January 22, 2019 |

Do You Want to Succeed?

 

Lots of people tell me they want to be successful.  My guess is that 75% don’t fully understand what they’ve just said.  And realistically, a subset of those 75% have no idea what they’ve just said.

 

What I’ve learned over time is that there is a big difference between wanting success and becoming successful.  And, there’s a relatively low correlation between the two.  Most people fall into the “wanting to want to be successful” vs. “wanting to be successful”.  Did you get that?  I’ll explain.

 

Wanting to be successful means that one is willing to define success, to set goals and do what is required to achieve those goals.  In other words, I want to be successful, and I’m willing to act accordingly.

 

Wanting to want to be successful means that one is truly excited about the concept of success and understands that action is required.  It’s at this point things break down.  Some don’t know how to define what success looks like.  There’s no goal; no endpoint.  They don’t know where they’re going, but they’re certain that it’s probably a really cool place.  Others know where they want to end up – I want to be my own boss.  I want to drive a Mercedes.  However, they don’t know how to create a path to get there.  The last group is the most tragic.  They know the endpoint.  They have a pretty good handle on the path.  But they are unwilling or unable to act; to do what it takes to get there.  They are, as they say in the South, in a perpetual state of “fixin’ to get ready.”

 

Success demands a price.  Always.  Action is the best measure of intelligence.  There are no shortcuts to success.  Be brutally honest with yourself.  Do you want to succeed?