How to become successful: The pillars to Success

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Hmm @drbenzz why this subject matters? I mean there’s been a lot of teaching and motivational talks by several sundry with amazing achievements to show. So why did you even bother to talk on this topic?

In a sincere response I really don’t know why I decided on this subject matter but I know for sure that there are a lot of perspectives to various subject matter and my perspective might make the famous topic of success clearer and more profound or maybe for some they may come to really understand what success really means.

There are many definitions of success, many different meanings to success. Some say it is the attainment of wealth or positions of honors, others see it as fame and triumph while a few believe it to be an obsolete outcome. However, as plain as it may seem, I believe success to be an achievement or an accomplishment and thereby define it as 'The achievement or accomplishment of an objective or goal.' Success is the yardstick to which one measures achievements and progress made in certain ventures previously sought out to achieve

Many people use wealth as a benchmark to measure success. Yes, some who have attained a level of wealth might call themselves successful, if gaining wealth was initially their goal. This makes success to seem linear in nature however, in an actual sense, there are so many other parameters to which success is quantified. So basically I can boldly say success is relative but could also be objective. For instance, as a student, while studying, I could set a target to cover 40 pages of my textbook in 2 hours. Being able to reach this target within the stipulated time or less, would personally translate that I've been able to achieve success.

Moving on, there are different levels to goals and your success varies with the type of goal you hope to achieve. There could be short-term goals and then long-term goals; these are time framed goals. The short-term goals are simply the objectives or aims you hope to achieve within a short period of time. These goals are goals that are achievable within minutes, seconds, hours etc. However, the long-term goals are goals or aims you hope to achieve within a longer timeframe. These long-term goals are goals are achievable within months, years, decades etc.

With that being said, let’s dive into the pillars needed to succeed. Pillars are structures put in place to provide essential support for something or someone. Now there are quite a number of pillars that success rests on but in order not to make this read a further sore to you, dear reader’s eyes, (haha just kidding. I hope you've enjoyed this read up to this point 😁 Awwn thanks a lot 😊. Well read on there’s more). I would only talk on a few of these pillars. “GENTLEMEN SHALL WE BEGIN”( Can you guess the movie?)

PATIENCE is a very vital pillar needed to succeed. Most times we are all in a hurry to arrive at the end, we cannot wait until we achieve these goals, we cannot wait to be successful, but as the saying goes, it is not a question of “how far?” but a question of “how well”? Yes, you may have arrived at the end but how well did you achieve the goals and aims that you set for yourself? Were you patient enough to analyze each step required to achieve the goals? Were you able to learn what's truly important on your journey to success? If not then you were not entirely successful?

Remember " To know how to wait is the great secret of success " Joseph De Maistre.

And the runner up isssssss…... PERSEVERANCE!! (Drum roll🥁). Patience and “perseverance” go side-by-side. It is the steady persistence in a course of action, a purpose, a state, etc. even in spite of immense difficulties. To succeed, perseverance is absolutely necessary. On your journey to achieve your goals, strength is needed and not just physical strength but mental grit, the strength that lives inside of us that helps us to keep pushing even when we feel weak and discouraged, when we get tired and grow inpatient but at the end of the line this strength reminds us that the result is worth the battle.

Once again remember that " The key to succeed is action and the essential in action is perseverance. " Sun Yat-Sen.

Next up is FOCUS. Focus has no particular definition, it is literally being serious and concentrated to the attention given. You cannot achieve your goals, you cannot be successful if you are not focused. You have to be serious and fully concentrated on the path you are working on. To be focused is to avoid distractions, to avoid things that will lead you away from achieving your goals. Be serious, be concentrated, be focused. Without Focus, the journey to achieving your goals, the great journey to success will be extremely difficult and most likely unable to achieve. As Sandeep Kakkpar once said

"Focus is the soul of success. "

However, you can be patient, persevere and focused but if you do not avoid PROCRASTINATION, there will be no success. Procrastination in a lame man's term is simply pushing activities, moving activities that are meant to be done at a particular time further and this is a complete no if you are trying to succeed. Whatever activity that is meant to be done today should be done today. Tomorrow is pregnant, you do not know if there will be room for that activity to be done the next day so do it when it should be done. Help yourself! Avoid laziness which is the backbone of procrastination, stay strong, head high, do what it is that is to be done, be sharp and most importantly listen to the great Benjamin Franklin said;

"Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today."

And then there’s SACRIFICE. Sacrifice is another essential pillar of success. It is an act of giving up something valued for the sake of something else. When trying to succeed, sacrifices should be made, give up some of your leisure time to grind. When you sacrifice your time and comfort to partake in activities that are more energy consuming or less entertaining than the activities you desire to partake in, you give yourself better chances in achieving your goal. It is always difficult to Sacrifice but not impossible. Sacrifices are not always bitter. Yes, they may be difficult but will only be bitter when they are forced. Do not force yourself to make sacrifices, if you are not able to then don't, but to succeed sacrifices are highly recommended because

" Great success requires greater sacrifice, " Sadin Prablue.

More so, it is almost impossible to make sacrifices without HARDWORK, just as patience and perseverance go side-by-side, hard work and sacrifices go hand-in-hand too. However, there are not a lot to say on hard work as we all know what hard work is and how important it is to achieve success, but for the sake of comprehension, it is best to define this great pillar of success. Hard work is simply the great deal of effort or endurance applied to a goal. To achieve your goals you must put in extra effort in the activities for which that goal entails. Work harder and tougher, play but play less and constantly engage in energetic works. G. K. Nelson once said and I quote

" Successful people are not gifted they just work hard then succeed on purpose. "

There are so many questions one would ask when trying to succeed. Questions like; how long? How do I keep moving? Will I end up succeeding? And so many more, but the real question is, is it possible to achieve all these without praying? the answer is, it is almost impossible to achieve success without prayers as the final pillar to success is PRAYER. Because only God can help you to really apply these pillars and virtues needed to succeed. (Whoa hold your horses right there. Nope, not stopping at all. God is an important aspect of all our lives and to truly achieve success we must ask for his help because he is the most successful being to have created the earth and us in it in 7 DAYS! It doesn't really matter your religious affiliation or lack there of, but it is commonly understood that the belief in the existence of a higher power is a factor which helps us overcome various challenges which most definitely will occur in our journey to attaining a goal and success.)

There’s just this little thing about success and having the right attitude I might add. And it’s that sometimes, from my experience, the journey to achieving success could be very rigorous and long making even the most determined and motivated person applying all of these pillars to fail. So here’s my personal antidote (Yh the Doctor’s prescription 🩺😁). We could break the whole journey into little bits, milestones of achievement, and reward the achievements for those little targets. That way there would be less pressure in achieving the whole goal while enjoying the whole process. So an example:

If I want to read 40 pages of my textbook in 2 hours, I could break it to reading 10 pages in 20 minutes with a 10 minutes break time to enjoy my achievements so far instead of reading through the full 2 hours stretch. Sometimes it could cause my time frame to increase and that’s fine because having fun and enjoying the process towards achieving your goal is the vital aspect to being successful.

Another step one could take to maintain the right mental frame when trying to actualize a goal is to overshoot the target of success by a good margin. Doing this challenges you to work even harder to meet that off shot target while taking away any feeling of defeat if for any reason that overshot target isn't met. In a realistic likelihood your efforts would put you within the range of a satisfactory alternative target if you hadn't overshot in the first place. However, if you do manage to meet the off shot target, you might experience an even greater amount of satisfaction than starting off with a target you know is easily within your own scope of achievement.

So as I said earlier, success is entirely based on your aim or purpose, it is not specific to wealth or power. It is generalized. On your next journey to success, carry this essay with you as a guide and an aid. A great man Pele once quoted " Success is no accident, it is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all love of what you are doing or learning to do. " We can be all successful if we desire to be.