By Jack Perry
Success means living your life according to your priorities. Therefore, success can mean different things to different people. Success to one person might mean working in a job that allows them plenty of free time to spend with family. And success to another person might mean working in a job that needs constant attention and oversight. So while the first person might be satisfied with a part-time position, the second person will more likely be happier in a job with more responsibility and higher demands, such as owning a business. But in either case, success is defined by what the individual wants in life.
In your mind, you define your success. Just because you come in second out of a thousand people doesn’t mean that you lose. And just because you earn a six-figure salary doesn’t mean you are successful. When people hunt for what they perceive to be success, more often than not, they are after someone else’s definition of success, maybe their parent’s, friends’, or spouse’s. All too often, society identifies success as the one person at the top. But that’s not necessarily true.
Understanding that you can set your own standards for success is important because it allows you to achieve a higher level of satisfaction from your life. Working toward your own goals is much more rewarding than working toward someone else’s. If you’re constantly trying to achieve another person’s definition of success, you’ll never be happy and you’ll always long for something more.
So how can you achieve greater satisfaction from your life? Use the following process for defining what success means to you and setting your own standards.
1. Define Your Success
If you want to know what success means for you, look around and study the people you see as winners. Spend time with people who you think are successful. For some, this might mean spending time at work with their boss. For others, this might mean spending time with a neighbor who goes skiing every weekend.
While you’re spending time with this successful person, try to determine what makes you think he or she is successful. Is it her salary? His position within the company? Or maybe you think her success is defined by the way she spends time outside of work, such as volunteering to help a charity or enjoying her family. The time you spend with successful people will help you determine exactly what success means to you.
Teams will have unified meanings of success. A team of co-workers might see success as not letting the phone ring more than three times before someone picks up, or as processing all their orders within a set amount of time. Teams and groups of people can have a unified goal, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t set personal goals for yourself and how you will contribute to that unified goal.
2. Identify Your Values
Your values will start to show through your definition of success. A person who sees success as being CEO of an international corporation might value power, while a person who sees success as working in a job that allows him to make his own schedule might value flexibility. Think about what really makes you happy. Do you value your time with your family? If you don’t have a family, do you value your time working as a team? Do you value making a contribution to a cause you feel strongly about?
To be successful, your values and motives must be clear. They must be understandable. This step obviously requires self-examination, so have the courage to take an inventory of your life. Look at where you are now, and then consider what you want to move toward. What things are important to you? If you achieve them, will that be considered success in your mind?
3. Determine Your Goals
Next, determine your goals. Is your goal to take a big family vacation next summer? Or is your goal to get a promotion? Whatever your goal might be, you must be able to visualize it and use your goal to achieve your success.
Write your goal down and take it seriously, otherwise you’ll never achieve your success. Use your goal to keep you motivated and moving forward. When you feel your motivation slip, visualize your goal and think about what it means to you.
Don’t use your goal to discourage yourself, such as, “I’m a failure unless I become president of the United States.” You are setting yourself up for heartache. But maybe you could say that you want to be president of something, such as a club or organization you’re involved in.
But keep in mind, success is a journey; it isn’t getting to one point and suddenly stopping. Once you have your own definition of success, you can use it to guide your future decisions. Success is a moving target. You will modify your definition of success as you go through life. As people achieve certain levels of success, they tend to raise the bar. They redefine success for themselves and move to new plateaus. You must choose to move yourself from one plateau to the next.
4. Create Your Action Plan
The final step toward success is to set up your action plan. Setting out a series of steps toward the ultimate goal will lead you to things that you have defined as success. If your goal is to increase your sales numbers by twenty percent this quarter, you may develop an action plan to make ten cold calls each day. This way, you have a small daily goal that that contributes to your ultimate success.
This step is where your discipline and hard work come into play. Without the self-discipline to achieve each small step you identify for yourself, you won’t be able to achieve success. No one is born successful. Success is something you have to want and learn.
If you fail to achieve one of your small goals, don’t get discouraged. Anyone who tells you they’ve never failed has some real problems with reality. Either they can’t remember, they aren’t being honest, they are blind to their failures, or they’ve never really tried anything. Failure is a part of success. So don’t let a setback keep you from reaching for success.
Success in Your Future
Always know that your success is yours to define. If other people don’t agree with your definition of success, ignore what they say. Take counsel with your mentors and close friends to see if you’re really using your capabilities and pushing yourself enough. But don’t let someone tell you that you aren’t successful because your definition of success differs from theirs. You don’t have to hold yourself to other people’s standards. If you let other people define your success standards, you’ll never feel satisfied with yourself.
Success is yours to define, identify, and achieve. When you use these steps to set your own standards of success, you will achieve a greater level of satisfaction from your career, life, and everything you do.
Success from The Respect Factor® Series
THE RESPECT FACTOR® is a trademark of Jack Perry in the United States and other countries. Used with permission. ©2009 Jack Perry. All rights reserved.
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