The need to be successful. This is the bottom line for us all. Deep down we all, you and me, want to be successful. This is why we are attracted to the various ‘get rich quick’ schemes that appear on the internet and in the newspapers. We are searching for success. This is what drives us beyond our limits. The need to be successful.
When we are breaking our necks to reach the top it is the need to be successful that is driving us. None of us wants to end our lives with the thought that we didn’t do our best. We didn’t at least make an effort to find our niche in the world. We have a built in need to be successful. We tell ourselves life will be fine when I am successful. When I can afford everything I want, life will be great. I will have no worries. But, are we deluding ourselves?
Simon Jordan, a wealthy entrepreneur and owner of Crystal Palace Football Club in the UK, appears to think so. He was quoted recently, in the Sunday Times, as saying,
“The truth is. I’m not successful at all, not truly successful. I’m not successful because I’m not happy in my personal life”.
This is a man who worked hard and allegedly sold his mobile ‘phone business ‘for more than £80m’ and yet he appears to be saying that success is more than being wealthy. This thought, that success is more than wealth, also appears to have come to our friend, Patricia. By most people’s standards Patricia is successful. She speaks five languages, owns her own home and has a successful career. But she doesn’t see herself as successful either. She sees herself as unsuccessful because she ‘does not have a successful personal life’. By that she means she doesn’t have a partner. Her five cats are no longer enough.
What are these two examples telling us? Is it possible that the dream of being successful in business, being wealthy, being able to afford whatever you wish whenever you want it isn’t all it is cracked up to be? Is it that now more and more people have dedicated themselves to reaching the dream of untold wealth that they are finding the dream to be just an illusion? Is it that real success comes from something more than wealth?
Is it that success may be defined in another way other than wealth? Is it that success may be solely achieving what we want in life irrespective of wealth. We can hear you say, of course it is. Success is only about achieving what you want to achieve and being happy. That is what success is. If this is so, why are our newspapers and television shows dedicated to showing us ‘celebrities’? Dedicated to asking us to believe that the correct role model is one who is wealthy and in the public eye?
In believing all the hype in the newspapers and the internet that success and money go hand in hand are you in danger of making the same mistake? Achieving wealth but not feeling successful.
In our experience the search for success has to start inside. Ask yourself;
- What is success for me?
- How do I define success?
- What do my deep down dreams say success is for me?
- What do I have to achieve to make myself feel radiant and ecstatic at having achieved?
- Now ask yourself;
- ‘What do I need to do to achieve this’?
- ‘What am I going to do to achieve this’?
Now you have every chance of being successful. Every chance of achieving what you were sent on the planet to achieve. In our experience, when you follow a dream that has been prescribed for you. You may achieve success but you will always have that doubt in your mind that something is missing. And you are right. What is missing is that you haven’t achieved your dream. You have achieved a dream thrust upon you. A dream you thought was correct. You have achieved an ought, should, must dream. In a nutshell you have successfully achieved someone else’s dream for you.
When you are working towards your dream you are fulfilling your need to be successful. And it shows. It shows on your face. It shows in your actions. It shows in your speech. It shows in your energy levels. Without any doubt at all you know when you are fulfilling your need to be successful.