We all want to manifest success in our lives. It fuels our desires to attain something. People perceive success differently as we have different desires. Some go after enriching themselves with material things to get financial freedom. Others study further to advance to the next level in their academic career.

Nevertheless, it’s necessary to identify clearly what we truly desire to achieve in life. This will give you a clear vision of which path you should go and what steps to take.

Bill Gates’s top secrets in achieving success includes starting as early as you can. He was only 13 years old when he started working with computers and looked how successful and influential he has become.

Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerburg built up his now multi-billion dollar company while he was still a student at Harvard University. Facebook has become one of the most popular and widely used social media platforms around the globe. 

These people proved that age is not a determining factor of success. Therefore, we don’t need to wait until we are old and stable enough to launch our start-up business. 

“If you believe in something, work nights and weekends. It won’t feel like work.” – Kevin Rose

The Key Elements to Achieving Success: Learning from the Best

Contrary to what we believe our elders have told us about hard work being the key to achieving success in life, Vishen Lakhiani, the Founder of Mindvalley said otherwise. He said that “Hard work has very, very, very little to do with success”.

According to his theory, there are four levels of consciousness that we need to achieve so that we can attain success in life: first, you need hard work; secondly, [you need to] learn how to do more with less work; thirdly, you need to [tap into your consciousness] and lastly, “Flow” “MOJO” and “Becoming Limitless”.

Vishen’s theory of success drops the binary ideas of success being a result of hard work or surrender alone. He believes that to be able to succeed in life, one must go through four different levels of consciousness stated above.

How to Attain Success in life?

We usually look after successful businessmen and personalities, hoping that we can use the same strategies they use to attain our own success. However, we must carefully consider which among their strategies are applicable to us. That being said, the following steps are guaranteed to help you attain success in your stat-up.

Step one: Have a clear vision of your goals in life

The title pretty much explains itself. For you to be able to achieve success in life, you must have a vivid vision of your goals in life. Ask yourself, “What is it that I truly want to achieve?” If you desire to achieve a lot of things in your life, listing them chronologically according to the degree or intensity of your desire pertaining to each goal will help you identify which among them are you going to prioritize and which comes next.

Step two: Find motivation

Your goal/s should be enough motivation for you already however, sometimes when our goal/s takes a lot of time to materialize or even seem impossible to happen as we planned—we lost our hope. In times like these, we need to motivate ourselves to remind us that giving up on our dreams would lead us nowhere, rather, we need to assess what we’ve been doing wrong and analyse if everything else is still in alignment with our goals. Knowing success stories from other entrepreneurs can also be quite motivating. You can find plenty of them in podcasts, Youtube channels for startups, or even books.

Step three: Create a timeline

Time is of the essence. It is important to have a timeline in achieving your goals. This prevents you from procrastinating and helps you control loss at worst case scenario. If your goal is time-bound, you will be forced to do everything just to achieve it within the time frame you set for yourself. 

Step four: Make your plan of actions

This pertains to your course of actions. What are the things that you need to do to enable your goals to materialize? Planning without taking the necessary actions to make it happen is merely dreaming. Likewise, doing things without a plan is futile and just a waste of time and resources. Hence, planning and taking actions are equally important in achieving success. Using your timeline, create a list of the necessary course of actions that you’ll take in every stage to ultimately achieve your end goals.

Step five: Create a contingency plan

Change is constant thus it is only natural to create your plans and goals flexible enough to deal with inevitable changes. However, it is also important to have a contingency plan so that if things go south, you are well-prepared to change course. Oftentimes, having something to fallback with gives us the assurance that there is still another way to achieve our goals. It also helps us cut further losses and refocus our actions to our vision even though it might be totally different from what we originally planned.

“The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” – Steve Jobs

Step six: Have faith

You already followed every step diligently, now the next step would be to simply believe that luck is on your side and that everything will unfold the way you envisioned it.

Step seven: Share your blessings

It’s always a great practice to share your blessings with other people. This is not only a form of giving back to the community or to the people who have helped you to become who you are now, it also brings you closer to God and lessen your enemies. Sharing your blessings helps you build a more positive environment where people are collaborating and working harmoniously, helping one another to succeed in life.