Define Your Own Success!

Our ultimate goal in this world must be to live a happy life that is fulfilling, enriched, and purposeful. You don’t become happy overnight, nor do you attain sustainable success in the night's time. You take things one by one, giving your best shot at each fragment of life. You find things to do that provide you satisfaction and fulfillment, and as a result, to those, you feel happy. This happiness differs and is far greater than that of the temporal gratification we obtain from worldly materialism.

When we speak of success, we mean contentment, inner peace, satisfaction, desire, motivation, fulfillment, positive thinking, and other traits that define growth. However, if you asked me the exact definition of success, I might not be able to give you a definitive description. I can only draw parameters that define success. The only person who can answer what success is, is you. You are responsible for creating your own success.

Why? Well, because the measure of success is different for everyone. It depends on their life choices, priorities, goals, and circumstances. No one but you can define success for yourself.  You must consider yourself a success if you find joy in things you are actively pursuing. This applies to professional and personal life. Success is a sense of fulfillment. It’s about living in the moment and having a positive and progressive outlook on your future.

For some, success can mean a sense of achieving more and more wealth. Some might term success as inner peace attained from giving back to the world. For some, success is in making a difference in someone’s life and so on. Remember this – nobody wants to invest in an individual or company that isn’t happy with themselves or consider themselves a failure.

You want to be someone that others look up to and are inspired by. It’s the right attitude that draws attention. That’s what gets you noticed, and that’s how you leave your mark. It’s what will attract new opportunities in life – promotions and investments and other potential doors of happiness.

To recapitulate, one of the biggest delusions of this modern world is that success is a measure of wealth or possession. They believe that success and happiness come only with a higher rank, fame, or money. They can buy you temporary satisfaction in the name of joy, but these are the weakest of all sources if you are looking for true happiness. If this were true, we wouldn't see celebrities battling depression and other mental disorders.

You cannot buy peace of mind through worldly means. For that, you need to work on yourself, evaluate your inner self, and realize your worth. Often people have rewarding lives. They may have an active social life, fame, wealth, and professional progress. But what they lack is fulfillment. Even their achievements do not feel like real successes – why?

Success is a sense of fulfillment. It’s about living in the moment and having positivity. Success is to forget what happened in the past, taking full responsibility for your current state, and taking immediate actions to build the future you always wanted.  Success is believing in your abilities to pursue your dreams. It is the power to get up once you have been knocked down. Success is the ability to stay strong despite all the negativities. It is the courage to speak up when it is most challenging to do so.

Success means holding your head high. It means living your life with integrity without compromising your values. It means empowering others and help them achieve what they want. It is to find peace within yourself and live passionately. Success is freedom.

Do things that make you happy, and rest will take care of itself. I learned a crucial lesson a long time ago from my mentor. This is the lesson: One must be rich in family values, rich in friends, rich in education, rich in positive attitude, rich in positivity, rich in future thoughts, rich in vision, rich in professionalism, and rich in goals.

Life is a complete package, and you must pay attention to all elements. I can’t ignore any of these elements; I can’t focus on some too much at the cost of the rest. All of these factors work like a human body. I don’t want to become super-rich and have a miserable life at home with my kids and family. If that’s the case, then what’s the point of all this? Exactly the same principle applies to a professional career as well. I don’t want to be in a job where I spend all day stressing about things, which will effectively have an impact on my personal and family time. You need to have a balance so that you can enjoy and live to a full extent.

Think bigger than yourself. Get involved in causes that are important to you. You will start feeling a more profound appreciation for what you have when you become aware of the less fortunate people.

The three things I really live by is (number one) trust in God’s plan. “As someone who believes in God, there is a plan that has got to happen. I try to stay really patient. Whether that’s success at work, studies, new ideas, anything in life – I try to stay patient,” and probably the most important thing for me is gratitude. Making sure when things are going well and even when they aren’t going well, I’m really grateful for all the blessings I have. We live in a beautiful country. I have a beautiful family and beautiful children. There are a lot of things in life that I can be grateful for, even food on the table. There are so many people out there who can’t even do that. I am not the richest person on this planet. I am very happy and successful in my world. I don’t need anyone’s approval.

Replace your focus. If you find yourself focusing on the areas you lack, you must try and shift your focus on things you are thankful for. Stop being too hard on yourself.  Change your perspective. Your perspective matters the most in shaping your life, how you take on things, and how you manage to stay put during the most significant storms

Make efforts to look at the bright side of things. Don’t just hope for things to get better. Take charge, and control your happiness the way you want, find a new interest or hobby. Despite the ups and downs, desire is what keeps us going. To proceed with a goal, you need to be willing to follow your passion and have an undying urge to do whatever it takes to achieve your goal. Without desire, a goal is just a featherless bird – it can never fly.

Learn how you can have a positive influence on someone’s life. For a leader, a problem should never be a distraction. Instead, they should accept it as a challenge and enable continuous improvement and previously unseen opportunities. I learned from my mother at a young age, when in a difficult situation in your life, look at people who are one level below you. Helping them and understanding their problems can make you feel much lighter. Always try to find someone who is struggling and develop a habit to inject some positivity in them.

Thoughts are contagious – be it negative or positive. We can be affected by others’ energy around us. Being exposed to negative vibes can take its toll on us. This is why it is very crucial to be selective when it comes to choosing the people you surround yourself with.

It is vital to surround ourselves with positive people who have a positive outlook on life, who think about their goals and achieve them rather than people who find the bad in every situation. They say you should stay away from negative people – they have a problem for every solution! They are right.

If you have positive people around you, their words and thoughts will align with your thoughts, which will automatically provoke your mind to think positively. Positive thinking offers compound returns, thus maximizing benefits. Practice it daily!

Optimism, enthusiasm, and respect are contagious. When you show up to work happy and with a positive and productive mood, you lead the establishment of a strong foundation. Leaders in specific, not bosses, know how to set the mood and how to be emotionally and mentally stable, competent, and humble so that others can do their jobs with equal enthusiasm.

Once we learn how to think positively, we will notice remarkable changes all around us. Our brain will operate in a state of free-flowing feel-good hormones called endorphins, which will make us feel lighter and happier. We will also notice a significant boost in confidence and will feel more capable of taking on new assignments and challenges that might have been outside our comfort zone.

We affect the people and are also affected by the people we meet. Either way, people leave their influence on others. And we don't do it intentionally; it happens on a subconscious level through thoughts. The thoughts we think are reflected in the way we speak, the actions we perform, the decisions we make, and the way we feel.

All this enables other people to develop perceptions and act accordingly. Negative thinking creates mood swings resulting in unhappy feelings, dissatisfaction, unpleasant moods, and behavior that may halt your success.

Once you remove self-limiting beliefs from your life, you will experience growth like never before. By harnessing the power of positive thinking, you can transform your life in many aspects. Positive thinking is a mental and emotional response that focuses on the brighter side of life – the mind expects positive results.

The good news is, we are in charge of our happiness and success. We hold the ability to choose our surroundings, and thus we may choose for it to be better, breathable, less judgmental, more optimistic, and solution-centric. By surrounding ourselves with positive people, we can clear the negative energy around us. This will free up some space for the nurturing energy to come in.  

“Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts.” Buddha