Today, I would like to address the question of what it means to achieve success in life. So what is success and how can you achieve it?
The first thing to recognise is that success means different things to different people. For me, it is living my life in exactly the way I want, doing what I want, when I want, whilst being completely free from any financial worries. Today, that is exactly how I would describe my lifestyle. I recently gave up my old day job and I now do exactly what I want with my time.
For you, success probably means something different. But, if you are ever to achieve real success in life, the first thing you absolutely must do is to define exactly what that phrase means - for you personally. Now, there is a little caveat that I must make here: for many people, when they think about success they start to, fairly naturally, think about money.
Personally, I don't think that there is anything wrong with thinking about money. We live within economies that mean that in order to have the things we want, we must first be able to afford them. Money is not an evil commodity intrinsically. We have the opportunity to do a lot of good when we have access to plenty of the stuff.
The problem is that we should not make the pursuit of money our central goal. Now don't get me wrong here. I don't think it is wrong to become rich. In fact, I think it is a lot more wrong to become poor. But there are causes and there are effects and the amount of money you have, your financial position if you prefer, is an effect, so that means if you want more of it (not a bad thing) then you need to concentrate not on the money (the effect) but on its causes.
As Wallace D Wattles once put it, when you replicate the causes of success, by the law of cause and effect, you will invariably replicate the effects. Money is a by-product of success. Let that sink in. Don't make it your primary goal. Instead, find out what you are good at and how you can use that talent that we all possess in some measure, in order to render service to your fellow creatures.
When you can create your own service that returns some amount of income, however small, then the key to your future success is in your own hands. From that point forward, you have a business that is limited only by your own imagination and your work ethic. You use your imagination to refine the process and you apply your work ethic to producing your income.
A word of advice about creating your service: find something that you can do that other people already want. In other words, find an existing demand that you are well-placed to serve. That way, you don't need to do any selling; only marketing. There's a big difference. With marketing, you just have to make interested parties aware of your existence. They already want your service, so provided you do it well, there will be no lack of customers.
Let's look at my business, just as an example, for a moment. The service I render is writing and the people who consume it do so via the internet. I earn revenue through advertising placed on my site by my good friend Ms Google and I also receive donations in return for my book. That's it - a very simple business model - nothing fancy at all.
Now, don't get me wrong. It has taken me seven years to get to this point, but nevertheless, that is my basic business model: I write and money flows in; that simple. So how do I increase my income; an effect remember, not a cause? Simple, by engaging in more writing activity and that's the operation of the law of cause and effect.
So, in summary, when you can determine what service you can render, that is already in demand, that can earn you a return for the time you invest, then your destiny is truly in your own hands. After that, it is down to your imagination, to improve things, and your work ethic to activate the law of cause and effect. Success in life awaits anyone willing to apply these principles.
