Success: What Gets Measured Gets Managed

Don’t we all desire to be winners in our various field of endeavor?

Wouldn’t you want to stand tall and get ovation from your friends and loved ones after achieving a feat? Everyone desires to win in life; we all want to be successful in everything we do. It is no secret that everyone, whether young or old wants to be champions and achieve success in whatever they do. People want to excel in sports, academics, business, career, finances, health, relationships, and in spiritual life. Why do some succeed, while others failed, why are some so far behind in the game of life while others are well ahead? Why does it seem like everything goes very well for some while others appear to be struggling in everything they do? What does it take to become a champion? Can anyone win in the game of life and become as successful as they desire?

In our society today, we have been conditioned to think about success only in terms of material wealth. While it is good to be wealthy, measuring success based on material possession alone is incomplete in the grand scheme of things. Success can mean different things to different people. Having good health, families, and children will be considered by some as being successful. Some other consider success as being happy, or working in a certain job, or living a certain lifestyle. Fame, power, and prestige are what some other people use to evaluate success. And to many people still, success is being able to do whatever they want at any time they desire. So, to correct this obvious misconception, I will like to establish that “True success should be measured by how happy you are doing what you are meant to do here on earth.”

My belief is that we are all gifted and endowed by God in different ways. While some have been born in circumstances that give them leg up, or a head start, I have known many whose path was a greater struggle, people whose only way to improve their lives and become champions in their chosen field is through sheer dedication, hard work, and personal sacrifice. I decided to study these people and learn how they achieved success. What does it take to be like them? Is there anything that successful people have in common? Is there a formula that can be tapped into in order to become a successful individual? What does it take to become a champion?

What I’ve discovered along the way is this: We all have the power and capacity to make a change and find meaning in our life, and it starts with changing our mindset and pattern of thinking. You will need to have a paradigm shift and make up your mind that you can go from ordinary to extraoridinary and fulfil your God-given purpose on earth. God created us for some specific purposes; you need to harness your creative mental capacity to discover your purpose. You need to work passionately to achieve that purpose. You will most likely fail at times, and experience setbacks during the journey, but you must not give up. Persevere and move on. You can have fulfillment and happiness, and the easiest way to achieve this is to know your purpose.

Develop a Winning Mindset

Winning begins in the mind. The reverse is also true, if you believe you have been set up to fail, the result of your thinking will be manifested in your outcome. Consider Proverb 23:7, “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.” To become successful at whatever you do, you have to learn to condition your mind for success from the onset. You’ve got to believe that you will achieve your desired results even before the start of that particular endeavor. You must intentionally train your mind to envision the kind of life that you want in order to be able to take the appropriate actions that will guide you as you take the required steps to bring your dream into reality.

A winning mindset is a positive mindset, a growth mindset. It is very possible that things may not be where you want them to be at the moment, but with a winning mindset, you will have peace and assurance that you can achieve your desired outcome. A winning mindset equips you with the fighting spirit that will ensure that you don’t give up when confronted by some temporary setbacks. A negative mindset is a losing mindset. It does not matter if the conditions are favorable, a person with a negative mindset will somehow find a way of ending in defeat.

Overcome Challenges on Your Path

The path to a successful life is anything but smooth. You will encounter challenges, you will make mistakes, you will be told that it is not worth it, and you may doubt yourself and question your purpose as you move forward. However, to really make an impact, you should not internalize failure or let the fear of failing stop you from pressing forward to becoming a champion. Learn from failure, but don’t dwell on it. Improvise and adapt when you encounter obstacles, and find a mentor—someone with knowledge and experience in what you are trying to do—to help guide you.

The lives we live can be very daunting and challenging, especially since we all do not possess any crystal ball with which we can see the future. The one big challenge that we all face is the lack of time to take a pause and isolate ourselves from all the distractions around us and really think about what we want in life. When was the last time you had personal time to ponder where you are in life and where you really want to be? When was the last time you asked the focusing question “What is my purpose on earth?” I have found that without being intentional and asking why we’ve been put in this world, it is extremely difficult to achieve anything and become a true success. Difficulties and obstacles are speed bumps on the road to a successful life; this is an indisputable fact. They can slow you down, but they are not meant to stop you from moving forward. If you take your time to study any successful person you know, you will also find out that they have confronted their fair share of challenges. As our purposes in life are different, so are the challenges that we will confront on our life’s journeys.

Prioritize Your Time Using the MoSCoW Principle

The MoSCoW prioritization technique provides a powerful tool that you can leverage as you seek to master your time. This technique is popularly used in the project management world to properly prioritize each activity in the project in order to fulfill the overall project scope requirement. The acronym breaks down into:

M (Must Have): This specifies a requirement that must be satisfied in order for the project to be acceptable. They are the critical features or elements of the deliverables. As an individual, you must ask yourself what those things are that are essential in your life, and that you feel you must accomplish at a particular point in time.

S (Should Have): This specifies a high-priority requirement that should be satisfied if possible and within the project delivery timeframe. They typically have substitutes. As an individual, you will need to identify those high-priority items that will make life a little easier for you.

C (Could Have): This specifies requirements that are just nice to have and will not necessarily alter the dynamics of your life.

W (Won’t Have): This specifies requirements that are desirable but totally out of your plan at a particular point in time. I have seen many situations wherein somebody decided to do something just because other people are doing it, and being influenced by external pressure to do something they had no initial, intentional plans of doing.

The MoSCoW principle can help to manage your time and help to effectively confront the challenges that you might encounter when you have multiple activities that you need to attend to. How do you balance your time with work and family and still have time for yourself, and for some fun and happiness in all three areas? Knowing your values and purpose makes it easier to prioritize your time and align your activities in a way that is aligned with your purpose, and help you to achieve optimum results in whatever you do.

Tune Out the Noise

When you embark on a journey to make a difference in the world, and attempting to do something that will distinguish you from the multitudes, there will be several people around you who will tell you to slow down. They will tell you that what you are trying to do is unrealistic and unattainable. They will try to get you to shift focus and redirect your energy to what is realistic in their opinions. Most of the time, these people genuinely care about you and they really want to help. The problem is that they do not know what aspirations God has deposited within you; they are not sharing your dreams with you. You own your dream, and must measure success by how you turn those dreams into reality—not by what others believe is posssible.

The best strategy to adopt when dealing with external pressure is to block out the noise. To become a winner, you do not only need to know how to block out or filter the external noise and pressure, but you also need to develop the right perspectives about any condition in which you find yourself. I can assure you that it takes guts not to be dissuaded by these external pressures, but over time you will learn how to trust your own judgment and find like-minded mentors who can help guide you as you make decisions. Mentors are champions who have already tread a similar path, and they will surely have some information that may help you on your journey.

Position Yourself for Success

You can enhance your chances of succeeding in life by being in the right position when your opportunity shows up. You can position yourself for success both physically or emotionally. The physical positioning requires you to be at the right location at the right time so that you can have a seat at the table where deals are being made. People that are in the right position physically are present to sign a contract, they arrive at meetings on time, they attend interviews or networking events, and they are physically available when potential opportunities are being discussed. Sometimes, new opportunities may require you to change your physical location and relocate to another part of town (or the world) in order to be positioned for the opportunities. This is especially the case when it comes to job opportunities. For example, during the oil boom, many people relocated to North Dakota in order to be well positioned for job opportunities in the booming oil and gas sector. The same analogy is applicable to millions of immigrants that are leaving their home countries in search of greener pastures. There may be times when it is necessary to relocate and reposition yourself in order to be physically present to partake of opportunities. The secret here is that you should move simply following everyone else pursuing a particular opportunity, but rather follow your conviction and pursue your purpose.

Do What You Love, Love What You Do

The majority of successful people succeeded because they focused their attention on what they loved the most. Nobody can really excel at doing what he or she detests. So to have a successful life, you will need to explore and find things that you really love to do, pursue them passionately, acquire and develop the needed skills necessary to succeed, stay focused on the task, and aim for continuous development. The idea of finding what you love to do is closely related to the fact that you must understand yourself as a being. What exactly do you enjoy doing? What are those types of activities that will bring joy to your heart? What is that one thing that, whenever you start, is often difficult or impossible to put down? Once you are able to identify your bright spot, you will then need to continuously work hard to hone your skills in order to become a peak performer.

Stand Out from the Crowd

Doing the right thing all the time is not always convenient, and most of the time it takes some courage and determination to remain upright in our society, but there are still many good people whose life stories can teach us some lessons about making right decisions even when they are not convenient or without any personal benefits. Doing the right thing can sometimes mean sacrificing your personal interests for the benefits of others. That is exactly the story of Sallie Krawcheck, the chair of Ellevate network and Ellevate asset management. Sallie found out that a stable value fund in Merrill Lynch’s wealth management portfolio under her management had lost some significant value and would not provide the necessary returns to the investors, who were mainly low-income earners, specifically Walmart employees.

She had two options, one of which was to hide the truth and do nothing to help the people who had invested in the fund, the other to find ways of moving money into the fund in order to increase its value. She found herself in a dilemma because she was just fired from CitiGroup’s wealth management division for reimbursing clients for their losses. She could protect her self-interest by doing nothing to help the thousands of people who had invested in the fund and continue to earn her salary as a hedge fund manager, or she could put more money into the fund and risk losing her job. She definitely would have liked to not lose her job, especially since she was fired for the same reason in her prior position. This could affect her reputation as a professional and make it difficult for her to find another role in her field in the future. But she understood the principle of doing the right thing even when there are no personal benefits involved. She moved money into the stable value fund, she did not lose her job, and as a result, she became a role model to other up-and-coming hedge fund managers in the industry. Had she measured success by the quicker, easier method of getting the most money for her company, she would have missed out on a much larger, more meaningful and honest success.

Let Your Enthusiasm Be Contagious

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” I couldn’t agree more. If you are going to be successful in any area of life, you will need enthusiasm as an ingredient. Enthusiasm can be likened to a form of energy that gives you the boost to keep going forward in your endeavor until you are completely satisfied or fulfilled with where you want to be. Having enthusiasm about what you do ensures that there is a determination within you to get it completed while also having pleasure and enjoyment doing it. You need some form of enthusiasm to be successful and rise to the top of your career.

An enthusiastic entrepreneur is better able to win more customers and grow a business than an apathetic one. Those who are successful in sports play with enthusiasm. They love the game, and can let go of every other thing in their lives just to play the game they enjoy. Couples that are enthusiastic about their relationships make successful marriages. Enthusiastic and passionate students tend to perform better in classrooms.

So, one final measure of success I’d like to leave you with is a question: Are you enthusiastic about the life you’re leading? If so, in what ways, and how can you lean further into it? In not, what are you enthusiastic about, and how can you pursue it? Once you find it, lead with it. Enthusiasm doesn’t mean the end of hardship, or constant happiness, but it does provide the fuel you need to stay on the path toward ultimate fulfillment and doing what you were meant to do in life. That, in the end, is how I want to measure success, and my definition of a champion.