Wanting To Become Successful Is Not Enough

The desire to succeed exists in everyone with a dream or goal to accomplish. However, like many factors that lead to success, desire alone won’t lead to victory. To achieve your grand goals, you must not only work on them, but you must live a life all about them.

When you decide today that you are going to lose weight, I’m sure the first thing that comes to mind is exercise, right?

Let’s say you decide to give it a try. But sometimes after putting in weeks of effort into doing it regularly, you realize that little or no improvement has been made. You end up giving up on exercising completely.

The problem is that we think that we are deciding to lose weight, while instead all that we are doing is deciding to start exercising.

Exercising alone isn’t the reason why people end up losing weight.

Losing weight has to become a lifestyle change for it to be effective. And exercising is just one part of that lifestyle change. The other changes could include eating properly, cutting down on bad habits that affect weight gain, etc.

In the same exact way, just deciding to become successful or just working on your goals isn’t enough. You must live a successful life. Success is a journey and not a destination.

At any one point in life, you are either succeeding or not succeeding towards that goal you set. You need to “align” your everyday life to your desires.

If you want to become the best fiction writer, your everyday life should reflect that. It could be that you read one great novel every week. Or maybe that you practice storytelling with your kids. Or that you pick the brain of different authors because you (strategically) follow their social media.

This can clearly be seen in the lives of athletes. A good number of people are convinced that talent is what makes the best sports athletes. No. Discipline in maintaining the sportsman or sportswoman’s life is responsible for that.

A footballer that has never shown up for practice even once can never turn pro no matter how talented he or she may be.

Let’s say that a friend of yours suddenly gets recruited to the national basketball team because of her skills. All may seem exciting at first, but you might notice some changes depending on the kind of friend you happen to be to her.

First, she may not be as enthusiastic as she used to be about going out at night every weekend. Also, she might not be keeping up-to-date with your favorite TV shows anymore.

Eventually, you notice that she hangs around the guys and girls she practices with a lot more than she does with you.

She has changed! Feeling abandoned?

Well, if you were in her shoes and realized that she is determined to become a great athlete, you would most likely do the same. People of similar drive, passion, and ambition tend to hang around each other more.

When your inner-self realizes that your associations or your lifestyle are in contradiction to what you want in your life, it sets off alarms. Before you realize it, you begin to take action to align yourself to what will help you get to where you want to be.

If you have a firm resolve to succeed, you tend to drop habits, lifestyles, and people that you feel don’t actively contribute to you achieving your goals.

It sounds brutal, right?

But I hope you can appreciate the struggles that many dreamers have to endure just to pay the bills or provide for their growing families. There are people who are homeless yet struggling to get a paycheck. Sooner or later a focused dreamer realizes that their future isn’t worth toying with.

So if it means dropping a few get-togethers with “the crew” at the local nightclub just so that you can focus on where next month’s rent is going to come from…

Well, I guess you get the picture.

No one ever said that the climb to the top would be a glorious one with rainbows on each side.

So before you compare your financial status to that of a successful person, first compare your Monday mornings. Or your weekends. Or the content you consume online. Because it is from the lifestyle you adopt, that the truth about your success begins to reveal itself.

It’s always going to be hard to focus on winning when your lifestyle is in complete contradiction with your desire to succeed.

Pay attention to what you do and think about every single day.

Outside working on that project that will accomplish your goal, is there any other way to prove that your life is aligned to your goal?

Think back to the weight loss example. Outside going to the gym, is there any other way to prove that your life is aligned to your goal of losing weight? Perhaps your eating habits? See what I mean?

I did not dive deep into this topic but I hope it makes sense to you. A lot can be said and I would definitely like to get your take on the matter. Leave a comment below.