5 SIMPLE KEYS TO GET SUCCESS IN LIFE

There are five simple keys to get success in life.  If you are going to use these keys, definitely you will succeed to open a door of success for you. But the condition is not to miss any one of keys; because, they are interrelated.

1. Change your mindset
2. Change your habits
3. Set your goal
4. Chase your goal
5. Celebrate every success

Change Your Mindset

Harvard Business School researchers studied what made the difference in success or failure for people of similar backgrounds and educational standards. Their studies found that 3% of people were successful, 30% were moderately successful and 67% just existed. The significant difference for the 3% who were successful is that they wrote down specific goals. The 30% who were moderately successful had a general idea of where they were going but didn't have any goals formalized. The rest were happy to watch the world go by. What is interesting is that people in the 30% category only needed to put in a small amount of effort to jump into the next group. The secret behind the effort is the development of habits and strategies which support the achievement of clear goals. Successful people form habits to do the things that less successful people don't like to do. ( http://getlevelten.com/blog/sumeeta-kumar/importance-goals)

Shiv Khera the author of “You Can Win” writes; there is only one difference between successful and unsuccessful people. Successful people dreamed and set goals in their lives. They committed to themselves and realized their dreams. 

Before you start your journey of success, you have to decide about yourself. Why are you not successful? What reasons and conditions led you to the failure? Why you did not set any goal in your life? Why other people are very successful and not you? What is holding back you to get reach to your destination?

There might be three reasons or one of them that is holding you back to join to the successful group.

1. Fear of Criticism
2. Procrastination/laziness
3. Don't know what they want to be.

If you have fear that the people around you will criticize if you are going to have some dream and planning to realize it, then you must decide about yourself.

If you are lazy and think that someday you will start setting your goal, then you cannot achieve anything in your life. Because, someday never comes. If you do not know what you want to be, then decide now what you want to be in your life.

“ There was a man who made a living selling balloons at a fair. He had all colors of balloons, including red, yellow, blue, and green. Whenever business was slow, he would release a helium-filled balloon into the air and when the children saw it go up, they all wanted to buy one. They would come up to him, buy a balloon, and his sales would go up again. He continued this process all day. One day, he felt someone tugging at his jacket. He turned around and saw a little boy who asked, "If you release a black balloon, would that also fly?" Moved by the boy's concern, the man replied with empathy, "Son, it is not the color of the balloon, it is what is inside that makes it go up."

The same thing applies to our lives. It is what is inside that counts. The thing inside of us that makes us go up is our attitude.(With Regards Shiv Khera)

Change Your Habits

Study shows regardless of race and color, time and place, all successful people have some attitudes and habits which are common among all successful people.  These qualities were found in every successful man. If you also succeed in adopting the same qualities and attitudes, certainly you will also succeed in realizing your own dream.  The rule of success is same for everyone. On the other hand, the study also shows that unsuccessful people also shared some common habits and attitude which hold them back to reach to their destination. Andy Bailey, the chief executive of Petra Coach rightly found 16 differences between successful and unsuccessful people.

Successful People	Unsuccessful People
1. Embrace change	Fear change
2. Want others to succeed	Secretly hope others fail
3. Exude joy	Exude anger
4. Accept responsibility for their failures	Blame others for their failures
5. Talk about ideas	Talk about people
6. Share data & info	Hoard data & info
7. Give people all the credit for their victories	Take all the credits from others
8. Set goals and life plans	Do not set goals
9. Keep a journal	Say they keep a journal but don't
10. Read every day	Watch TV every day
11. Operate from a transformational perspective	Operate from a transactional perspective
12. Continuously learn	Fly by the seat of their pants
13. Compliment others	Criticize others
14. Forgive others	Hold a grudge
15. Keep a "To Be" list	Don't know what they want to be
16. Have gratitude	Don't appreciate others and the world around them

Check these 16 failure attributes and find out which have rooted in your life. Get them out one by one. Unless you don’t change your attitude, way of thinking and habits, there is no chance to win the game.  

Set your goal

What is success?  Oxford dictionary states the meaning of success; “the accomplishment of an aim and purpose”. All successful peoples accomplished some goals. Naturally, if you do not have any aim in your life, you cannot be successful. For being successful, the first condition is to set up some goals in your life.

It is very simple. Do you board any plane and you do not know where it will go? Do you take any bus without knowing where it will take you? No. Then how can you live the whole life without purpose and objective?

Shiv Khera says; On the brightest sunny day, the most powerful magnifying glass will not set a piece of paper afire if you keep moving the glass. But if you focus the light and hold it on one spot, the paper will burn. This is the power of concentration. So, in life do not do many things, make some specific goal and purpose and focus on it.

SET SMART GOALS:

Ask yourself:

What you want to achieve?

How will you achieve it?

When are you going to achieve it?

Then make your goal smart. What is S M A R T  goal?

Specific: Goals should be simplistically written and clearly define what you are going to do.

Measurable: Can you quantify your progress so you can track it?
How will you know when you reach your goal? Define specific criteria for measuring progress toward the accomplishment of each goal you set so that you can measure and keep track of your progress.

Achievable: Goals should be attainable; they should stretch you slightly so you feel challenged, but defined well enough so that you can achieve them. You must possess the appropriate knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to achieve the goal.

Realistic: Realistic and reasonable.  Is your goal realistic and within your reach?

Are you willing to commit to your goal? 

Almost certainly your goal is realistic if you truly believe that it can be accomplished. So do not set goals which are beyond your capacity and out of reach.

Time-bound: Goals should be linked to a timeframe that creates a practical sense of urgency, or results in tension between the current reality and the vision of the goal. Without such tension, the goal is unlikely to produce a relevant outcome. Without time-bound you will never chase to reach to your goal. So, fix time when you want to reach to your destination.

Chase Your Goal

Chasing goal is not easy. A great man said: success is not winning each battle it is winning the war. On the way you will find many barriers and difficulties. You must know that all successful people did not get their outstanding achievements without fail and troubles. Your success depends upon your attitude how you tackle your difficulties and overcome the barriers in your way.

Always remember failing at any time is not shameful, but quitting game due to failure is disgraceful. Keep running until you reach your destination. This is the secret of success.

—  NASA failed 20 times in its 28 attempts to send rockets to space.

—  Henry Ford’s early businesses failed and left him broke 5 times before he succeeded to establish Ford Motor Company.

—  Albert Einstein was perceived to be mentally handicapped before changing the face of modern physics and winning the Nobel Prize.

—  Thomas Edison took1,000  attempts before inventing the light bulb.

—  Dr. Seuss’s first book was rejected by 27 publishers before it was accepted and became the best seller book.

—  American author Jack London received 600 rejections before his first story was accepted by the publisher. That is some thick skin! Is not it?

—  Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team for not being good enough due to his hard work and persistence he became the best basketball player of the century

Celebrate Every Success

Ironically, most of us do not have any goal in our lives. If some people have, they do not want to change their weakness and flaws. Some of them if succeed in converting their bad habits and negative attitude into winning attributes and traits but they don’t persist, they quit the game in the middle. If we persist and do not quit, nobody can stop us to succeed. It is very famous story of Thomas Edison who failed nine hundred ninety nine times before he succeeded at inventing the lamp and he succeeded on the 1000^th time. When he was asked how he failed so many times he replied, he just discovered that 999 methods did not work.

If you want to succeed, you have to bounce back after every failure and always remember that the persistence is the only key to getting what you want.

Success is not by chance, it is the result of accepting the challenge, changing your old habits into winning habits, setting up smart goal and then chasing it until you get what you want. Think about it and do it now.

If you succeed even in small achievement, do not think it is trivial, instead, celebrate it. Celebrate every success that will energize you to move to next step. Share it with your friends and motivate them also.

Best of Luck.