The Secret to Success: Avoid It

What is Success? Answer to this may vary from person to person. Success gives us happiness, it gives us satisfaction. But if you ask me, success is the fulfillment of a goal for which you put in the best of your efforts and time. Each minute, each second, all you think about is how to fulfill that goal. Each right step towards it is a milestone and even one step gone wrong may be devastating and lead to failure. The joy and sense of achievement attained on reaching the goal is unmatched.

The sweetest victory is the one that’s most difficult. The one that requires you to reach down deep inside, to fight with everything you’ve got, to be willing to leave everything out there on the battlefield—without knowing, until that do-or-die moment, if your heroic effort will be enough.

Even success can have its ill-effects

We all seek success, but the actual experience of thinking you’re successful is potentially performance eroding or even dangerous. That's true for businesses, teams and us as individuals. In extreme cases, others think you are smarter, more creative, and more often right. You aren't, of course.

For example, when you do a very important and difficult task right, you will be expected to do it right, with the same level of excellence each time. This task, of doing same activity repeatedly, can be very painful and irritating. There may come a point when you will be forced to do it without any motivation.

Also, doing something challenging, builds confidence, which is good. Also when you take up herculean tasks and do them right too, it may lead to overconfidence and get you all cocky which may have bad effect on your work. And if it gets into your head, it is a catastrophe. It has the potential to disrupt your personal as well as professional life.

"Life is a process. There is no success or failure – only feedback."

Embrace Failure and unleash your Potential

Even the smallest of our daily life activities involve success and failure. For instance, reaching your place of work on time, in spite of obstacles, is a goal. Achieving this goal may be a small success, but significant enough to start your day in the right way. If you fail to achieve this small target, you are welcomed by taunts and insults. This has a prominent effect on all the activities of the day.

Society doesn’t reward defeat, and you won’t find many failures documented in history books.In fact, we’re so focused on not failing that we don’t aim for success, settling instead for a life of mediocrity. When we do make missteps, we gloss over them, selectively editing out the miscalculations or mistakes in our life’s resume.

To many in our success-driven society, failure isn’t just considered a non-option—it’s deemed a deficiency. But it is important to fail. Failure is wonderful because you learn from it and it keeps you humble. As long as you risk manage it, you can't be overcome by it. And failure beats success 10:1 for learning.

Recently i ponder upon this beautiful, little long, poem by Bracken Darrell, CEO of Logitech, wherein he beautifully describes what success does to you and how can you overcome failure.

This poem has helped me remain calm, and not getting glorified, overwhelmed by my achievements and success.  Hope it serves the purpose for my readers too.

"You joined the world naked,
Unclothed and unhaired.
You started out solo,
Crying and scared.

By trial and error,
You crawled up and past two,
Then learned right through grade school,
High School and Big U!

Sometimes you won,
Oft you fell down destroyed,
Broken and beaten, and,
Worse, unemployed.

Early on you climbed up
Mt. “I’mSoGreat” Peak,
You got TOO confident,
Loved to hear yourself speak!

From that elevation,
You tumbled down far,
You rolled, bounced, and crumbled,
You damaged your car.

You climbed up again though,
Now humbled, strong willed,
No, nothing could stop you,
Not even a spill.

You learned to keep learning,
As you grew older,
When you lost you showed grace,
You were humbler but bolder.

As the ‘wins’ piled up,
A new friend joined you, too,
At first you hardly took notice,
But SUCCESS grew and he grew.

He praised average comments,
Your most awkward charm,
He loved all your faults,
Like your worst throwing arm.

SUCCESS is a problem,
Not a friend, don’t you see,
Because you like him TOO much,
But he’s ALL about ‘me’.

SUCCESS makes you fearful,
Of losing your place,
Of gambling with stature,
Of losing your face.

So what now my friend,
You see what SUCCESS brings,
How does one avoid him,
Yet accomplish great things?

You’ve got someone to nurture,
Still naked, no hair,
That someone is yours,
ONLY yours, so take
Care!

One vulnerable child,
Lives lifelong in us all,
His name is ‘Potential’,
He stands ten feet tall.

SUCCESS is wicked,
He’s not what he seems,
He lunches on goals,
For dinner eats dreams.

And I hope if you live
To 120 plus 4,
You read this each year,
Feel it down in your core.

Remember Success
Is the wolf in your tale,
Live hungry in life,
Always learn and please fail."

“One of the biggest secrets to success is operating inside your strength zone but outside of your comfort zone.”

Download the full poem by clicking here.

Sources :  Ianswer4u.com,
http://blog.logitech.com/2017/05/10/avoiding-pitfalls-success/