Goals or Systems

“What do you want to become when you grow up?” asked my teacher. I, the grade 5 student, got up and answered: “I just want to be successful.”?“And what does success mean to you?” she asked.?“I….I don’t know,” I stammered while answering.?

I belonged to a humble background and grew up seeing my father come home not with gifts or surprises but with values, experiences,?and beliefs which he instilled in me. However, when I would see other children around me?whose?parents were doctors, engineers, lawyers,?and?businessmen, I often equated a?well-to-do?lifestyle, good social status,?and?decent education with being successful. And with time, that’s how I began to define it.?

However, I didn’t know how to become successful. Everyone around me said I need to be passionate about something and had to be consistent with it. But how? I began reading some books and they said the same thing. So I ended up going with the flow, accepted life the way it came, failed many times, made decent money,?and?ensured my family lead a good life.

However, I often wonder whether this trial and error method is the only way to success.Was so much failure inevitable? Could it have been avoided or perhaps turned into?victories??

Scott Adams, the creator of the famous comic strip Dilbert, shares his experience with failure and how he could turn them into eventual?success?in his book, "How to fail at almost everything and still win big."?According to him, passion doesn't guarantee success, but success gives birth to passion because passion will run out if one continuously?keeps?failing, and I agree with it. How many times have we given up on things after trying too hard? I have a lot of times.?

The secret to success is having a system in place. As much as the world celebrates goal setting, Scott explains that goals are for losers and systems are for winners. Goals are specific objectives.?

Once they are reached, they are done. But systems are regularly applied. System-driven individuals find ways to see the familiar in new ways. While goal-oriented people stay in a continuous state of pre-success or the worst-case scenario, never succeed, while system-oriented people succeed every time they apply their system because it is tried and tested.?Now, one may think that systems work only in certain areas.

For example, if you want to lose weight, you need to follow a diet, hit the gym, avoid calories,?and so on. However, the truth is that systems?extend?beyond physical goals, to all areas of life.?

For instance,?by?blocking our calendar with appointments (even for personal activities), we can balance work and family life. Initially implementing a new system will feel a bit uncomfortable but with persistence, things will eventually work out. The magic mantra is to focus on making minor, incremental improvements rather than expecting a single, massive effort to lead to success.?

Another important key to success is to embrace failure selfishly and view it as a learning opportunity.??"Being selfish is bad." Again, this is a common notion that's about to break.?

Being selfish is a necessary strategy on our?way to success. To live a happy life, selfishness is necessary. It assists us in making the right choices for our future?selves. We can only function optimally by thinking about ourselves. But the selfishness being referred to here is where you set your priorities straight and focus on getting better, pursuing your career, and quality time with your loved ones.?The world needs us to be selfish and handle that with grace and sympathy. If we do it right, we automatically become a net societal benefit.

Now that we’re thinking about ourselves and what we need to do, setting priorities comes next.?

Sitting down and writing what is important and what needs to be done first is required?to?manage our work so that we?can?focus on everything necessary. To set the priorities, let's take the example of the concentric rings of an archery target. The bullseye is us. Taking care of?ourselves, our?careers, and everything related to us should be our topmost priority. The next ring is economy. We need finances of our own. Otherwise, it will burden our loved ones and the country in the long run. The third ring represents our friends and family. To truly enjoy life, spending quality time with our loved ones is important. After that, the other rings are our local community, the country, and the world.?

Indeed,?failure is the stepping stone to success. But if we don’t learn from our failures and repeat the same mistakes time and again, we’ll keep falling into the same pit. Applying tried and tested systems to succeed, reading books, learning from people who’ve succeeded before us, prioritizing our activities,?and being unapologetically selfish will help us steer the anchor of our ship?toward?growth and development. Unless we take the charge, nothing will change.?

Let me know what your mantra to success is.

Pankaj Gupta Executive Director -?BNI Deira, Dubai, UAE

Executive Director - Corporate?Connections, Dubai, UAE?