What makes you successful?

(If only at growing vegetables!)

If I were to ask you to what you attribute your success, what would you say?

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Most of us would probably immediately say our skills, experience and knowledge.

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Think about it a bit harder and we might say a good education, parents who encouraged (even pushed?) us.

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You might be someone who says that you had succeeded despite a difficult start, poverty, illness. It’s true, sometimes those things make us more determined, and we come out stronger.

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But have you ever wondered about the conditions that have enabled you to be successful? We all know the examples of highly successful CEOs for example who have been headhunted to another company and bombed. Maybe it’s happened to you. Why?

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Completely different conditions, perhaps described as culture, of the new company, but it goes further than culture. What kind of person are you? Someone who likes to work on their own, someone who likes to lead a team, or maybe be part of team, but not in charge. Are you an expert who likes a role where you can deliver your expertise, but don’t want to manage people? Are you a driving force, someone who doesn’t recognise obstacles, gets things done?

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It's good to know these things about ourselves otherwise we can find ourselves in circumstances where we don’t perform. Take some time to look back over your career. As you look at times when you were performing at your best, being really successful, in the flow, what was going on around you? What were the conditions that enabled you to be successful?

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As you look to 2025, how can you create the right conditions for yourself, conditions which enable you to build on your success?