Success Skills Part 3
Without fortitude, no one will be successful. Without the ability to allow success to arrive in is own time, you won’t get there either. I speak and coach about patience and perseverance as regularly as I write about it.
• Persistence and Patience:
These two characteristics I tie together because they belong hand-in-hand. You must persist and have the determination to succeed. Calvin Coolidge has a quote that basically states that nothing is as omnipotent as persistence and determination alone for creating success. Imagine if Edison had given up before creating the electric light bulb? He tried 2,000 times before succeeding. A reporter later asked him, “How does it feel to have failed 2,000 times?” His answer, “I never failed once. I invented the light bulb. It just happened to be a 2,000 step process!”
Do you have the persistence it takes to create your own success? Once you have that determined spirit, then you must have the patience to allow your success to come to you in its “natural” time. In other words, it won’t help your success (and in fact, I believe it will hinder it) to get upset because your own “light bulb” didn’t get invented in the first few tries. Work your hardest; do everything you can do to create your personal success. Don’t give up and, as you go through the process of taking one baby step after another toward your goals (sorry no magic formulas here), have the patience and trust to let it happen in its own time.
• Whole brain thinking:
Success requires the use of both the left and right sides of our brains. We need to use logic (left-brain) to develop our plans; to take each step, knowing what to do first, second and third. But we also need our intuition, gut response or instinct (right brain), especially in times of rapid paced change, which has been and continues to be the norm in our world today.
If you are faced with a decision that needs to be made and you keep postponing it because all the facts aren’t in yet, you may be waiting too long. The most successful business people are making decisions based on both logic (the available facts at the moment), and instinct – a trusting of their inner sense of what would be best.
Using just your left brain, you can certainly think through anything logically. This is by all means necessary for certain decisions. But knowing your gut response will help clarify even further the subtleties of the situation. By the same token, you cannot live in your right brain alone. Great novels, art and music are created there, but if someone is going to get those treasures to a greater audience, they will have to plan and market their talent, and that uses the left brain.
Even though it would be nice to know the future, no one can. You can only guess at it, given the facts and your intuition. Using both the right and left sides of your brain, you will find a greater chance of being successful than trusting only your logic.
• Determine Your Own Definition of Success
And while you’re at it, consider your definition of success. Are you trying to be successful in an area that you have no passion for? Do you feel you have a purpose, but are attempting to create success in another arena? Lastly, and most importantly, are you using someone else’s definition of success?
Ask yourself seriously and take some quiet time to ponder this: What does it mean to be successful to me? Write down your description and remember it when someone else buys a new car or wins an award.
If you were on your last breath of air, what would you deem most important? Start there and see where your characterization of success leads you. I’m betting there are more important things that status and dollars. Use your own description as your benchmark and move forward from there.
Wishing you success on your own terms!
