Success is Just a Process

Get Success From a Process

What? How can success be a process?  Well, okay, maybe it’s more a ‘recipe’ than a process.  It’s not so much about ‘do A then B and you’ll get C every time’.  It’s a bit more subtle than that, but if you put in all the right ingredients in pretty much the right quantities and in the right order, modify a bit for your own taste you should get something that tastes pretty good.
So what do I mean, and what’s the “process” for achieving success?.  Now my definition of success might be a bit different to yours.

Mine is:

“Having a secure asset base established from which to pursue the things in life I want to.  Having the freedom to choose my own course and on my own terms.  Having the opportunity to do things that are fun and grow me, and the health to enjoy it whilst learning new things and being able to fully participate.”

For me, I want all these things so that I can share it with my family.  For you, and in the context of this blog, it may be something different.  It may relate more to finding the partner of your dreams or just having the confidence to talk to others.  ‘Success’ is a very personal thing.
But the success process I propose looks like this:

1. Work On Your Personal Development
The first key step is to start working on your own personal development or self improvement.  I hear you asking “Why am I working on me?  I thought that this was about success? SHOW ME THE MONEY!”  Well it is, but you can’t build effective relationships with others if you can’t relate to yourself.  This is part of the process is as much about building self awareness as it is about self improvement.
There are so many different ways that you can look to develop yourself and the areas to focus on will be for different people but start by sitting down and writing down your top 3 negative habits.  You can’t solve everything, and most of us have plenty of demons, so pick the low hanging fruit and get some momentum.

Make some progress on this and I guarantee that you’ll be proud of yourself and raise your self esteem a notch.  Doing this will ultimately help you to tackle the others.

2. Improve Your Health
If you truly want to achieve the success in life you desire then you need to be in a physical state capable of doing so.  We get one life and we get one body (it took me way too long to work this one out!).  You can’t do anything from the grave. It is that simple.

Now I’m not suggesting perfection but eating better and getting some exercise are critical.  Physical health is about 70% nutrition, 25% exercise and perhaps 5% supplemental optimization.  That means you get the biggest bang for buck through diet and being active, and this doesn’t have to cost a fortune to do – it’s all about time and commitment.

Focus on eating the right foods as much as you can and getting out for a walk or a run a few times a week.  This is not about making yourself attractive to others in the physical sense but making yourself attractive to others through your improved self-esteem and the positive mental state you will get from being healthy and feeling good.  Having a better body is just an added bonus!
3. Build Your Relationships
So now that you are doing some positive things for your own wellbeing and feeling better about yourself you are in a much better position to start to focus on those relationships that you are looking for.  There is a stack of good advice on this blog on how you can approach new people, so the advice in this article is really about putting yourself in the right space for the advice provided here to work.

However I would suggest that two key things for you to work on that will be crucial in building relationships are listening skills and empathy.  You’ll learn as much about yourself with these skills as you will about others.

In this way, the relationship component will further enhance the momentum of change within your development.  It will open up further opportunities for your own self improvement and the whole process can go around the loop again.

All of this will improve your attractiveness and lead to your success not just in these areas but in the other areas of your life that you are seeking to improve as well.

Remember. Success is a process.