8 Elements of Success

Everyone has their own definitions of success. People know themselves succeed in life when they accomplish their aim or purpose or when everything goes according to the plan they set for themselves in the long run and get what they’ve put all their mind into. Success gives immense pleasure and motivation to set even more and great goals. Success boosts confidence in a person and even makes them believe that they can do anything. People who failed to succeed often doubts their capabilities, believing that they can’t do anything. They finds it difficult to set larger goals and often believes that successful people are just lucky and they’re not, which is not true.

Here are some elements of success that people could follow to lead a successful and prosperous life.

Goal setting:

Goal setting refers to planning a whole structured map for yourself which could lead you to path of success. It helps people set an attainable, realistic goal and take necessary actions to achieve it. Setting up goals provides a wider image to the person and motivates them to keep a track of it in order to reach final destination i.e. success. Goal setting makes helps person take up right actions and follow the right direction. The kind of goal people set also matters as if the person set an easy goal,it would go neglected being referred as easy goal, so it’s always recommended to set bigger and harder goals so that you could challenge yourself and get out of comfort zone to achieve it and get the maximum outcome.

Also Read: Career Transitions and Mental Health: Navigating Change Successfully

There are 7 steps of goal setting which starts by visualising the goals you wish to achieve. Make sure the goal is SMART( specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time specific). Write the goals down on a piece of paper and create an action plan by keeping the goals in mind. Creating a timeline is indeed an important step to make sure the success isn’t getting delayed by procrastinating. Taking action to achieve them is the biggest step of all, as we all know, without working for it, the success seems so far away. The last step in goal setting is to re-evaluate and assess your progress, it’s like a feedback mechanism to make sure you’re doing it the right way and it is within your reach.

Determination:

It’s the commitment and determination towards your goal or purpose that shows people are going to be successful or not. Sometimes people set goals out of motivation and after few days forgets it or procrastinate for a little longer. Determination shows how focused a person is in aiming success. Taking breaks is fine, but leaving it undone half way in between shows the lack of determination from person’s side and it’s really a bad attitude for those who wants to succeed in life. Even if the things are getting difficult or anyone’s having hard time keep in track, it’s necessary to keep going forward by staying determined and putting lots of efforts and energy to the work in hand.

According to self determination theory, humans have three basic psychological needs:

• Autonomy: autonomy makes people believe that they have choices and are willingly choosing to do what they’re doing to get success.
• Competence: competence is the experience of mastery and shows that the person is effective in whatever they are doing.
• Relatedness: relatedness refer to the need of belonging somewhere and feeling connected with others.

A strong belief in self:

In psychological terms, it is called as self efficacy. Bandura’s self efficacy theory states that a person’s confidence in himself and his abilities determines his potential to succeed in life. According to him, perspective plays a major role in the accomplishment of goals. If a person believes in himself and his abilities, he’ll be able to conquer over anything and solve any hurdles that comes in his way of success.

Also Read: Why Is Optimism Important To Achieve Success? 

There are four ways to build self efficacy:

• Mastery experiences: mastery experiences boosts your confidence and makes you believe that you’ve already got skills to achieve the goal in hand.
• Vicarious experiences: when we see a person doing the same thing we ought to do and overcoming all the hurdles coming in his way, it inspires us in such a way and makes us believe that if that person could do it, why couldn’t I and that’s the only attitude needed to keep going and believing in oneself.
• Social persuasion: social persuasion is when other people recognises your potential and skills to do a particular task. This positive feedback encourages to achieve what we wish to achieve.
• Physiological and mental states: These states could influence a person’s self efficacy to a great extent by changing their interpretations. Negative thoughts and beliefs highly impacts your self efficacy and leads you to believe you are not capable of getting success.

Leadership:

leadership is a skill that helps individual to positively influence others by leading them right way and guiding them toward attaining a particular set of goals. A leader’s success depends on the persons being led. Successful leadership qualities include respect, care and appreciations for every member of the team. Great leaders are those who are able to create a positive work environment.
Leaders are self aware of themselves, have good decision making skills, can be trusted easily with work and are attentive, open minded and quite punctual. That’s what makes person successful.

Discipline:

Discipline is the key to success and it has been seen that disciplined people are the most successful in life. Disciplined people take things and the time in hand quite seriously. They don’t waste their energy on useless things and prioritize their goals wisely. Disciplined people don’t lose hope or gets sad when faced with any obstacles, instead they looks up for the solutions to solve the obstacles, leading on the path of success. Discipline refers to control of one’s impulse and desires which gives immediate satisfaction, preventing us in achieving long term goals. Disciplined people first gets aware of what makes them happy and would benefit them in long run, then follows a well-established plan bit by bit to achieve whatever they put their mind into. They believe in consistency and hard work.

Also Read: Some Psychological Habits of Successful People

Clarity:

Being clear with what people want to do in their life and what could be appropriate to be put in the list of ‘success’ is an important step towards leading a life of success. Clarity with ones own thoughts and goals helps clear the path of success by removing the confusions and difficulties that comes in the way. Clarity is a state of mind in which people are more focused and their perception is clear. It has been said that ‘more is lost by indecision than wrong decision.’ Having a clear mind means not doubting what one’s doing or thinking about what could go wrong as they have their mind set and got preoccupied by whatever decisions they’ve made for themselves. Major step towards success is being clear with the goals that could suffice an individual.

Mindset:

Having a growth mindset is all what it takes to get successful in life and stand out from the crowd. Thinking and believing that you can achieve what you wish for means you’re already half way there. Success mindset is the one that embraces the challenges and believes in putting effort to get something and not just be dependent on the luck factor. Keeping a positive mindset while working for something big helps keep the mental health of person intact.
A person’s mindset that is how they view their abilities and face challenges is the primary predictor of one’s success. There are various books defining the growth mindset that could help in achieving success. The ‘yes I can do it’ mind-set can do anything despite of all the hardships coming their way because now they’ve developed that kind of mindset and hence developed a inner source of motivation.

Passion:

It refers to the strong inclination of a person towards something they like, value or desire. If a person has passion to get something or is passionate about something, he’ll do it despite of knowing how hard the task or goal is or what it’ll take to achieve it. Often the passionate people are the ones who can see the success incoming. They dedicate themselves to their work because they genuinely enjoy it, not just for the sake of doing it. Passion is like having a mindset of ‘yes I can do it because I really like it.’

According to the dualistic model of passion, there are two types of passions:

• Harmonious passion: Harmonious passion is when a person follows the passion with a balanced and flexible approach. The activity is significant part of person’s life but they also considers the other aspects of life by managing time.
• Obsessive passion: As the name suggests, Obsessive passion is the one when the person is completely immersed in the activity but they are doing it for social acceptance or to seek for pleasure that they’re getting out of it rather than one’s own interests or compassion.

These are some of the elements that could make person succeed in life and achieve bigger goals. Every human being has their own rules of success and targets set up for them which helps the individual reflect upon all the accomplishments they’ve achieved or yet to achieve.