26 A to Z secrets of Success:
The definition of success is differ from individual to individual. Before giving you 26 secrets of success, I would like to define success according to my point of view.
Success is when you achieve your goal, target, aim or purpose.
Success is when you become most beautiful flower of your plant or most attractive fruit of your tree.
Success is when lot of people look at you with admiration and seek your guidance.
Success is when you are more useful for others than yourself.
Success is when you are touching sky but your feet are firm on the ground.
Success is when you are continuously walking towards your goal in-spite of obstacles or failures.
Success is when you have reached to your destination but already have set your eyes on next goal.
Success is when fruit of your achievement is useful for others.
Now I would like to reveal 26 secrets of success. These are arranged in A to Z sequence and not in a sequence of importance. These secrets are nectar of my last 26 years of reading around 500+ books and 1000s of articles. One person can not have all the following qualities however you will find most of these qualities in a successful person. It may so happen that you are not finding your favourite word in 26 headings but that is certainly represented directly or indirectly under one of the secrets. Such as PERSEVERANCE, it is synonym with determination. Still if you feel that I had left out important quality, please do write me.
Action Oriented:
Taking a birth in the wealthy or intellectual family is not success. It is your destiny and result of your past karma. Success depends on your present actions which will convert into results and create your destiny. Actions depends on decisions you take now and decisions depends on quality of your thinking and thinking depends on your day to day observations, learning and interactions with people.
Successful people are action oriented. It may so happen that their all actions do not result into desired outcome but they never stop. They may change their path but they will keep walking, keep doing, keep going ahead with a clear vision in mind.
Blessed with Luck:
Few of reader may not believe in luck but directly or indirectly we acknowledge importance of the same. Few people are born lucky and few are mostly fortunate to get their way wherever they go or whatever they do.
If presently luck is not favouring us it does not mean in future also it will not favour us. Whatever the positive actions we are taking today, result of those will come before us on future date as luck.
Communication Skills:
It is not necessary that if you lack good communication skills, you can not be successful. I have worked with few fine brains in industry but they were not having great oratory or communication skills.
Still having a good communication skills helps in climbing steps of success. They work like a icing on the cake. Many people acquire good communication skills after achieving a certain level of success.
Dedication and Determination:
The first step is to have clear dreams of what you wish or desire to achieve. Once the dreams are clear, decide action plan to achieve those dreams. When goal and strategy both are in place one need perseverance or dedication to walk on the path. Dedication is the one of the most desired single quality require to achieve any thing. If any body asks me what is the single most attribute require for success, I will select dedication or perseverance.
Dedication alone can not drive to success however coupled with determination and discipline, journey will become faster toward destiny.
Education & Learning:
Probably few decades back formal education was not must for success. In present world also there are examples of great success without completing formal education. However chances of success are better when one is equipped with better education.
Learning shall be life long endeavour. Knowledge is power. One need to be updated in his field. Technological and other advancements are continuous process so learning shall also be continuous process. Knowledgeable person will always have an edge to think clearly in complex situation, find solution of problems, decide the strategy and set the vision.
Focused Efforts:
You might have come across extraordinarily intelligent people but not getting success in life. If you deeply analyse, you will find that prime reason is lack of systematic focused efforts. They lack concentration. They do not follow monomaniacally a single focused goal. They will put their resources in various projects.
There are people who are capable of doing multitask and can handle several projects simultaneously however those are exceptions. If you dig 10ft at 10 places, you may not get water but if you dig 100 ft at one place chances are bright that you get water.
Goals Clarity:
When we step out of a house, our destination is in our mind. But most of us are living entire life without any purpose. It might not be possible to decide the ultimate goal however, it’s also not difficult to decide short term and medium term goals. Goals may be materialistic, emotional, intellectual or spiritual but life without goal is like balloon without air. Furthermore, people at work without goal might achieve something but their achievement will always be lower than their potential.
Professionals say that your goals must be SMART (Specific; Measurable; Attainable; Relevant; Time Bound). If goals are not SMART then they are not goals, they are basically wishes. Written goals have always better chances of getting fulfilled so always keep on writing and modifying goals periodically. When the END is defined, chances are very high that you will reach the END otherwise wherever you reach consider that is END.
Honesty Generates Trust:
Many may argue that in present days most of the successful people are not honest. But I am sure that dishonest person can not have happiness and peace of mind. Having a success, mostly financial one, without peace of mind is not meaningful.
Honesty in behaviour is key to create trust. If our thoughts, words and actions are not aligned, people will not trust us. Sustainable success is impossible without trustworthiness.
Invest Your Resources:
It is not possible to do YAGYA without giving AAHUTI. whatever you have, your knowledge, time, energy and money, you will have to invest to get some thing better out of it. A farmer will have to plough the field, sow the seed, water it etc. to get the crop.
If there is no input than there is no process than how can there be output? The main reason of failure is our input are less than required to get desired output.
Joyful:
It is not necessary that all successful people are joyful but I will consider all joyful people as successful. Success can not be measured with wealth, fame or power alone. If wealth, fame or power is not coupled with joy than that success has got no meaning.
Some may argue that once I get success, I will become happy but those people will never get happiness. Rather chances are great that happy people will get success sooner.
Kwality:
Whatever you think, whatever you talk, whatever you do, adds the flavor of quality and you will be delivering the extra ordinary performance. The existence of your business or profession depends on quality of product and services you are giving to your customer and client. Quality depends upon quality of input material, process and quality check for final output. Success is impossible if you are not quality conscious.
Leadership:
It is impossible to think of success in absence of leadership quality. Leader is the person who can get extraordinary result from ordinary people. A leader can inspire and motivate team to get peak performance. Many people get confused managerial skills with leadership traits. One can manage things but people to be lead. Mostly we do reverse. We start managing people and leading the things.
Move on:
In my opinion we must discourage every one to use word FAILURES. The word failure has been used so negatively in day-to-day life that it can’t do any thing better than to demean and demotivated someone. The failure is basically not getting success in that attempt, which can be better defined as experience. Thomas Edison did not get success 999 times before developing bulb, but he learned 999 ways how not a bulb can be made.
In work life, failing is actually accumulating experiences. The best example of learning from failure is Abraham Lincoln. When we will start calling failures as experiences, we will not get demotivated and never feel down. We will start again with new experience and new zeal. Instead of asking how and why you failed, ask how was your experience and what are your next plans. Failures are best lessons to learn and strong foundation stones on which a palace of success can be built.
Net Working:
A person with average talent but strong net work has better chance of getting new job, closing the deal and winning the project. People give more importance to attitude than ability. Over a period families are shrinking but friend circles are growing. Social networking sites are booming. Professionals are eager to join groups, association, clubs etc. major deals are getting closed either at the golf course or get togethers.
Organise Yourself:
Most of the successful people manage their time very efficiently. They strongly believe in delegating responsibilities down the line. They focus on creating efficient systems and processes. Mostly you will find their table and schedule less cluttered. Successful people are efficient as well as effective.
Positive Thinking & Attitude:
Positive thinking is the seed of positive attitude. Thousands of books are written on positive attitude but very few are focused on positive thinking. I wonder how one can have positive attitude without positive thinking. Positive thinking require lots of conscious efforts and continuous watch and refinement of thoughts.
Positive attitude helps in getting success as well as overcoming failures with greater speed. You will not find a single example of highly successful person with negative attitude.
Quick Decision Maker:
Success oriented people are very quick on their feet. They have amazing ability to see the end even before starting a first step. Since they can visualise the final destination and path instantaneously, they are very quick in making decisions. They have great intuition and do not need all the facts to take decision. I have seen many successful entrepreneurs who do not delegate effectively but they are quick in taking decisions. Their quick decision making trait compensate their weakness of non-delegation.
Risk Taking Ability:
Safe players can never be successful. They can walk but they can not run. Nothing greater have ever achieved without taking risk. It does not mean that they jump blindly in the well but they step out often with calculated risk. They will risk their all the resources once they are convinced about their ideas. According to them ship may be safe in harbour but ships are made to sail. Successful people do not enjoy routine life where there is no risk. They strongly believe in high risk high gain rule.
Smart working:
Doing things rightly is good but doing right things is more important. Working smartly requires creativity and innovativeness. It reduces fatigue and eliminate the wastage. Smart people gets more output in given resources. If a person can do hard work along with smart work than it is a feather in the cap.
Team Building: The height of ego, I consider, when a person says I am self made and independent person. We are product of team work of 2 persons who are our parents. To achieve anything worth while we need hard-work and support of many people.
The successful people know this secret very well and build a team of employees, associates or partners who are mentally, emotionally and physically dedicated to his goals and purpose.
Understanding & Empathy:
EQ i.e. Emotional Quotient used for knowing level of emotional intelligence of a person. Successful people are sensitive enough to feel, understand and empathise emotional turmoils of self as well as others with whom they are dealing with. This quality help them in connecting other people and getting most out of them. One can not build palace of his success without using bricks of efforts of other people.
Vision and Direction:
The first step to be successful is having clear vision. Success is basically journey from present status to future destination. There is a difference between goal and vision. Vision is long term outlook whereas goal is short term target. Vision is final destination where as goal is intermediate milestones.
Spend more time in clarifying your vision and direction otherwise your ladder will be against wrong wall and your all efforts will be wasted. If you feel lack of ability in visualising your final destination, take the help of experts. Dedication, determination, decisions and actions are all useless if your vision is blurred.
Wealth Creation:
If we keep apart success in spiritual world, wealth and earnings are major criteria and barometer of success. Mostly it so happen that when our earnings are good, we ignore creation of wealth. We spend the money for wasteful things which has got depreciating value. One can not be so fortunate that in life never meets failure. Failures and bad times are inevitable. At such stage accumulated wealth can bail you out and again give you courage to take risk and get success. People are wise who create wealth for having sustainable success.
Xceed the Expectations:
When you work to get success, there are several stakeholders. Such as shareholders, customers, lenders, employees, society, government etc. Each stack holder has certain expectations. Successful people make it as a habit to exceed the expectation of all stack holders. That increase confidence and trust of all involved and efforts of involved create a momentum where it is impossible to fail.
Yes I Can:
Though courage is covered under risk taking but I would stress on having attitude of 'Yes I Can' and 'Yes I Will'. Attitude matter more than skills. People have courage to take first step without much knowledge of future path, get success easily than people have lot of knowledge but do not have attitude of I CAN or I WILL.
Zealous:
Last but not least, passion to excel is major trait of successful people. Passion is their source of energy and enthusiasm. For their passion they can give long hours without feeling stress in body or mind. Their mind will be 24 hours occupied with their passion only. Flip side is that, they ignore all other aspect of life. But nothing great ever achieved without passion and passion for excellence.
