We all want to be successful, yet many of us focus on the prize of reaching the ‘success finish line’, rather than on the race itself. We consider success a destination and blind ourselves to the fact that success is more of a structure, a system, and a practice. Check out the many successful people in our society who stick to a stringent set of practices daily to be at the top. They do not limit their ideology to the notion that success is an endgame. No. Rather they see it as something that requires consistency and ongoing effort. And here is why:
“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out” – Robert Collier
Read on to find out why success shouldn’t be your main focus in life:
You won’t be happy
Everyone deserves to be happy. But the journey towards success shouldn’t be dependent on the notion that you will only get to be happy if you reach your destination. For example if you aim to lose 300 pounds in three months, your happiness should not depend on whether you lose it or not. Rather your happiness should be in the daily effort of working out and going to the gym. Your daily life will only become full of worries and fatigue if you aim at success and don’t reach it. However when you find joy in the process of constant daily practices leading to you reaching your goals, you will become unstoppable.
You won’t grow
Success doesn’t happen suddenly. Neither will yearning for particular results lead them to occur overnight. Rather we have to put in the work and sustain our efforts over the long haul: growing resilience and strength in the process. Focusing on success as an end goal doesn’t make us cherish the process of making mistakes, learning from them, adapting to new ways of working, and improving on our existing strengths. If we want to be successful some personal development is involved. This sometimes challenging process means that we are willing to commit ourselves to the task, the moment, and the process at hand.
You won’t make discoveries
Why do we want to be successful? Is it for the money, the fame, or the acknowledgement from others that it can bring? Solely focusing on success can keep us from discovering new opportunities, life less lessons, and experiences. Aiming for success also does not test us on what is really motivating us to want to be successful. At the end of the day what success should mean to us is that we are making an impact or a contribution, not simply taking from our world. Focusing on our values and what we discover along our journey towards success helps us to attain meaningful rewards in life. Throughout this process we also learn to embrace challenges and own up to the responsibility of making needed differences to our world.
You’ll miss out on opportunities to be thankful
Viewing success as a journey offers you moments you will always cherish. You will thankful for those people you meet along the way, the vulnerable times, and those periods when it all seemed so daunting that you never thought there would be a way out. If success was your sole aim, you would not have gained an appreciation for the tests and trials you endured. Rather, you would likely fixate on them as merely failures. You appreciate success more deeply when you take it one step at a time. This process also offers you a fuller perspective of where you are coming from, and where you are heading to. Thankfully, opportunities to be thankful occur often when you are able to attain what you may never have thought possible through daily, consistent efforts.
We live in a world where the media puts it spotlight on seemingly instantaneous success. But you would not benefit from this kind of success in the same way that you would if you had worked for it over time. Learn to grow with every passing moment and enjoy the thrill of the journey rather than the overwhelming allure of the destination. Your daily efforts will become your legacy.
Featured photo credit: http://www.flickr.com via flickr.com
The post This Is Why You Shouldn’t Focus On Success appeared first on Lifehack.
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