success
səkˈsɛs/
noun
1. the accomplishment of an aim or purpose.So, what makes a person successful in life? One person might tell you something completely different from the next. After all, the meaning of success is subjective. One might think that being rich and having a booming business is the real meaning of success. They wouldn’t be wrong. Having a successful career and being financially stable is great accomplishment in life that requires a lot of hard work to achieve. All of that can allow you to be comfortable and have a sense of security, but unless you are healthy, happy and spiritually fulfilled, it’s all pretty meaningless.
Some of you reading this might flinch at the word ‘spiritual.’ But what I mean by spiritual, is your sense of self. Science can not yet explain that niche aspect of the brain that makes you fundamentally you. I like to call it the soul, or spirit. I imagine it as if you were to strip away all your experiences, and you were a completely blank canvas, there’d still be a glowing gold dot right in the middle of the taught cloth. That centred pulsating dot would be your individuality, the essence of your life.
If you lay awake at night with worries, fears or regrets, your spirit is in jeopardy. If you go about your day-to-day affairs concealing, with a mask of who you are, you are smothering your soul. If you feel you are constantly searching, never finding solace, your spirit is wired and needs to find balance. You can have it all on paper. The job, the car, the estate and all those thingy things, but unless you are doing good in the world and feeling good within yourself, what meaning does it all really have? Are you really successful if you’re unfulfilled?
Success in achieving a “good life” has less to do with one’s job title and more to do with the lives you touch along the way.
Beth Waldron
The 10 habits
I bet a lot of you were expecting something along the lines of early mornings, healthy diet, vigorous exercise routines and maybe some trade secrets. Sure, a healthy lifestyle in the sense of diet and exercise is vital for ensuring your body is nourished, and a healthy body goes hand in hand with a healthy mind. I’ve used the word ‘healthy’ way too much already. I’m not going to share with you the obvious factors in keeping the human body in optimal shape, nor am I going to tell you the odd ticks of famous people like only wearing silk on Sundays and eating bananas every other day. What I am going present, is 10 habits that truly successful people have, and it might help you take a glimpse at how to get there for yourself.
1.) Successful people don’t wait for opportunities to be handed to them, for problems to fix themselves or for times to change. They create a platform for opportunities to exist, they dig deep and find ways to fix their problems and ultimately, they make the changes they want to see in the world.
2.) Successful people deal in fairness. One of their main goals is to make things fair for everyone and have a sense of equality in their environment. Whether that be in the work place, or at home with the family. If something seems unfair to them, and they have the power to make it right, they will do everything they can to make sure it happens.
3.) Successful people know love, give love and are loved. Not everyone is born into the perfect circumstances with perfect parents to raise them, and even if they are, there will always be an instance when you form a relationship or come into contact with an ill-intended person. Successful minds do not consider themselves victims, they make the best of what they have until they are able to make it better. They keep fighting through hard times because they are certain they will make it out to the other side, the brighter side.
4.) Successful people work smarter, not harder. There’s a limit that we all have, and becoming burnt out is the result of an unbalanced work ethic. If your job is so important to you, then don’t you want to be around to actually do it? The term ‘workaholic’ has negative connotations for valid reasons. We work to live, not live to work, just make sure you’re taking care of yourself first before taking care of matters at work.
5.) Successful people don’t have to fake a smile, because they actually are that happy. Living a life of positivity is the realm in which they choose to reside. It is the better realm, the comfier realm, the realm that will get you further in life. Nobody wants to be around negativity, who wants to be brought down? Attitude is like toast. The bread should be your realism, buttered with a good amount of positivity and the jam is your perception of things. If your bread is made of negativity, breakfast is going to taste bad everyday. Successful people eat a tasty breakfast, that’s just fact.
6.) Successful people know their worth.
7.) Successful people are open minded, but have their own opinions formed. Their opinions are subject to change when new data presents itself, like a scientist. When you are closed-minded you stunt your potential to grow, limit opportunities and block the real truth from making itself known.
8.) Successful people do not concern themselves with matters that don’t concern them. Knowing information is not the key goal here, it’s knowing the right information.
9.) Successful people want to help others. Mother Theresa, successful. Obama, successful. Dr. Phil, successful. Ellen Degeneres, successful. If you don’t feel that it’s important to help others, then you’re really missing the whole entire point of being human. You cannot be a fully formed, well rounded successful human being, unless helping others is part of your lifestyle.
10.) This last one might sound odd, but it’s pretty important. A sense of humour. I’m not sure how you go about getting one if you don’t have one, but I think we’re all born with our own varying tickle sensors. If you have a hard time finding the ability to laugh, to take things with a pinch of salt and give yourself an opportunity to giggle your socks off, then you’re just simply really missing out. After all, you can’t take life too seriously, you’ll never get out of it alive…Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
Winston Churchill
