We all want to be successful. Success, however, is a very broad term and what it means depends on the person defining it. Success to some may be getting their dream job–that would be professional success. Others, on the other hand, may define success as earning lots of money which they consider as financial success. Ultimately, what we consider as success helps us in building the lifestyle that we desire. However, even with that, people set different standards and measures of what success truly is for them.
How about you? What is success for you?
They say, if you do what you love, you will never have to work a day in your life. While this saying means well, it should be taken with a grain of salt. Doing what you love will still entail lots and lots of hard work. The thing is, when you enjoy what you are doing, you do not notice anymore how much effort you are exerting because it comes naturally. Your drive and commitment come strong and you are focused on achieving the goals that involve success in your passion.
When you do what you love, you aim for a certain professional growth. This is a matter of asking yourself how far you want to go in your career. That would be your measure of professional success.
In effect, you can get your measures of financial success from there. You have to ask yourself how much do you want to earn with that career. You have to set realistic standards that are achievable.
Together, your professional and financial statuses and successes help determine your current lifestyle and the one that you desire.
If you have no idea how to go about this, continue reading as this article will help you define what success is for you and determine how to achieve that level of success.
It all starts with passion.
People define success in their own terms. Personal experiences and preferences are two of the factors in shaping one’s definition of success. While these may differ from one person to another, one thing is constant–passion.
Everyone has his or her own passion. Some even have two or more. The first step in achieving success is determining what your passions are. You may ask yourself these questions:
What are you interested in?
You start off with something simple: your interests. What kind of things are you fond of? What keeps you interested? Answers to these questions may vary. You may be interested in novels, healthcare, building designs, music, and the list goes on and on.
The career path of your choice must always spark your interest. If you do not know what you want to do in life, it is safe to start with what you are interested in. List down all of the things that you find interesting. You do not have to worry if your list is long because you can simply narrow it later anyway.
What do you enjoy doing with your interests?
After asking yourself what you are interested in, you have to ask yourself what do you enjoy doing. This involves the things that you are interested in.
Let’s say, if you are interested in novels, you have to determine what you enjoy doing with them. Do you love reading novels? Do you like writing? Or do you enjoy editing existing manuscripts?
From there, you already have a view of what type of work you see yourself doing. People who love reading can consider reviewing books for a living. Individuals whose passion is writing can be authors. Those who prefer editing than writing can opt to be an editor in a publishing company.
While determining your interests can be broad, this question somehow narrows things down. You get a more specific answer towards determining your passion.
What do you want to excel in years from now?
This may be the most specific question among the three. It is completely fine to have a lot of interests and career choices. You can even juggle two passions at the same time. However, you have to set which of your passions do you really want to excel in.
The problem with having too many passions with no set priority is that you are prone to getting confused in the process. Confusion is inevitable and making mistakes is part of the process. When you determine your priority, though, you get a clearer view of the future that you want. The journey becomes easier and you get to save more time and resources.
If you want to change your priority in the middle of your journey, you can do so. It all depends on you. With that shift, you must follow the same process and put your priority above everything else.
For example, if you want to be a doctor but really love painting, you can do both for as long as you have determined which of the two you want to excel in more. You can excel in both but you have to choose which do you want to spend more of your resources on. When we say resources, it is not limited to finances but also includes time and effort. If you want to choose being a doctor over painting, you have to make it a priority. You have to set your eyes on being a doctor.
With these questions in mind, you will have an idea of what you are really passionate about. You can start from there and move forward to achieving professional and financial success. If you do not know what you want, you may find it hard to be able to attain your goals because you do not know what they are in the first place.
There are a lot of self-help books that can help you in knowing more about your passion. Finding Your Element by New York Times bestselling author Sir Ken Robinson is a good read that will help you understand how talents and personal passions go together. Keith Abraham’s It Starts With Passion is a helpful book on igniting your passion. You can check these reads out.
Set your goals.
Once you have a concrete idea of what you would want to achieve, the next thing that you have to do is to set your goals. It is very important to set your goals so you know where you are heading. There are two types of goals that you have to make: short-term and long-term.
On one hand, short-term goals are your day-to-day objectives. These are the little things that you celebrate in life such as passing a subject or winning a bid for a project.
Long-term goals, on the other hand, are the great goals that you want to achieve in a longer period of time. These goals are the sum of your short-term goals. They serve as your finish line or the culmination of everything that you have worked hard for.
This does not mean you have to stop, though. Once you have achieved your long-term goals, you can add more goals to your list. Whether your new goals are long-term or short-term is up to you.
There are also instances where your long-term goals change. That is normal since personal experiences and life happenings may affect our goals and ultimately, our definition of success.
Goals, whether short-term or long-term, have to be concrete, measurable, and attainable.
When we say concrete, we mean specific. Is your goal buying a new car or maybe passing a subject? You have to give yourself details of what your goal is. What kind of car do you want, or what grade do you want to achieve?
Your goals also have to be measurable.You need to lay down your own measures and standards. For example, if you want a good rating from your boss, you have to set a standard rating that you consider good. You can consider 3 of 5 stars as your standard of good. If you get a 3 or even 5, that means you have achieved your goal of receiving a good rating.
Above all else, your goals must be attainable. Dream big, they say. However, you have to make sure that your big dreams are possible to attain. If you set very impossible goals, then you would most likely beat yourself up if you do not reach them. Set a goal first that challenges you but at the same time is something you can achieve. Once you succeed, you can set bigger goals.
Setting goals can be quite difficult and requires much thinking and introspection. You may check out Goal Setting: The Ultimate Guide To Achieving Goals That Truly Excite You by Thibaut Meurisse for reference. Though there are many books on goal-setting available in the market, this one provides a comprehensive method that can guide you.
Educate yourself.
Sir Francis Bacon said that knowledge is power. In order to excel in your chosen career, you must have enough knowledge about it. There is the need to constantly learn and educate yourself.
What do Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Steve Jobs have in common? They are all billionaires who have made a mark in the tech industry with Microsoft, Facebook, and Apple respectively. It is also notable that all three are college dropouts.
What do we get from this? A diploma does not really guarantee professional and financial success the same way that professional and financial success does not require a diploma. However, it does not hurt to have one.
There are certain careers that need proper education such as those in medicine, architecture, and engineering, to name a few. In fact, there are some where you have to take licensure examinations before you can practice the profession. Other professions do not really require proper education since skills and talent needed can be self-taught and learned through experience.
Still, if you have the opportunity and resources to get proper education, you should grab the chance. Let’s face it–a good degree and impressive educational background give you an advantage when it comes to employment.
In fact, according to the United States Department of Labor, 2017 employment data showed that holders of bachelor’s degrees had higher salary than those of associate degrees and high school diplomas. In addition, people with master’s and doctoral degrees were paid higher than everyone else.
Your salary level, in a way, affects your financial success. Of course, with higher pay, you get to spend more on your needs and wants. However, your salary is just one facet of your professional success. There are other facets which may be more important. What these facets are depends solely on you.
Aside from the salary bracket, education also has a say on one’s growth particularly in the corporate world. Some employers and companies require higher studies before giving promotions to employees no matter how hardworking they are. This is a reality that we must all face. These companies have rules and standard operating procedures for their employees that need to be followed.
Do not stop learning. Build yourself up.
We are all too familiar with the saying that change is the only thing constant in this world. Aside from that, there is another thing that should be constant–learning.
Learning is not limited to the four walls of a classroom. Technology nowadays offers many wonders to the world and that includes a variety of learning and reference materials readily available online. You can scour the internet and look for articles or you can even read books in your Kindle. There is so much you can learn with one tap of a finger. With this, it is now easier for us to learn more about our profession and expand our knowledge on the industry that we are in.
Aside from research, there is another way of learning that Is very important in achieving professional success–learning by experience. It is in school and through the materials we are exposed to that we learn about concepts and ideas.
Knowledge is important, but it is through experience that you improve yourself.
Regardless of the career path that you choose to follow, experience is the ultimate key to achieving your goals. It is through experience that you apply everything that you have learned. Experience includes honing your skills and having your commitment to your goals tested.
Education takes you to places profession-wise but it is nothing when you do not have skills. Employers consider one’s education when hiring, yet it is one’s skill set that makes employers want to keep you. There are instances where people without diplomas have far better skills than those with formal education. Case in point, the three billionaires that we mentioned earlier.
Taking cues from Bradley R. Staats’ book titled Never Stop Learning, we should constantly learn or else there is the risk of becoming irrelevant.
You should build yourself up. If you are a budding engineer, take on difficult tasks and listen to what your mentors have to say. If you are a newbie journalist, take notes from veterans and learn from your day-to-day coverage. It is a matter of furthering your experience and bettering your skills.
It is a constant process of becoming a better person. The more you become a better person, the closer you get to achieving your goals and building the lifestyle that you desire.
Earn while doing what you love.
Doing what you love is definitely something to look forward to. It brings a sense of contentment. Perhaps one of the best things about getting to do what you love is when you earn while enjoying what it is that you are doing. It is like hitting two birds with one stone–you doing your passion and getting paid for it at the same time. You are able to achieve professional success and financial success.
We tackled professional success in the earlier parts of this article. Now we will help you understand what financial success is for you.
You may often wonder: what does it mean to be financially successful? It all begins with you asking yourself what is financial success for you.
The lifestyle that you want has a say on your financial success.
Like professional success, you have to determine the things that you want to achieve for you to say that you have financial success. It is also a matter of knowing the kind of lifestyle that you want. From there, you would know how to be financially successful in life.
Do you want to live in a house in a quiet suburb or do you want a flat in the middle of the metropolis? Do you want to drive an expensive sports car or do you prefer a low maintenance sedan? The lifestyle that you aim to have will help you find out what financial success is for you.
Each lifestyle has a financial requirement. If you want an expensive abode, you have to spend much money. If\ a high-end vehicle is on your to-buy list, you need to have funds. If are contented with simple living, then your costs are relatively much lower than those with extravagant lifestyles.
When we want great and expensive things in life, our measures of financial success becomes even greater.
It takes hard work and hustle.
There is no shortcut to achieving professional and financial success. The key is to hustle hard and keep going. You need patience, perseverance, and hard work to be able to reach success.
To get the job that you want, you have to study hard and learn so many things. When you are already there, you have to work hard and prove yourself to get the level of position that you want. If you have professional success but are not quite there when it comes to financial success, you have to find the means to be able to get the finances that you want.
In the process, there will be challenges, failures, and disappointments. The key is to keep going despite all the downs.
Take good care of what you have.
When you are already at the peak of success, chances are, you may get too complacent. It is a continuous process so the hustle should not stop. You must learn to take good care of whatever it is that you have.
Profession-wise, you have to give your best in everything that you do. Your quality of work is one of the main reasons why people have trust in you.
Financial-wise, you have to manage your finances. This may get challenging because when you have much, you are tempted to spend more. Good habits of financially successful people are the reason why they remain financially successful. One of these good habits is not spending more than what you have. When you spend beyond your means, you are putting yourself at risk of debt.
We mentioned earlier that you should not stop learning when it comes to your profession. The same also applies to your finances.
There are a lot of courses, some you can even find online, that you can take to help you learn how to manage your finances. Reference materials also help. You can also find tips for financial success that you can follow.
Erick Wecks’ book titled You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth is a good read especially for those who do not have much. It will help you survive with barely any finances.
In conclusion, you must determine, learn, work, and take care.
To get what you want, you must first determine what you want. What you want may not be what others want so comparing yourself is really unnecessary. When you know what you want, it is much easier to get it.
Learning is something constant. Just because you are doing well does not mean you should stop learning. Even experts continue to learn.
You cannot get what you want with a snap of a finger. There is the need to work, work, and work. Working hard will take you to places.
Whether you already have what you want or it still is not enough, you must take good care of what you have on hand. Being too complacent may cost you what you have.
To summarize, you have to earn whatever successes you want in life. You have to exert effort and spend resources to get to where you want to be.