OUR HUMAN QUEST: SUCCESSFULNESS

OUR HUMAN QUEST: SUCCESSFULNESS

Now convinced success seeking is the primary human driver my goal is to characterize its attainment as a universal endeavor; however, as each of us is an original, specificity is unlikely; therefore, I am opting for a generalization. Undaunted by that obstacle my goal is identifying the success essentials of which I see six.

The online Oxford English Dictionary [OED] defines success as “The accomplishment of an aim or purpose.”, achieving goals making every attempt made and achieved is a success. How many successes do we have daily? Hundreds? More? Since most are recurring routines we discount the majority.

Consider this: At eighty-four my current number one success to awake in the morning. Some may discount that as frivolous, but I have done so more than 30,000 times. I'm on a roll. One day I will not. That will be my final loss. Other failures, however, like my first love dumping me for being a jerk or failing at college on my first attempt were seeds for subsequent successes.

Three years after being dumped I met the one for me. We married two years later which was the high point in my life for sixty-three years. Failing in college prompted me to join the Air Force where I was trained as an electronics technician which guided me into computer technology followed by voice and data communications which led me into all the bit fiddling that occurs in the Internet.

Our lives unfold by chance and choice, especially how we respond to chance occurrences.

In retrospect my expanded definition of success is now “Achieving goals which are more helpful than not to myself, others and the rest of it.” I have added “more helpful than not” because I see any harm we do as toxic to both ourselves, others, possibly the planet. When we can't be helpful it may be time for a break.

The Six Success Essentials

As one with an engineering mindset I am addicted to models and terminally analytical. It's my nature. Avoiding or denying it would be harmful to my success. That said, I am convinced success has been mine when I participated in life fully immersed in an actualization born of the following six qualities.

1. Embracing a Success Premise

This can be defined, more eloquently, as our raison d'être, our purpose for living, why we are seeking success. While there are many descriptors offering specific actions and behaviors my favorites are having a mission statement (what I want to accomplish) and vision (the pay off).

Having clear goals and appropriate rewards prime us for success.

2. Actualizing the Success Fundamentals

In my view five basic qualities are required for success as an original: Desire (What we truly want to accomplish) – Motivation (Our reasons for its achievement) – Competence (Focusing on excellence) – Commitment (Investing time and energy into it) – Persistence (Staying the course until completion).

Of these persistence may be the first among equals. The desires that lure us flow from a special place, the subconscious. Some may be spurious, but our cognitive powers can winnow those into the trash bin.

3. The Success Triad

Three qualities – actions, behavior, worldview – define our success potential:

Actions: What we are doing for ourselves, others and the rest of it.

Behavior: Who we are being during the doing.

Worldview: How we see ourselves, others and the rest of it which we carry as information (for which there is proof), opinions (for which there is partial proof) and beliefs (for which there are no proofs, but they are as true to us as information). It is vital we understand which is which. Embracing opinions and beliefs as facts can be harmful to ourselves, even others.

4. Five Success Questions

Our worldview, what we hold as true whether it can be proven or not, is formed by answering five questions: What's it about? (What's what about? Everything that's relevant.) – Who am I? (An original, what are my defining qualities?) – Where am I going? (What is my mission, my goals, my vision?) – Who will go with me? (Who are my fellow travelers, who accepts me as I am and vice versa.) – How will I participate in life? (As my self, with others and the rest of it.)

The answers define us and they will continue changing a little every day. Staying current with our singularity can be a daunting task, but worth it.

5. The Stages of Living

That our lives unfold in distinctive stages is a popular theme. In As You Like It Shakespeare identified seven: childhood, school boy, lover, soldier, justice, retiree, second childhood. Eric Hoffer believed each stage lasted thirteen years. While mine has evolved through seven stages of ten to fifteen years each, the first three seem universal:

Childhood: Our formative years which may be focused on joy as success.

Adolescence: That chaotic stage for many seeking their identity and place in the cosmos.

Individuation: The coalescence of mind, body and spirit into an integral whole.

These three often reach completion in the vicinity of forty years when we form a more stable self-identity in answering the five questions. We see ourselves more clearly.

6. The Success Process

While I suspect this exists in each of us in differing forms, my process model is offered here, not as a verifiable sequence of events, rather as an idea for your consideration.

Success flows from Paying Attention (with all six senses, especially our interior monologue, that little voice that keeps interrupting our reasoning.), Focusing on the Important (setting aside what is distracting), Assessing the Situation (characterizing the present), Considering Alternatives (rank ordering possibilities), Choosing the Better (actualizing what seems most appropriate) then Paying Attention to the Outcome (focused on what's important).

While this process is written as a sequence, a series of events, mine functions otherwise, spontaneously and intermittently, yet it is a process with a step-by-step progression as described, a basic model worth following when not detoured by chance events.

In Closing

These six success essentials are what I have come to see as the defining qualities of success. They have become apparent in an evolutionary process which continues. That's how I see it and will stand by it until I don't, which I have done before and shall again.

Here's wishing you all the best in your quest for success, Story Gordon