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Imagine a treasure chest full of gold and jewels and it’s all locked away from you with a combination lock. You need to find the winning combination of numbers, actions you need to perform, in order to get the treasure inside. That’s one approximation of what earning success is like.
Life is full of treasure chests, also known as opportunities for success. You need to choose the right chest and then get to work at cracking the code to earn the treasures inside. For earning success in life, these 10 things are just a few of the things you will need to achieve the things you desire.
10 Things You Need to Succeed in Life
1. Goals
First of all, you need a goal that you want to accomplish. Without a definite goal, you’ll be like a ship lost at sea, eternally drifting along until you eventually sink.
If you have no goals in life, you will end up like most of the masses who simply work hard to eat and survive. Like drowning men, they waste all their energy trying to stay afloat, never knowing that if they focus their strength in one direction they can reach the beach with a treasure chest a few feet away.
2. Wisdom
If you want to build a mansion by yourself, you must learn how to design a house, mix concrete, stack bricks, carve wood, craft metal bars, and more. If you don’t want to learn all that, you can pay a construction company to build it for you. The problem now is you have to know how to earn enough money to pay for all of that. If you don’t know how to do those things, then it’s unlikely that you’ll ever build a strong and sturdy home. You can apply the same principle to any other achievement. To earn the things you want, you need to LEARN the things you need to do in order to achieve them.
3. Confidence
Orison Swett Marden mentioned that “a general who expects to be beaten will be beaten. His expectation of defeat communicates itself to his army, demoralizes it at the start, and makes it impossible for the men to do their best.” If you don’t think you can win, you won’t train hard and you won’t play hard either. If you don’t give your 100%, you will likely keep losing to those who do, the people who give their best because they think they can win. They will keep winning while you will stay at the bottom of the rankings where you think you belong.
4. Action
You can learn how to solve equations, you can learn engineering principles, and you can learn business, but unless you go out there and use what you learned, then everything inside your head is useless.
Remember what Jack Canfield said: “The world doesn’t pay you for what you know, it pays you for what you do.” The guy who builds and sells an ordinary chair gets paid. The guy who knows how to build “the greatest chair” but sits around doing nothing won’t.
5. Perseverance
Can you remember the first few times you tried cooking food? You probably burned it, or undercooked it, or maybe you put too much salt, or too little seasoning. What about the first few times you tried to ride a bike or skateboard? You probably tripped or fell but you didn’t let that stop you.
Failure is inevitable, you know. We’ll trip, we’ll get tired, and we’ll fail. There’s no getting around that fact. The thing is, if there’s something worth doing, it’s worth doing badly at the beginning. Just keep practicing until you get better, and keep going until you become one of the best. If you’re heading in the right direction, you will almost certainly get to your destination. Just keep walking and don’t give up.
6. Create Value
Why do some people become rich and successful? There are many reasons, and this is one of them. Take a good look at the things you own and the services that you use. Your computer, the software you used to open this, and more. How much do you think their creators earn for creating those excellent products that serve people like us?
You pay the bus because you need to get somewhere fast. You buy tickets at the cinema because you want some entertainment. You pay the doctor or pharmacist because you want to be cured of disease. What do you do at your job? You’re probably paid because of the value you give for the company. Create or do things that people want or need and they’ll reward you with cash and/or kindness. Those are things you will definitely need to achieve your goals and dreams.
7. Think of Your Future
Do you want to know what creating goals, doing productive things, and spending time and money (saving and investing) wisely have in common? They are almost always meant to bring positive results IN THE FUTURE.
Just imagine the kind of people who don’t think about the consequences of their actions. They are the ones who gamble money away hoping for short term “big wins” that never happen, they get buried in bad debts because they want to buy cool things NOW (forgetting about the “pay later” part), and they are also likely the ones who cheat and steal from others because they “didn’t think” they would get caught one day.
8. Good Money Habits
What would happen to you if you wasted every cent you have on worthless junk, like gambling everything away at a casino or getting into bad debt? You’ll end up on the streets. While there are exceptions, it’s often harder to become successful if you’re sleeping on the streets and dying from dysentery than when you have a good income and millions of dollars in the bank ready for good business and investment opportunities.
You need to learn how to manage money wisely. It’s an incredibly important resource on your road to success.
9. Discontentment
It’s said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Are you doing the same kind of work over and over again hoping it will somehow lead to “success”? If you keep doing the same work without making any improvements, you’ll just keep earning the same salary. There’s nothing wrong with being content, but you have to remember that when things stop growing and stagnate, they die. If you don’t keep getting better, you’ll stop being good.
Don’t be content with what you have now. Always aim for something higher.
10. Integrity
The road to success is long and hard, spanning maybe decades of endless effort. That’s why so many people try to take shortcuts by lying, cheating, or stealing things that others worked hard for. That’s one main reason why a lot of people end up in jail… or dead. Don’t fall for it. Just do good, create value, and help others on your way to your goal. A long and harsh journey to that leads to success is much better than a quick road to ruin.
While this list contains a few of the most basic ones, this list of 10 things you need to succeed is not complete. There are plenty more, and many of those will be specific for you and your personal situation. You will likely need to discover those by yourself, or with the help of mentors who will guide you along your career path. If you’ve learned some of them, then tell us all about it in the comments section below! Your tips will likely help others who are just starting out.