What is “successful success” and how does it prevent us from being happy?

Greetings, dear reader!

Each of us periodically asks the question: what is success? Some may feel it on an intuitive level, and can imagine in their heads what a truly successful life looks like for them. However, the signs of success are different for each of us : for some it is expensive premium cars, and for others it is a feeling of importance among loved ones. It all depends on the goals, worldview and personal qualities of a particular person. However, there are several main components that make up real success. Let's figure out what is included in this concept.

What is real success?

In the most general sense, success is the ability to realize your goals and find ways to achieve them. It seems that this definition is very simple, but it is in it that the entire subjectivity of the concept of “success” is manifested. Just as each of the people living on earth has different fingerprints, the true goals and intentions of each of us are also different. And when we find the path to achieving our goals, as well as the strength and determination to overcome this path, that is when we truly get closer to success.

More specifically, the list of attributes of success is wide and multifaceted: fame, respect, significance in society, fame in certain circles, financial independence, climbing the career ladder, love from loved ones. But again, for some, climbing the career ladder may not mean success, but quite the opposite - if a person, for example, dreams of developing his own business.

One of the best answers to the question “what is success” was given by the American writer Bessie Anderson Stanley, author of the poem “What is Success?”:

Its definition contains the most harmonious and complete set of elements, which for most people add up to a single component called “success”. However, there will be those who will add something of their own to this definition. This reveals the amazing subjectivity of the concept of success.

A very interesting definition of the term success was formulated by Brian Tracy, a Canadian psychologist, successful entrepreneur and writer:

Summary information

Understanding the responsibility to ourselves, as well as to the people around us, we must clearly follow the plan. All goals must be achieved no matter what. It is very important to surround yourself with people who, just like you, strive to reach the top. If there are only losers around you, then you will not be able to achieve what you have in mind, they will always pull you down. Therefore, think carefully about which people can help you achieve success, and who will slow down your development.

To be successful, you need to be a hardworking and selfless person. Always help those in need and do not leave those around you in trouble. By following moral principles, you can multiply all your achievements and achieve real success.

What distinguishes successful people from unsuccessful ones?

Successful people are not at all the darlings of fate, and excesses and luxury do not flow into their hands. To achieve the intended heights, you need to put in a lot of physical, mental and psychological effort. An integral aspect of true success is constant self-development. a series of tasks for yourself , boldly look your goals in the eye and invest in yourself on the way to achieving them as much as you would like to get in the end.

Most successful people cannot boast of aristocratic roots or higher education. Moreover, many of them lived in poverty for half their lives! It’s just that these people have a clear idea of ​​success. They understand what they really need. For many, it’s easier to leave everything as it is and continue wandering along foggy paths that lead nowhere. What distinguishes successful people?

First of all, successful people have a positive attitude towards life, even towards failures. Where others give up, successful people always try again and again . No one will make our life bright except ourselves. To devote yourself wholeheartedly to any undertaking and to float on a wave of positivity with the flow of life is what is really important in this world.

In addition, every successful person always has clear goals - for the day, for the week, for the year. He devotes his life to the endless search for opportunities to achieve these goals. A very effective tool in achieving goals is keeping a “Success Diary”.

Successful people know how to believe in miracles. This is a prerequisite when you set yourself a truly grandiose goal - one that no one has achieved before. This is how the first car was invented, the first television was invented, and thousands of other important discoveries were made. Belief in miracles, perseverance, and constant development.

Success

At all times and in all societies there have been people who are distinguished by extraordinary luck - those for whom any business succeeds, and any conditions develop in the most favorable way. As if the whole world is subordinated to a single task: to help the lucky ones in everything, no matter what they undertake. In the modern world, the successes of such people are bright and noticeable; in business they are the very “spools” that bring success to any enterprise.

Success is accompanied by such attributes as money, recognition, fame. Many people would like to become successful, but not everyone succeeds. Others are ready to pay a high price for success: broken families, damaged health, loneliness. Is there a technology that creates good luck and allows you to be happy at the same time?

A talented person is talented in everything

One of my clients, a former scientist-inventor, at the beginning of perestroika faced a choice: sell his bright head to the West, where many universities would be happy to accept him into their ranks, or try to survive in a changing economy without losing himself. Having relied on his mind and energy in the chaos of the late 80s and the absence of any capital other than intellectual, he achieved success: the high-tech products developed by him and his colleagues were in demand on the market and brought decent profits to the company.

Having successfully coped with the task of organizing the income necessary for life and work, this man did not stop there - he is now updating production equipment; writes a new book; develops his own farm; builds a temple...

Everything he undertakes works out, all projects are realized, the world around him blossoms. The secret of his success is in his restless character, creative and responsible attitude towards everything to which he applies his energy and strength, in a constant interest in life, in accordance with himself. It’s not easy with such people, but it’s always interesting; they don’t complain about circumstances, but use them creatively, enthusiastically transforming uncertainty, materializing their own dreams, creating “miracles.”

According to plan - an ordinary miracle

Success and victory are instant phenomena, described by a specific date, figure, fact. They are transitory and, without further reinforcement of the results, are quickly forgotten, losing their sharpness and significance. Success is necessarily a peak, a milestone, a milestone, something that stands out from the general background.

Success adorns a business, but maintaining its unfading attractiveness requires serious systemic measures. A series of successes should be a planned “miracle”. For a businessman today, it is easier to keep his business in constant good shape by promoting not global ones, but small ones! - but new ideas on how to relax ahead of schedule, subsequently being revived by painful shock therapy. Thus, Marshal Zhukov, in his troops under besieged Leningrad, used a “strategy of small victories,” which made it possible to break the decadent mood among soldiers and commanders, calling every conquered inch of land a victory.

A series of small victories creates a period of great success. Determination and hard work, no matter how ordinary it may sound, are necessary and sufficient components of success.

But just as the entire cosmos is subject to the law of periodicity, so periods of success are replaced in human life by periods of decline, silence, and the fading of bright positive events.

Time for contemplation

You can often hear about people who have everything, who have achieved all the desired regalia, powers, material victories, and, nevertheless, are in a state of dissatisfaction. “... People around me say that my life is worthy of imitation and admiration, but I regard the current situation as a complete collapse, failure and shame, there is not enough real evidence that I am still as smart as before.”

Life, like learning, follows a schedule: at first the curve rises, and this corresponds to vigorous activity, aspiration, and a continuous series of large and small successes. Then growth abruptly stops, a period of awareness of achievements begins, analysis of mistakes made, determination of one’s place in the process and evaluation of the results obtained. On the chart this is a plateau, in emotional life it is a period when the rapture of success is followed by despondency, a feeling of meaninglessness and fatigue from life. Reflecting on himself and the results of his activities, a person who is accustomed to constant confirmation of his success feels uncomfortable. “At first I reached incredible heights, and then I lost the meaning of life...”, “... there was discord in my soul. I want to prove to myself again that I’m worth something - and quickly!”

A period of calm frightens a successful person accustomed to activity; he frantically searches for a way out of this state - to urgently go on vacation, forget himself with alcohol, introduce ill-considered changes to the business - “the main thing is to do something, no matter what. Move so as not to lose the feeling of life!” And now the success curve is heading downward: mistakes become more frequent, ill-considered actions lead to disastrous results that are clearly visible to others. The “dark streak” of sudden loss of previous guidelines and frightening uncertainty encourages a person to break out of it as soon as possible and move further along the usual path of unclouded success.

Remember: “Tests are within your power.” In the natural process, all living things strive for development, everything that happens to people works for their growth - both the time of achievement and the time of rest. Social success is impossible without personal achievements. An organization or idea lives on the potential initially invested in it and needs constant feeding and recharging. The plateau of “stagnation” is a rewarding time for inspecting internal reserves, a time when you can adjust the movement towards success in accordance with the changed or requiring change internal state.

The quality of life

Success is a subjective concept. What is valuable to a person is what is the subject of his aspirations. For everyone, success is something different, deeply personal and desired. For some, the size of their personal bank account is important, for others, the well-being of their family, for others, the number of girlfriends/villas/islands/spaceships they own - the list is endless, everyone builds their own ladder of their future achievements.

You can nominate yourself to the jury in order to receive data on the recognition of professionalism, the degree of usefulness for society, etc., but the level of success is apparently determined by the internal independent assessment of your actions, their compliance with thoughts, the degree of their implementation according to personal plans. When trying to assess personal success, you can trust only your own feelings about the quality of life, rather than accurate calculations based on the results of competitions and positions in ratings. It is enough just to answer the question for yourself: “Why did I come into this world, what is the meaning of my existence?”

The feeling of harmony, or the correspondence of personal aspirations and the possibility of their implementation in the existing environment, is deeply inherent in successful people. They do not go against their personal beliefs, do not break or adapt themselves to the demands of society. It is enough for them to rely on the strengths of their personality and independently create the conditions for their implementation. The formula for personal success is simple: just recognizing yourself as successful is enough.

Social recognition

At all times, one of the criteria for potential success has been a creative attitude towards one’s own life. You can look for convenient niches, adapt, adapt. Creating new ones is no more difficult, you just have to feel like a harmonious part of the world, having the right not only to exist, but also to co-create.

To be recognized as social success, additional necessary steps will be required:

1. Problematization. Decide on the reason for future actions - find a problem that requires your active intervention. What in life do you want to solve/change/improve that will make you happier? Turn a problem into a goal.

2. Subject. Decide on the tasks: what specific steps need to be taken to achieve the goal - cut off the unimportant, identify the main thing.

3. Social expediency. Determine the benefits: find areas in which the achievement of your personal goals coincides with the needs of the environment - social, environmental, industrial.

4. Toolkit. Decide on the means: use the entire arsenal of internal and external factors that help you move forward most effectively

5. Behavior strategy. To be decisive and flexible in achieving a goal - high readiness for unforeseen circumstances will allow you to more accurately choose the ratio of means, the most successful moment in time and space in which the goal is realized.

6. PR. Introduce the idea of ​​your own success into the minds of others. Well-organized communication with the outside world will create the most favorable conditions for using existing resources and attracting new funds.

One of the necessary tools for achieving the status of success today is the information that a businessman owns and manages, its quantity and quality. The ability to obtain, use and create information, to choose the right social circle in which it will have the greatest value, to increase the amount of knowledge, contacts, connections - something without which business success is unthinkable. Information allows not only to correctly sense market trends and consumer expectations, but also strengthens positions and is the key to maintaining and developing existing achievements.

The way you identify yourself in the market, in your target audience, will help you or hurt you. “Take from me everything that I have, but leave me my speech, and soon I will gain everything that I had” - the famous phrase of Daniel Webster is true for someone who is able to give society positive information about himself, who is capable of any events in his life interpreted as successful, significant, necessary for the common good, unique. A good reputation is created not only from the actions and personal qualities of a businessman, but also from the light in which he presents them, how he himself treats them.

Forgivable "weaknesses"

It is also important to be able to recognize one’s own imperfections in order to study them and turn “weaknesses” into strengths.

A successful person is in a constant process of understanding current events, constantly “working on mistakes,” and cultivating the ability to overcome large and small crises that accompany any active activity. The will to achieve, the desire for the intended result guarantees a high level of weighted average success, and responsibility for personal actions allows one to correct inaccuracies, overcome obstacles and move on, turning temporary failures into knowledge, and therefore into advantages.

“Be the best in anything you do!” - an effective motto, but with a sense of humor and the absence of the “Lord God syndrome”. Do everything with full dedication, analyze successes and failures, implement conclusions in life - and this will be enough to avoid resting on your laurels and drowning yourself in the abyss of self-torture.

Calm forward movement, respect for yourself and your activities is a healthier and more viable approach than “moving mountains.” The time that requires inhuman courage and obsession is becoming a thing of the past; the realities of today require more subtle handling of business objects, more sophisticated methods, and a deeper understanding of the essence of ongoing phenomena.

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What does success look like?

It is not uncommon for bright magazine images that embody complete financial security and self-sufficiency . Many people idolize such people, because someone who was able to break into the public eye, climb to the top of the career ladder and start earning a huge amount of money is an idol, a role model, a classic portrait of a successful person.

But often, even these idols come to emotional emptiness. Financial success is only one side of the coin. The second is occupied by much more significant things than the rustle of banknotes: happiness in your personal life, professional development. And it is important to maintain a balance on both sides. Only with their complete harmonization is real success possible. Relatively speaking: what is the use of achieving the desired position if it becomes an obstacle to full communication with loved ones?

Under the influence of personal characteristics, each person has an individual and unique perception of the world. A key role in this is played by both the character as a whole and its individual components - ambition, emotionality, temperament. Therefore, everyone will have their own answer to the question “what is success”.

Financial independence

No matter what anyone says, you need to understand that you can’t live without money and material resources now. You can hardly be a calm and confident person if you are constantly thinking about where to get money. It is necessary to understand that the root of evil is not money, but its absence. Therefore, it is necessary to be a financially independent person in order to live calmer and more confidently.

Key questions: How much do you want to earn? What kind of work do you want to do? How much money would you like to have? How much money would make you feel comfortable?

Foundation for Success

Improving personal characteristics is a mandatory step on the path to success. Whatever different goals we set for ourselves, the basis for achieving them is working on ourselves, constant development.

Self-development is learning new skills and gaining new knowledge. To begin with, you can learn universal, but very valuable and useful skills in everyday life: learn a foreign language, cook an exotic dish, sign up for a massage course, or take up painting. The main thing is that these steps bring you closer to your main goal.

Even if you are well-read, smart and can skillfully support any conversation with an interesting conversation, self-development will never hurt. This is the eternal mechanism of life that develops us, and believe me, it will certainly lead you to the desired heights . Think for yourself: after reading about new technical developments, will you become a more specialized master if your activity is directly related to the innovations of technical progress?

Remember: the key to success in any activity is workaholism with maximum dedication to the task. And such thoughts as “this is difficult”, “I’m lazy”, “I won’t get paid for this” and the like - need to be thrown out of your head. They only reduce motivation and determination.

Principles for achieving success

We have figured out what success is. Now let's study several universal principles of success, which together make up a single formula and help you achieve results regardless of what goals and objectives you set for yourself:

• Take it and do it! No undertaking will bring results without action. The more you think about the idea, the more fears you have. So, any goal will remain just a dream if you are always afraid of difficulties. Only by throwing away fear can you conquer the tip of the iceberg!
• Always say yes". Every sentence presented by fate has meaning. Before refusing anything, you need to think and analyze the reason for refusal and the consequences three times. Often, it is precisely because of a thoughtless “no” that we miss promising chances.
• Challenge yourself! A person who does not strive to learn new things slides down the personal ladder. The meaning of our life lies in constant development, self-improvement and the realization of our goals. Remember: we only live once. It's stupid to miss opportunities while lying on the couch.
• Set goals! If you don’t have your own goals, you’ll have to work on someone else’s. This is the process of life and it cannot be stopped. No one promises an easy path to the intended heights, but aspiration and positive thinking will help you “soar above the world.” Read an interesting article on the topic “How to set goals and achieve results” here.
• Stand firm on your feet. To act under the influence of someone else's opinion means to lose yourself. Consider the information around you, but make your own decisions clearly and confidently. This will add credibility to you both in the eyes of others and in your own.
• Be conscientious. Decency and honesty are what success is! These wonderful human qualities guarantee the desired prosperity in life. Working for money is bad policy. If finances are on the pedestal of goals, then you shouldn’t count on real success. The more you devote yourself to what you love, to people, the higher the price for your efforts will be.
• Live life to the fullest. Only we ourselves can fill our lives with bright colors, interesting events and pleasant moments. But all this requires special courage. Preferring not to go beyond the comfort zone of guaranteed safety, the joy of victory will never visit your heart.

Health and Energy

This is perhaps the most obvious component of success. Without health, all other components simply do not make sense. Remember Maslow's pyramid. It was not without reason that the American psychologist placed human physiological needs at the lowest level. Your life depends on meeting these needs. What could be more valuable than life?

Think about ways to improve your health. Go to specialized doctors and get a consultation. Get rid of bad habits. Eat right. Lead an active lifestyle. And then this will allow you to confidently achieve your goals.

Key questions: How would you like to look? What height and weight do you want? What exercises would you do? How would you eat? What habits should you give up?

Main components

So, based on what we have discussed today, we can identify 10 main components of the concept of success:

• the ability to clearly formulate your goals;
• the ability to find ways to achieve goals;
• the ability to constantly work towards achieving goals;
• feeling of happiness from one’s own activities;
• love and respect of loved ones;
• a strong family;
• material well-being;
• continuous improvement;
• health care;
• the ability to endure failures;

Self-knowledge and self-analysis

Throughout our lives we try to study and understand ourselves. Some work harder, some less, but we all study ourselves to some extent. By meeting people, reading books, getting education, playing sports, we understand ourselves, our potential and our capabilities. You need to understand yourself, your character. Explore what motivates you most to do something. Accept yourself as you are, with your positive and negative sides, and work on yourself.

Key questions: who am I? What and why am I here? What is my character? Do I know myself well enough?