South Sea island?"  My client may answer "I want to be able to holiday on a lovely South Sea island whenever I want!"  Well, that doesn't necessarily mean you have to buy the villa.  One of my colleagues who coaches people how to achieve anything they desire is a very wealthy lady.  She used to have a very similar phrase on her wish list.  As she is very good at doing what she coaches, and is an expert in manifestation, she soon acquired this villa.  But after owning it for a few years she realized it was not really what she wanted so she sold it.  Instead she manifested friends who owned such a villa and were happy for her to use it whenever she wished.  Now she had what she really wanted, but without the hassle and responsibility of the ownership of property.

I suggest in order to be in the best position to be really successful you ask yourself the right questions.  Find out what success really means to you, and then challenge yourself.  Think about what you have said and dig deeper.  Ask yourself why this represents success or whether there is really something underlying it that better defines success for you.  Until you do this you will not be trying to manifest the right things, and you will probably be disappointed in the results.  Don't blame the universe for this - it is your fault for not really digging deep and answering the question properly, "what does success mean to me?"

Asking yourself this question, "what does success mean to me", is absolutely key to becoming successful.  Spend some time right now defining it and be sure the answer you give is the right one (or rather, the right ones, as almost certainly there will be a number of answers).  If you do this you will really be on the right road to success.

How to Become Successful

So many of my followers approach me and ask me how to become successful.

What exactly must you do to become successful?

The very first thing to do is to recognize that you CAN and WILL become successful.  Until you do this you will find there will always be a nagging voice inside you, no matter what you are trying to achieve, saying "you won't make it!".  The voice is wrong.  You WILL make it.  But only if you completely silence that reactionary voice.

Somewhere I read that when Karl Benz was building the Benz Patent-Motorwagen a neighbour kept saying "It won't go!".  He ignored the neighbour and kept building it.  When he finished and started driving it he heard the neighbour shouting "It won't stop!".  I have no idea whether this story is true or not, but it doesn't really matter whether or not it is true.  All that matters is the great truth within it.  Karl Benz ignored that voice completely and achieved his success.  You must do likewise.

How do you ignore or even silence that voice?  By having a strong belief that you are right and that it WILL work.  Spend time building up that confidence.  Sit quietly and meditate.  Feel yourself merging with the power of the Universe, which you can imagine as a ball of light way above you.  Bring it down inside you and feel the warmth and love of it filling you.  Know that with this infinite power within you can achieve anything you desire.

This is a practice you should repeat often.  Make it a routine part of your day.  The more you practice it the easier you will find it and the more you will be able to ignore and defeat that dissenting voice, the voice that wants you to fail at everything.

You will now have removed the main obstacle to success.  The next step is to determine what it is you want to achieve.

It is important to have a very clear idea of what it is you want to achieve, and why this is important to you.

Spend some time thinking carefully about this.  Write down any ideas that come to you.  Treat this in the same way as you would a group brainstorming session - at this point write down everything, without critically rejecting it.  When you have a good list of ideas read through each and see which ones really resonate with you.  cross out all the others.  You now have a list of things you want to achieve which are close to your heart.

Against each of these ideas write down all the reasons they are important to you.  As you do this you will find some are not really goals you want to achieve, and you can delete these.  You should find you end up with a minmum of three and a maximum of six that feel right and that have a good list of reasons why they are so important.

For each of these goals sit and meditate again.  Begin your meditation by recalling a time in your past when you felt really happy and really relaxed.  Perhaps it was lying on a beach during a special vacation.  Maybe it was wandering in a meadow in cool, fresh air.  Whatever it was, bring back that image.  Place yourself there and let it stimulate all your senses.  See the beauty around you.  Hear the sounds you heard, perhaps the sound of birds.  Smell the salty air of the sea, the fresh smell of flowers around you etc.  Feel the soft, fine sand pouring through your fingers, the feel of the waving grass as you walk through it etc.  Recall your feelings at that time, a feeling of happiness, contentment, love.  When you are fully into this meditation bring in your goal.  Does it still feel right?  If not, discard that goal and replace it with the next goal on your list.  You will find one really fits and feels just right.  This is the goal you should work on next.

Now that you have the right goal, create an affirmation around it.  Follow the rules of making good affirmations.  Read this article by Natalie Ledwell to get some good ideas on the correct way to create an affirmation: http://iwanttoimprovemyself.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/5-simple-steps-for-creating-powerful.html.  Repeat this affirmation as often as you can.  The more you repeat it the faster you will achieve your goal.

Write the goal in a notebook you reserve purely for this purpose.  Include pictures of how your life will be when you have achieved it - either pictures you find in a magazine etc and cut out and stick in the notebook, or simply draw them yourself.  It doesn't matter if you are not artistic - just ensure the picture encapsulates your dream as much as possible.  Even better, create yourself a "mind movie" of the goal.  If you don't already have the software to create a Mind Movie you can get it here: http://www.mindmovies.com/mm4/changeyourlife.php?25923.

Follow the above and you WILL achieve goals fully aligned with your inner desires.  But the key to success has one more essential ingredient.  That ingredient is simply recognizing that success is not actually achieving specific goals at all.  Success is an ongoing journey, and the knowledge that you are on the right road.  You never reach the end of that road but are successful simply because you are travelling it and achieving goals along the way.

Achieve Personal Success

by

Jared D Ingram

We all strive for success...  But what is this success? Success, when viewed with a positive mental attitude, is a process, a journey and not a destination.

Success for the husband and wife means making their marriage work with hope that they can celebrate their golden wedding anniversary. Success will mean keeping their family intact with communication lines open.

Success for a student means passing the courses in school and developing mind and talents to make a beneficial contribution to the human race.

Success for the surgeon means saving a life!

So what does success finally add up to? A diploma on the wall? A trophy in the case? Money in the bank? Professional honors? Yes, this is success, but more than this, success is being able to look at yourself in the mirror and be proud of the person you have become! Success is noblest when it leaves you with self respect that you have become a good steward of life, liberties, possibilities, and opportunities that God offered to you.

Achieving personal success gives you joy, real joy, when you look at yourself. As the cliche goes "Don't love the office you work for, instead love the work you do. Your office may betray you, your work wont."

The moment you fall in love with your work is the moment you can be sure of your success. Your life is in your hands, and so is success if only you try achieving it. Are we all successful in things that we do? What is keeping us from success? Why do we limit our own abilities?

The reason for failure is lack of self confidence. No matter how impossible the task may seem, self-confidence is the seed for success. Success is analyzing, recognizing, visualizing, mobilizing and energizing our possibilities and seeing them turn into realities.

The first step towards achieving your personal success is to frame a goal which is long term. Visualize yourself after 10 years. How and where do you want yourself to be? This clears your mind of any doubts you may have. The next step is to frame short term goals, goals that lead the way towards the main objective. Take a goal, make it your life. Dream of it, breathe it, live it... And don't fail to love it. "Be the change you want to see". Seek pleasures in small and beautiful things around you, yet don't get immersed. Stay focused on your vision.  If you do this, success is all yours. Dare to dream the impossible. Yet work to turn your dreams into reality. Dreamers who become doers operate emotionally and rationally with self confidence. When opportunity meets preparedness the outcome is called "luck", but don't rely on that all your life. Take a goal, make it your life, dream of it, and achieve personal success.

With these simple but powerful approaches you can bid goodbye to failures and hello to success.

How to Become Successful – the First Step

As a researcher and promoter of personal development and success systems the commonest question by far that I hear is “How can I be successful?” How to be successful is the driving force for most people with whom I come into contact. Not surprising really, as this is my niche and my area of special expertise.

Usually I answer with another question. “What does ‘success’ really mean to you?” This is not a cop-out. I believe this question must be answered before I can even begin to outline what I believe this person must do in order to be successful. I do not believe anybody can really be successful unless they know exactly how they personally define success.

I have met people I would describe as very successful, but who have very little money. Many successful people are not well-known. Some have no close family and few if any friends.

So, if success is not defined by wealth, fame, family situation, or friendship, then what on earth does define success?

The answer, again, is that success can only ever be defined by the person who wishes to achieve it.

The first step to becoming successful is therefore to set aside some quiet, uninterruptible time, and begin to define for yourself exactly what you mean by success. You should make sure you have at least an hour for this, and preferably more so that the exercise can be open-ended and continue for as long as you find necessary. I can promise you that if you truly want to be successful this will be the most valuable hour or two you have ever spent.

This should initially be a brainstorming session. The concept here is that you should write down everything that comes into your mind when you hear the word “success”. Do not limit yourself to things you think it should be. You are trying to arrive at your own definition of personal success, not what you have read as someone else’s definition. Anything goes here. Do not be judgemental – if the thought occurs then write it down. Be prepared to fill quite a few pages here and to spend a good twenty or thirty minutes, not just a couple of minutes filling a single sheet of A4!

When you have spent a minimum of twenty minutes doing this (and keep going well beyond if ideas are still popping into your head) you can begin sifting through those ideas and crossing out ones that are not relevant. Also look for ones that are just repeats or variants of others; keep the most relevant and cross out the others.

You should now put your scribbled lists aside. In fact, turn the paper over so you cannot see anything you have written. On a clean sheet of paper write in large, bold capitals:

WHO AM I?

Don’t try to answer this. Just read it, then sit in absolute silence for at least another five minutes.  Ten, if you can manage it. This should be a form of meditation. If you are used to meditating on a phrase, then meditate on that question. If not, don’t worry – just sit there in silence.

When the five or ten minutes is up, turn over your list of words and phrases that came into your head when you thought about “success”. Start a fresh list and write down some words and phrases that now seem to resonate with you as being a start of your definition of success. These words and phrases may come from your brainstormed list, but you may find there are some completely different ones that now come into your head.

What you are trying to do here is to make sure your own personal definition of “success” is truly aligned with your own inner “you”. Only when your definition of success is properly aligned in this way can you really start to become truly successful.

At this point, start trying to formulate a sentence or two from this new list. This sentence will be the starting point of your own personal definition of success. It will probably be quite different from anything anyone else will ever write. That is quite natural, as this is extremely personal, and not some definition foisted upon you by the media. Treasure it! This definition, I can assure you, is one of the most precious things you have, as it will be the starting point of your true success.

Your definition of success will evolve over time, and in a few years from now may be quite different from what you have just written. But it will be a true definition, and one you can now be happy to go out and seek.

Good luck!