While every one of us desires to fall into the category of that so-called “successful” people, many give up. They give up, not because they weren’t good enough, but because they told themselves that they weren’t good enough. And while life is full of ups and downs, there are things we need to accept and embrace in order to grow. In this post, I will summarize a list of 10 hard truths to know before even thinking that you are “successful”
It’s Never As Bad As You Think It Will Be
Just as we trick ourselves in life into believing something will make us happier than it will in reality. We also trick ourselves into believing that something will be harder to achieve for us than it will. You need to admit this. The longer you procrastinate over your goals or the longer you avoid doing something, the more painful it becomes for you (in your life).
However, once you start to take action over your goals. The discomfort is far less severe than you imagined it to be. You need to remember that even to extremely difficult things, human beings adapt easily.
The biggest problem with fear is that it holds people back from taking big challenges in life. What you will discover is that no matter how big or small your challenge is, eventually you will adapt to it. And further, when you consciously adapt to a great amount of stress, you evolve into someone better.
It’s Never As Good As You Think It Would Be
“We buy many things to make ourselves happy, and we succeed. But only for little time. New things which are launched are more exciting to us then, and we adapt to their needs again,” he further states from his study.
Actually, savouring an idea of the desired outcome is generally more satisfying than the outcome itself. Once we get what we desire, whether that’s health, wealth, or romantic relationships. We adapt and the excitement fades away. Often, the experiences we’re seeking end up being less satisfying and even very disappointing.
Until you learn to appreciate what you currently have, more won’t make your life better in any possible way.
You Carry Every Advantage To Succeed
It is very easy to talk about how hard our lives are. It’s easy to talk about how unfair life is to us. But does this kind of talking really help you in any possible way?
When we judge our situation as something worse than someone else’s, we are ignorantly trying to say,
“You’ve got it easy for yourself. You’re not like me. Success should come easy to you as you never had to deal with what I’ve gone through in my life.”
This paradigm has formally become known as the victim mentality. And if not handled well, it further leads to feelings of entitlement.
Remember one thing, the world owes you nothing. Life isn’t meant to be fair and it will never be. The world has also provided with you everything you’ll ever need to be successful. The truth is, you carry every advantage to succeed. And by putting your belief into this, you’ll feel an enormous weight of responsibility. You’ve placed yourself in a perfect position to succeed, just believe it. Everything in the universe has brought you to this point. You can now shine and change the world, power lies in your hands. Your natural state is to thrive. All you have to do is show up & hustle your way.
Competition Is The Enemy You Need to Beat
Competition is extremely costly for any company. The maximum product reach and wealth creation is the ultimate goals for anyone. It becomes a battle, in which the one who can slightly out-do the other for cheaper and best, wins.
“All of the failed companies are the same, they failed to escape the market competition.” — Peter Thiel
Instead of trying to compete with other individuals or businesses, it’s better to focus on a tightly defined niche. Once you’ve established yourself as a priority over something, you can set your own terms — rather than proactively responding to your competition. Thus, you can easily monopolize the space in which you create value for your customers.
Competing with others leads even good companies to spend every day of their lives pursuing goals that aren’t really their self defined. But what society has deemed important. You could spend your whole life trying to keep up, but will probably carry a shallow life. The contrast to this, you can define success for yourself based on your own values and detach yourself from the marketplace noise.
Never Forget Where You Came From
It’s lucrative when you achieve any level of success to believe you are solely responsible for that success (don’t worry, many people suffer this syndrome). And through this, it’s very easy to forget where you came from.
Yes. It’s easy to forget all the sacrifices other people have made to get you where you are. All the support they gave you to build you as YOU. It’s easy to see yourself as of a superior level as opposed to other individuals.
You’ll need to burn all your bridges and you’ll have no human connection left. In that internal cave of isolation, you’ll lose your mind and very soon identity. And would become a person you never intended to be.
Gratitude, humility, and recognition of your blessings keep your success in proper direction & perspective. You couldn’t achieve what you’ve achieved without the help of many countless other people. So, always remember, you are extremely lucky to be able to contribute in the way you are right now.
Your Vision Of Who You Want To Be Is Your Greatest Asset You’ll Ever Have
No matter where you are right now in your life, you can have any future you want. But one thing is for certain for you, what you plant you will harvest. So, please plant with intention & planning. Mental creation always precedes physical creation in every stage of life. The blueprint you design in your head becomes the life you will build.
“Always create the highest, biggest & grandest vision possible for your life, because you become what you believe in.” — Oprah Winfrey
Never let society tell you how your house should look like or how your life should be. You are an artist and creator of your life. Your life will be exactly how you want it, whether or not it’s considered to be a “mansion” by society. Remember, home is where your heart is, and your heart never lies.
Earning Money Is A Moral
I know many people who genuinely believe that making money is immoral and that people with money are evil. Many people also believe that those who seek profits force those weaker than them to purchase their products. Well, here’s a learning for you all,
Money is not evil, but neutral. It is a symbol of perceived value in the world.
For example, If I’m selling a pair of shoes for $50 and someone decides to buy them. They would perceive the shoes to be worth more than the $50, or they wouldn’t buy them at all. Nowhere, I’m not forcing them to buy my shoes. It’s completely their choice. Thus, value exchange is always & will be a win-win situation and is based purely on perception. Remember, Value is subjective! If you offered that same person $50 for the shoes they just bought, they probably wouldn’t sell it off. They see them as worth more than $50 in value. But what if you offered $60? Well, they still might not sell them.
“For better or worse, humans are holistic. Even the human body does best when its spiritual and physical sides are synchronized with each other. People’s bodies perform best when their brains are on board with a purpose program. Helping your mind to believe what you do is good, noble, and worthwhile in itself helps you to fuel your energies and propel your efforts in a forward direction in life.” — Rabbi Daniel Lapin
By living in a society built out over money allows us to borrow it, lend it, and leverage it. Earning money is a 100% moral pursuit when it is done with integrity & honesty. Realizing that our ability to scale our work would be enormously limited in a bartering and trading system.
In fact, if you don’t feel moral about the work you do, you should probably change your nature of work.
When you carry believe in the value you deliver to customers so much that you are doing people a disservice by not offering them your services. Then, you’re on track to creating colossal value. Our work should be a reflection of who we really are. It’s always their choice whether they perceive the value in what we’re offering or not to them.
Don’t Seek Praise. Instead, Seek Criticism.
We’ve become so fragile as a culture that we must combine honest feedback with a few compliments. And when we get feedback, we do our best to disprove it. Psychologists call this as confirmation bias — the tendency to search for, favour, interpret, and recall information that confirms our own beliefs while giving excessively less consideration to alternative options.
It’s easy to get praise when you ask family and friends as they will tell you exactly what you want to hear as an individual. Instead of seeking praises for yourself, your work will improve if you seek criticism about your work.
How could this be better? You do know that your work carries merit when someone cares enough to provide a critique over it. If something is noteworthy, there will always be some haters.
As per Robin Sharma, author of The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, says, “haters confirm greatness.” When you really start showing up, the haters will be intimidated by you. Rather than being a reflection of what they could do, you become a reflection of what they are not doing in their own life.
Create Something You Wish Already Existed
Many entrepreneurs develop products or solutions to “scratch their own itch”. Actually, that’s how loads of problems are being solved in this world. When you experience difficulty, you develop a solution.
Musicians and artists approach their work in a similar fashion. They create music they’d want to listen to, draw painting they’d want to see the existence of, and write books they wish were written for fine reading. This way, a form of personalization is attached to the solution.
Your work should first and foremost resonate with yourself and then with others. If you don’t enjoy the product of your work, how can you expect other people to enjoy it?
Don’t Play All By The Rules
The convention is where we’re at right now. By breaking convention is how we would evolve, which requires a huge quantity of failure to fall in our basket.
If you don’t have the grit to fail at least 10,000 times. You’ll never invent your light bulb, your own wheel or the compass. A famous author, Seth Godin, says, “If I fail more than you do, I win.”
“There is nothing that is a more certain sign of insanity than to do the same thing over and over and over again, and expect the results to be different from the previous ones.” — Albert Einstein
Failure is something to be prized and praised by. Failure is a form of feedback. Failure helps you to move forward with the trail to success. It’s exerted effort towards something you’ve never done before. It’s incredible & necessary.
“The person who doesn’t make mistakes is unlikely to make anything out of his/her life.” — Paul Arden
