Success – How do you define it? Part 4.

Is success a destination that we are all trying to get to? What if success in life is more like a collection of all the other successes – each leading to a next one. Like that phrase: “Life is a journey, not a destination” – Success, too, may be a great journey that need not end. How interesting of a concept is that?

Before I continue, I would like to thank my contributor, Neelam, for finding and summarizing the material that follows in this entry.

First, let's see these two presentations were given at the TED conference by Richard St. John.

Presentation 1

Presentation 2

The motivation for the first presentation was a girl on an airplane who sat next to Richard and asked him a question “what leads to success?” Not knowing a clear answer, he interviewed TED conference presenters and came up with factors or what he calls the secrets that lead to success.  These 8 secrets are:  passion, work, focus, push, ideas, improve, serve and persist.  The presentation provides more detail on each secret.  In this first presentation, notice that the secrets leading to success are depicted as a staircase process leading to the end goal of “success”.  However, in the second presentation, he has changed this depiction and made it cyclic.  And so I found the second presentation to be more helpful to me personally as it points out some pitfalls that we should avoid once we reach success. 

The linear, "One Way" view. The circular, "continuous journey" view.

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In the second video, Richard St. John explains that “Success is a continuous journey” and I think we forget the continuous part in our aim for success.  We tend to believe that success is a onetime goal and that once we reach it we do not need to do any extra work to maintain it.  This brings us back to same place we were before our first experience with success and so we think that something is wrong with us.  In reality, nothing is really wrong with us except that we forget that life is a journey and that it requires continuous attention.  Similarly we need to remember that success is not a onetime deal and that we need to make it a regular part of our life. 

You have looked at different definitions of success and recipes for it.  I think most of these recipes have similar underlying factors.  I think every person out there who is working towards success is probably using slightly different version.  I think there two important parts to having a continuous success:

1. Determine the initial process that leads you to success.
2. Test and refine this process through continuous application in various areas of your life. 

We just have to remember to continue to do what works best for us.  We have to train our mind to learn certain skills, teach our mind to continue to use those skills and refine them overtime.  I think the best example I can give is when we first learned driving.  When we first learned the process we had to pay much attention to each step involved but now after some years of experience, it has become a subconscious part of our mind.  Many times, I don’t even remember driving home from work because my mind is so trained to do it so well that I feel like I am not doing anything when I am driving.  Similarly, I believe that we need to use the process of success over and over until it is embedded in our subconscious so that it becomes a routine part of our life. 

Thanks again to Neelam for this find. This really does make me reflect about “attaining success”.  No more searching for a “sweet spot” in life that can comfortably stay and relax once I find it. It’s almost like the “upward spiral” found at the very end of the 7^th Habbit: Learn – Commit –Do. I think got the “learn” part down. It’s the other two I need to work on.