Of all the goals people set in life, two
stand out: success in our personal and professional lives. It turns out, these
two are interdependent.
Personal success supports and reinforces
professional success. Professional success reinforces personal success. And
together, they reinforce life’s most important pursuit -- happiness
.
That’s why both goals are on top of everyone’s
agenda, especially the 20-something generation, as they begin the life journey
from their parents’ nest.
How are these goals achieved? What does it
take?
If you ask Rhonday Byrne, she’d tell you it’s
The Law of
Attraction.
Byrne argues in The Secret for
the power of positive thoughts, which she says will act as a powerful magnet to
bring things your way, and help you to identify and externalize your internal
strengths and capabilities.
Put good things in your mind, says Byrne, and
they’ll happen.
While positive thought may be a necessary
condition for bringing out strengths and capabilities, it isn’t sufficient,
counters Ken Robinson and Lou Aronica in The Element. That’s the
second secret to success.
Maybe you are exceptional in drawing,
dancing, cooking, or some other field. That’s where you ought to position
yourself. You must find your own “element,” your passion– the right field of
study, the right occupation, sport or activity that matches your inner
strengths and capabilities — which you might or might not even know you
possess.
Besides, luck, being in the right place at
the right time often makes a big difference – which is why you should be
willing to try and try again, learning how to endure failure. That’s the third secret of success, according
to Scott Adams, author of How to Fail at Almost everything and Still Win Big.
“There is plenty of luck to go around; you just need to keep your hand raise
until it’s your turn,” argues Adams. “If you drill down into any success story,
you always discover that luck was a huge part of it. You cannot control luck,
but you can move from a game with bad odds to one with better odds. You can
make it easier for luck to find you. The most useful thing you can do is stay
in the game. If your current get-rich project fails, take what you learned and
try something else. Keep repeating until something lucky happens.”
The problem is, however, we cannot keep
trying forever. Our life journey may finish before we raise our hand a
sufficient number of times to take advantage of what statisticians call the “law of large numbers” – which provides equal chances for each
possible outcome to occur.
Besides, getting your turn to succeed won’t
work unless you can execute, and steer away from harmful behavior that destroys
whatever progress you have made towards success. That’s where the fourth secret
comes in: get your priorities right; use your resources wisely; stay focused;
develop the right relations; don’t be greedy; and don’t be complacent
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