How can you achieve success if you can not define it for yourself?
Defining success:
Success can mean many things depending on who you are and who you ask. It could mean an impressive investment portfolio, a high school diploma, a happy marriage, getting off probation, or being TikTok famous.
You need to define success for yourself and be as detailed as possible.
Ask yourself what would make ME successful? Or what would make this decade successful? This year? This quarter? Start with the long term and narrow down.
Examples of success:
Eliminating debt and increasing investments.
Graduating high school.
Getting Married and having kids.
Having a fulfilling career in teaching
Retiring early
Success is simply achieving or accomplishing something you’ve been trying to do.
Why is it important to measure success?
Setting goals and making plans. Sure it’s nice to go with the flow but that does not always work out and can take you in unforeseen directions. Planning and having goals to work towards is the only way to achieve success. Unless of course, your goal is to have no goals and try to accomplish such a lifestyle. Then by definition, you’d be successful. Hence the importance of defining and measuring success. This small step helps to understand what it is you want to work towards and how you can track progress.
What metrics can we use to measure success?
Consider the time-based approach to success. What will make me successful today? This week? This month? The year? Decade? Lifetime?
You can also ask yourself these questions per specific tasks or jobs. For example: What will make this night with my wife a success? What will make this the most successful week yet?
Using these questions will help detail your metrics for measuring success on a time-based approach.
Why does success matter?
Success is a great way to set goals, be motivated, find the drive, and live a life that you can and will be happy about. Success does not have to be millions of dollars and expensive items. Success can be whatever you want to achieve and however you define it. (One night, week, decade, etc).
Achieving Success
We have defined success, we have given examples of success, discussed the importance of measuring success, and figured out how to measure success. Now let’s talk about how to achieve success. The first step you must take is to determine what success means to you. In this example, we will say that to be successful, I am following through with the idea I had to start a blog.
Now if I start is that success? Absolutely! However, I need to be able to have a metric of success. Because starting it only makes me successful in doing that. I want to be successful in having people subscribe, read, and find value in my blog. I want to be successful in teaching people how to start a blog. I want to be successful in monetizing my blog and having other people with blogs want me to write for theirs.
The idea here is that success will start with a small win and you can play into momentum to keep the small wins coming. With each win, you’ll need to reassess what makes the next step a success. Keep in mind that some wins will take longer than others.
Conclusion
Success is and can be what you determine it to be. I believe that people will inherently try to succeed and “do better”, without any external motivation. On the contrary, external motivation or reward will encourage success. Money is an example. As well as status or material things. Small wins add up!