Most of us want to be a success– and the very reason you’ve likely clicked on this article is that you want to be, too.
There are countless articles out there that will tell you all the things you need in order to become the best success you can. However, the more you read them, the more it might begin to seem impossible to achieve.
Everything that will be outlined in this article could be seen as good things to have in order to be a success, but are not entirely necessary.
What is Success?
Success is a tough one to define. The reason for this is that it just looks so different for everybody. For some it’s about learning as much as possible and using that knowledge to jumpstart a career later, for others, it looks like getting on a career path and working their way up later.
Success doesn’t have to be about being good at everything. The truth is, doing things like reciprocating compressor equipment is tricky and should be left to the professionals. It doesn’t matter if you’re not an engineer when your skills are best suited to marketing or public relations, for example.
Success is about being able to identify the areas in your life that you have both a passion and talent for and running after utilizing those to the best of your ability.
Now that the measures of success have been identified, here are some of the ‘must have’ things that have been identified as necessary that you don’t actually need to become successful.
A Specific Plan
Planning is good- in fact it is encouraged in order to help you to achieve your goals and to figure out exactly how you’re going to achieve them. But too rigid a plan will deter you if life takes you somewhat off course- which it will. Specific plans are unnecessary when it comes to actual success, as a lot of it comes from being attuned to your instinct. Decision-making comes down to either a ‘hell yes!’ or ‘hell no’ response.
A Schedule
One of the preconceived ideas of a successful person is that they have their lives dictated with up to the minute time management systems that outline their every waking moment. You don’t need this- in fact, the only place this kind of planning would have worked would have been back in school when we had timetables so that we could fit in all our learning, and our teachers, teaching. So, no more English at 9 am followed by double biology, then lunch- did you know that you can wait to eat until you’re hungry? As previously mentioned, success comes a lot from intuition, and part of that is being able to listen to our body’s needs–and we can’t always predict those!
A Perfect Diet
OK, so obviously, eating enough vital nutrients, etc is pretty essential when it comes to our health, but sometimes you do just want a beige-looking hot breakfast from a drive-thru. You have to let yourself let that be okay every so often. Eating endless kale salads and avocado on gluten-free bread might be good for the body, but might leave you feeling hungry. Successful influencers may infer that their success is due to ‘clean eating’ but that’s just not true. If you crave it, great. If not, eat what you want. You’re not going to be less successful because you chose to eat wings in your car one night on your way back from a meeting.
Minimalism
Sure, getting rid of some of the stuff we don’t need might help to reduce some stressors, but others like to be surrounded by the comfort of their things. Quite often people will preach the power of living a minimalist existence as though it’s the only way to go. People work in different ways. So if you’ve Marie Kondo-ed out your apartment hoping it will bring you peace, and you’re feeling anything but, that’s quite okay. Some people work better knowing that they are working in an environment with character. The most important thing is beginning to understand how you work best without getting too overwhelmed with ‘stuff.’
Meditation
There’s a lot of good that can come from meditation, but escapism won’t always open the doorway to success. Mindfulness, however, is a different story. Mindfulness gives you the capacity to notice the things that are going on around you as well as understanding how your presence impacts them. Meditation allows you to escape for a bit, which could be useful if you need a break to reassess your life. reassess your life, but it’s not going to be dire if you don’t find the time to do it.
To Be Your Own Boss
Stop the presses! Somebody can be a success if they happen to work for somebody else. Your life becomes successful when you say it does because the choices that you made brought you there. Of course, there are plenty of people who managed to find their success by leaving behind the traditional world of work in favor of doing things their own way. But that doesn’t mean that people who don’t do that are not just as successful. Success for you may be scoring a promotion in your employment, or it could be keeping the same job for several years. Yet again, everybody is different.
Being Regimented
Lastly, the notion of success is often portrayed to come from being highly disciplined and driving yourself forward with daily mantras, mood boards, and pictures stuck to your fridge of what you want your life to look like. One of the only things that will do is to lead you to constantly belittle your success and beat yourself up if you do not achieve the things in which you set yourself out to do.
Make sure that you’re able to celebrate every one of your successes along the way and count them as a win toward your ultimate goal. At the end of the day, you are truly the only person who can determine how successful you really truly are.
