Everyone wants to be successful, unless there’s something wrong. Everyone wants to find a way in life that brings them joy and fulfillment. I think these are great truisms.
This is very much a part of human nature, for the most part. Few people would claim they want to be losers and end up as beggars and indigent on the streets. They want something more.
When I ask my students what is their goal in life, many of them say I want to be rich. And I say, well, will you be successful? They always are a bit puzzled.
What do you mean? I’ll be rich. I said, yes, yes, yes.
Many people are rich, however, and they seemingly are not successful because they’re miserable, they’re unhappy.
And as we know, Aristotle tells us that we have an opportunity in life, in my piece of life to be happy, which obviously means successful. I think success, happiness, contentment, all similar for sure. And it seems that money is a factor.
Everyone loves money for sure, but it’s not enough because we also need family, we need loved ones, we need purpose, we need our relationship with God, Gaia, or the universe, friends, good friends.
And we have to believe that our mission is on its way to being fulfilled. At the very least, we want to be on the path, don’t we? So success, I think it’s very, very interesting.
It’s a difficult subject, because what do you mean? To one person, success could mean, perhaps my mom, raising five children.
She considered herself extremely successful, because her children were all healthy and happy, and all went to school, had good careers, et cetera. Another person might say I’m successful, because I have ten million dollars in the bank.
And I think if they have ten million dollars in the bank, God bless them, especially if they have a loving, caring family. They’ve done it. They’ve achieved a work-life balance.
I think to myself as well, that it’s attributed probably to Confucius, do what you love, and you will never work again. So I think also we don’t want to view our time as work.
If we possibly can avoid it, I think it would be scary in a sense to spend most of your life working. One young man the other day worked for a large chip manufacturer in here. He said that he’d gotten home at four o’clock.
You hear me? Four o’clock in the morning. And one of my students mentioned, Oh, but he’s making so much money.
I said, but so what? He obviously is not on his way to success if he’s getting home at four o’clock in the morning. So I think we need to take command of what success means.
Because if you think to yourself, the very first thing you have to do when it comes to an approach, a successful approach to life is you have to clarify what you want. What do you want, truly want out of your piece of life?
And if you don’t know, many people claim they don’t know. What’s the old Emerson trick, isn’t it? You gotta get your notebook and you gotta write in your notebook every single day and then your mission undoubtedly will come to you.
Prioritize what matters to you, right? Very important once again. Obviously, if you want to get a degree, you have to prioritize your studies.
You want to build a business or start a business, you have to prioritize money.
I was listening the other day to an interview by a billionaire who said essentially, if you imagine that you can go to work at eight and come home at five and you’re going to build a multi-national, very successful company, you can forget it is just
not real. And then, of course, we need a plan, don’t we? A plan for my life. And I don’t mean a foolish plan.
I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that. A real plan. How am I going to eventually plot a successful path for my future?
And a lot of it for sure has to do with training, doesn’t it? You’ve got to really be serious about wanting to train yourself, not just go to school. School’s great.
I love school. I was there a long time. But when I left school, the experience was far more valuable.
What school taught me was to learn how to learn. Degrees are great. Degrees are wonderful.
But they certainly are just the theoretical, aren’t they? The theoretical. And you know, we got to set some deadlines.
And they say zero to 30, I’m building a career, 30 to 60, I’m nurturing that and expanding it. And then at 60, I’m on my way to infinity, so I should make a statement at that point, right? So you need these benchmarks, you need these deadlines.
And then, gotta remember, life’s fickle, bad things could happen. They just could. And you have to find a way that you’re capable to respond without being a victim.
How many people have I spoken to that were down and out, that told me a story, I lost my money, I lost my wife, I lost this, lost that, and now poor me. And you know, if you allow your spirit to be broken, it is very, very hard to get it back.
So don’t allow that. Be optimistic. And I don’t mean be naïve, but say there’s always another day, especially if I have expertise.
And then we also have to know, I guess, in a way, when to say no. No to bad relationships, no to abuses that alleviate stress, like drugs and alcohol, no to weight.
We have to really view the body and view the mind as temples and great, great attributes on my way to success. Right?
And then, gosh, the biggest one of all, when we do get beaten down, and we will, many of us do, we get beaten down, remember that you can get back, you can get back up. You can. You really can.
I mean, there’s too many stories in history. If you want reference points, look at the people that were broken. I always think of Churchill.
Churchill spent ten years in the political wilderness before he came back and really saved the Western world from Nazism by becoming Prime Minister of Britain. Saved the world.
But ten years he waited for that opportunity because he felt that he had a mission and he was going to be called to do something, and he was, ultimately. So I think it’s an interesting way to approach life, isn’t it?
Remember that you’re always being called to do something great. To you, of course. To you.
And leave you with a thought. An act of kindness is a wonderful way to build up your success. Because an act of kindness makes you reflect what success is all about.
Ultimately, it’s to share my success with others. So when you commit an act of kindness, usually other people respond well.
And when you are successful, you in theory are going to be able to help so many souls, so many people, because they also want to feel enlightened and successful, don’t they? For sure. And you know what they say, you know what they say.
Critical thinking is everything, especially on your path to success. And critical thinking is great. Truly great.
You take care. God bless. Bye-bye.