What Keeps You Awake at Night?
Success or Lack of
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” — Winston Churchill.
Success means attaining your vision of a good life by achieving specific goals that result in a future you have planned for yourself.
Success is defined by the individual whose vision of success looks different than everyone else’s.
Five potential keys to your success lie in the following:
Confidence
If you do not have confidence in yourself, you cannot expect anyone else to. That means that you are sure in both your plan(s) for success and in your ability to work the plan(s) and achieve the desired results.
There will be bumps along the way. With all plans, no matter how well conceived, there always are. And you will make mistakes along the way to achieving the end result(s).
Realizing these things and having self-assuredness that you will ultimately get to where you want to be is what sets you apart from others and gets you to your finish line.
Perseverance
This trait goes hand-in-hand with Confidence. When times get tough and the going gets rough, your Perseverance in what you are doing is what will get you through.
Giving up is easy. You can make all of the excuses in the world for quitting. But, sloughing through the hard times is what successful people do. If you study the lives of those we hold as paragons of success, you will find that all had bumps along the way.
But, they had confidence in themselves and what they wanted to achieve and they let nothing stand in their way. They modified their plans and adapted to the circumstances and changes they made until success was theirs.
When Edison was asked about all of the failed experiments he had before inventing the light bulb, he exclaimed that they weren’t failures, just his way of discovering what wouldn’t work. When success was finally achieved, he was declared a genius and all else was forgotten.
Organization
There is an old saying, “When you don’t know where you are going, any path will get you there”. What that means is that to get to a destination you must know where you want to go and have a plan for getting there. That is Organization.
Not being organized may eventually allow you to get to where you want to be. But, the time, hardship and duress that accompanies that is not worth it. There is another old saying. :You should plan your work and work your plan.”
You are allowed to make changes if needed. As said before, no plan is perfect and things will crop up. But that does not mean constantly changing the plan. If so, in reality it isn’t a plan. It is more a hope list and little is achieved by hoping.
Working the Plan
This has a double meaning. The first is to work the plan regularly. Doing a little and then nothing and then a little more is not the way to succeed. You must stay at whatever it is you have devised if you truly want to succeed.
The second is that you will not succeed in a vacuum. Others will be involved in your journey to success. Few if any succeed alone. There are others involved in their success and you must be able to get along and work with others, if you truly want to succeed.
You will also encounter others who for whatever reason do not want you to succeed. You must be aware of that and deal with them as needed and warranted. Some may have the power to hurt you and your efforts. Learn how to deal with them and keep them from thwarting you.
Resilience
If life was only full of highs, achieving everything you want to would be a snap and everyone would be successful. But that is not real life and most are not successful. That is because they did not follow the first 4 points and when times got tough, they stopped and never restarted
Resilience is the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties. It may take some time, especially if something catastrophic occurs. But those who are able to become tougher and stronger. It is said that, “If it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger”.
To be successful you must have Resilience. If not, you will join the majority that have but never realize their dreams.
“Never let success get to your head; never let failure get to your heart.” -Anonymous
So, is your fear of becoming successful, “What Keeps You Awake at Night”?
Do you lie awake concerning your Confidence, Perseverance, Organization, Working the Plan, and Resilience? Doubting any one of these can be harmful and cause you to lose sleep. At the least they may cause you to get off track from reaching your goal{s}.
This shouldn’t happen, but too often it does. Something or somethings occur which cause us to question ourselves. When that happens, we need to take a restock of who we are and what we have and are accomplishing. We also need to reaffirm that our goals are real and that we will allow nothing to get in the way of achieving them.
I know that sounds simplistic, but unless we can convince ourselves, then we will not achieve the success we are looking for. These are our dreams and goals and no one else’s. Others may help us to get to where we want to be, but only if we are taking the lead.
“Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.” — Dr. Norman Vincent Peale
Lying awake at night worrying, accomplishes nothing other than to make us more tired and cranky. It also makes us miserable and helps to feed our self-doubt.
The sooner we get over this and work to make our success{es} a reality, the sooner we will get to where we want to be. And along the way, get a good night’s sleep and make this one less thing That Keeps You Awake at Night.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter H. Christian was a founding partner and president of espi, a business consulting firm in Northeastern PA. Previously he was an Executive at Crayola Corporation. He has worked with 300+ clients in business development, profit improvement, operations, IS selection and implementation, and Project Management. He has 40+ years of experience in strategic and facility planning, CI, lean, and supply chain. He has helped companies to realize millions of dollars in cost reductions and profit improvements adding and retaining thousands of jobs. He has authored the Amazon bestselling business books, “What About the Vermin Problem?” and “Influences and Influencers” (4 out of 4 star review on Online Bookclub) and is published in a variety of professional magazines. He is most appreciative of Dr. Rodney Ridley and Donald Schalk of the O’Pake Institute, Alvernia University for their support in allowing him to teach this important course
