Of all the goals people set in life, two stand out: success in our personal and professional lives. It turns out, these two are interdependent.
Personal success supports and reinforces professional success. Professional success reinforces personal success. And together, they reinforce life’s most important pursuit — happiness.
That’s why both goals are on top of everyone’s agenda, especially the 20-something generation, as they begin the life journey from their parents’ nest.
How are these goals achieved? What does it take?
If you ask Rhonday Byrne, she’d tell you it’s The Law of Attraction.
Byrne argues in The Secret for the power of positive thoughts, which she says will act as a powerful magnet to bring things your way, and help you to identify and externalize your internal strengths and capabilities.
Put good things in your mind, says Byrne, and they’ll happen.
While positive thought may be a necessary condition for bringing out strengths and capabilities, it isn’t sufficient, counters Ken Robinson and Lou Aronica inThe Element. That’s the second secret to success.
Maybe you are exceptional in drawing, dancing, cooking, or some other field. That’s where you ought to position yourself. You must find your own “element,” your passion– the right field of study, the right occupation, sport or activity that matches your inner strengths and capabilities — which you might or might not even know you possess.
Besides, luck, being in the right place at the right time often makes a big difference – which is why you should be willing to try and try again, learning how to endure failure. That’s the third secret of success, according to Scott Adams, author of How to Fail at Almost Everything And Still Win Big. “There is plenty of luck to go around; you just need to keep your hand raised until it’s your turn,” argues Adams. “If you drill down into any success story, you always discover that luck was a huge part of it. You cannot control luck, but you can move from a game with bad odds to one with better odds. You can make it easier for luck to find you. The most useful thing you can do is stay in the game. If your current get-rich project fails, take what you learned and try something else. Keep repeating until something lucky happens.”
The problem is, however, we cannot keep trying forever. Our life journey may finish before we raise our hand a sufficient number of times to take advantage of what statisticians call the “law of large numbers” – which provides equal chances for each possible outcome to occur.
Besides, getting your turn to succeed won’t work unless you can execute, and steer away from harmful behavior that destroys whatever progress you have made towards success. That’s where the fourth secret comes in: get your priorities right; use your resources wisely; stay focused; develop the right relations; don’t be greedy; and don’t be complacent—as we have discussed in a separate piece.
Originally Published: http://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2013/10/13/4-secrets-of-success/
