Success! What does that mean to you? For some people it means a bigger car. A bigger house. More cash to blow on empty calories. More conspicuous consumption. That, of course, is a possible way to be. But it is not success! It is not a form of 'right livelihood'. And it has nothing to do with the road to happiness or completion as a human being.
Indeed there seem to be more 'failures' among the super-rich today than among the moderately poor. (For details, see: 'Affluenza', by Oliver James, psychologist and author).
There are many different ways of defining and approaching personal and professional success, and success in life in general. My dictionary defines success as: "1. the accomplishment of an aim or purpose. 2. the gaining of fame, wealth, or social status..." And I would say that while number one is an important part of my definition of success, number two quite definitely is not. If you do what you love in life, and love the people in your life, you will gain all the acclaim and joyful success that any person could reasonably want.
If you want to be successful, then you could benefit from knowing your life goals, because often having goals can pull us towards them - though this is by no means a magic formula. It is just that, on average, having goals tends to be more positive than not having goals.
Earl Nightingale, one of the earliest and most impressive of the personal development experts in the Anglo-American tradition, always maintained that success consisted of the gradual achievement of a worthy goal. He saw goals as being like seeds, planted in the mind, and growing over time into what they specified. Indeed, his book and audio programme - the Strangest Secret - is once again back in circulation. You can see an extract here: Earl Nightingale Movie.
Modelling yourself on successful people is another good strategy. The best way to do this is to idenify a few role models who have published autobiographies, or about whom significant biographies have been written. By reading these books, you can learn the values and attitudes and behaviour patterns of your role models, and copy them.
However, you would not be very successful if you turned out to be a clone of somebody else, so it it important to choose a whole panel of role models, copy a blend of their approaches, and develop out of that your own unique approach to life and success.
A third approach is to focus upon those goals which are life enhancing, such as:
Being healthy;
Being happy;
Having successful relationships with at least one other significant person;
Having a service orientation towards other people;
Aiming for a reasonable level of income - above the poverty line;
Becoming fascinated by some area of vocational or avocational interest, and pursuing it passionately;
And on and on.
However, it is important to remember the Stoic insight that there are only certain things you can control and certain things you can't. Success depends upon being able to distinguish between these two conditions, and only trying to change or control those things that can be changed or controlled. But even this requires a sophisticated understanding and a canny strategy.
Also, as the Buddha discovered, life is suffering - or full of frustrations - and to be successful we must take this factor into account.
And again, from Buddhism, we had better make sure we only engage in "right livelihood". That means doing a morally good job, in a morally good way. Or, as William Du Bois says:
"Your return from your work must be the satisfaction which that work brings you, and the world's need of taht work. With this, life is heaven or as near heaven as you can get. Without this - with work that you despise, which bores you and which the world does not need - this life is hell".
Or, as Buckminster Fuller has said:
"The moment you choose to do what you really want to do,
it's a different kind of life".
In his book on 'The Truth About Success and Motivation', Dr Robert Montgomery talks about Relationships and Communication (including Assertive communication). He does not mention money once; nor position; nor rank; nor material possessions!
Success is mainly a state of mind - sustained by good companionship, good food, a good balance of work, rest and play, good health, and the ability to laugh at the silliest things. Laugh at any opportunity, on the slimmest of excuses! Laugh your cuffing head off! For human existence is a great cosmic joke!
Coming down to mundane "reality" again for a moment, we can take a more formal approach to the psychology of success.
The psychology of success involves a number of factors:
Perhaps the most important one is your ATTITUDE! If you have an attitude towards life that is based on expecting success to happen easily, effortlessly, and automatically, just because you want it, and just because you are YOU, then you are going to have a long wait.
If you want to create success, you need to develop the attitudes and values of:
Concentration (on your top priorities, and on your daily tasks);
Commitment, which means that you get behind your ideas, and give them your all - try your hardest - act with vigour - and keep on trying, even when you fail and fail and fail: (Failing behaviours do not make you 'a fail-ure');
Excellence - a determination to give of your best, to achieve the highest standard that you can;
Service - to dedicate yourself to helping others to get what they want from your product or service;
Responsibility: If there's a problem in your life then you are responsible: Not necessarily in the sense of having caused it - but nobody's coming on a cuffing white charger to rescue you, so you'd better take responsibility today, and get on with solving it;
Integrity, which means that you always and only act on your own values, and never compromise your values for what seem like short term rewards or profits;
Self-development, which means you are your principal capital asset, and if you do not keep developing yourself, then you cannot grow, and you will continue to produce roughly the results you are producing today; and finally:
Courage - which does not mean being fearless. On the contrary, it means taking calculated risks, and putting yourself on the line, even though you are realy quite nervous about doing so.
But then remember to have balance in your life - a good balance of work, rest and play. And remember to LOVE! And remember to LAUGH! And don't waste a moment counting the money in the bank. You will have to leave all of that behind you when you leave the "waiting room"! Ha, ha, ha! ("The chimney smokes, and I am gone!" Marcus Aurelius).
Just before I present four steps towards personal success, here is an inspiring little video clip on Attitude, from Mac Anderson. When you have watched the clip, close down Mac's site to return to this page and read the four steps to success: The Power of Attitude.
(1) Distinguishing success from failure. This is not as easy as it looks. Most people in the modern world have their definition of success determined for them by the mass media of advertising, PR, unrealistic movies, biased newspapers, and so on. Most materialistic definitions of success are found in practice to be totally empty: the cars, the big houses, the fur coats, the power boats, and so on. They are the starting point of Siddhartha, not his end point. They are the 'fools gold' of modern capitalism. Success, for many more profound philosophers includes: being healthy; being happy; having really powerful relationships with a couple of other humans; having successful relationships with a small group of others, including neighbours, peers, associates; and having career or non-vocational success in terms of setting and working intelligently towards their business/money/hobby goals, and/or their volunteer work goals.
(2) Setting goals for success. Again, this is not perfectly effortless. Firstly, it is most important that your goals are written down. It is also important that you rewrite them on a daily basis, to get them deeply into your non-conscious mind, which is the source of all of your habitual action tendencies. And goals had better be written in a specific kind of form, to maximize their effectiveness. Furthermore, goals without plans for their achievement are just wishful thinking.
(3) Avoiding behaviours related to the psychology of failure (which include being lazy, greedy, ambitious, selfish, ignorant and vain). This is difficult because most people do not know how to change their behaviours from the habitual loser behaviours to the desired winning behaviours. But this can be done, using the steep road or the slow road, and the right kind of reinforcement schedule.
(4) Working on your beliefs about success and failure. Humans are 'belief machines'. We are encouraged by others to adopt certain beliefs, from the earliest days of our lives. We construct our own beliefs. And we have innate tendencies that fuel certain kinds of other beliefs. All of these beliefs shape our perceptions of our lives, and influence our view of the possibility of success for us as individuals. If we have a set of 'loser beliefs', or a 'loser script', then we will tend to mess up all our opportunities for success. But we can re-programme ourselves for success, if we are willing to take on the task with energy and commitment. (What follows is a little video clip on the importance of energy and commitment to personal and professional success. One degree of effort can produce many degrees of difference! One Degree of Difference!)
Jim Byrne,
October 2006/January 2007/July 2007/October 2007.
ABC Coaching and Counselling Services
If you are interested in receiving Personal Performance Coaching from Jim Byrne, to do with improving your goal setting and achievement, then please contact Jim on 01422 847 882 (from inside the UK); or 44 1422 847882 from outside the UK). Or email me at ABC Coaching and Counselling Services.
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For further information, please contact Jim Byrne at ABC
Coaching and Counselling Services.
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