Success is beautiful. Success is sweet. There is probably no other feeling in the world that feels as good as the feeling of success. But it is also one of the hardest things in life. To achieve success, you must be willing to make a lot of sacrifices and go the whole ten yards. If you go through the success stories of some of the most accomplished men in the world, you will find that, for a lot of them, success never came to them on a platter of gold, they had to earn it. They had to put in their sweat and blood and make every single day count for them. But these days, a lot of young men and women want to cut corners to become successful. They desire to rub shoulders with the high and mighty, yet, they lack the capacity to go the distance like the high and mighty they admire did. They want to cruise around town in the most exotic wonder on wheels, yet they do not wish to break a sweat like every man who is desirous of success should. There are several steps to take to become successful and everyone of them is very critical. You cannot ignore anyone of them. But there a few that you simply cannot compromise at all. You don’t negotiate these ones. The following are four things you simply cannot ignore, critical things you must do to attract success, otherwise, success will also ignore you too.
*Procrastination: How many of us have been guilty of this? A lot of us I can bet. Often times we have found ourselves deciding for the umpteenth time that we would give that idea we’ve been toying with for a long time a shot. We say to ourselves, next week, I will do a proposal and go talk to the MD of that company, but the next week never comes. We continue to shift the date forward and looks for flimsy excuses every time to justify our illogical procrastination- ‘oh, the weather looks bad, its not a good day to go out today’, or ‘I hear the traffic is bad today, I can’t step out of the house.’ The truth is, while you are procrastinating and stalling on pushing out your idea, someone is busy somewhere working tooth and nail to get his big break with such similar idea. You must stop procrastinating, it will do your ambitions no good. Success and procrastination are not the best of friends, whatever you wish to do and you can do today, go right ahead and do it, don’t wait till tomorrow.
*Sacrifice: This is also not negotiable. You cannot aspire for success and not be willing to make some fairly heavy sacrifices for it. You must let go of some things, habits, excesses, to hit the bulls eye. For instance, you cannot be indulging yourself in all of the vices in school, going to all of the hottest parties on campus and rocking every available event and still hope to make a First Class at the end of the day. It is highly unlikely for that to happen, you will have to be an incredible genius to achieve such incredible academic feat. You cannot aspire to be one of the most successful players on the planet and consistently skip trainings while others are sweating it out on the pitch during training sessions. Every coach that has worked with Christiano Ronaldo, even the ones that do not necessarily get along with him like Jose Mourinho, will still tell you that despite his humongous success, Ronaldo is usually the first to arrive training and the last to leave. Even after the training sessions are over, he stays behind for personal training. He perfects his shooting ability and free kick skills when everyone else is gone. During the week when a lot of footballers secretly rock night clubs and hang out with all sorts of women, Ronaldo stays focused on the next match day. Everybody knows Ronaldo loves beautiful women and enjoys painting the town red. But the difference between him and the others is that he waits till the season is over and then he enjoys himself to the fullest. He makes sacrifices to attain the level he is. How much sacrifice are you willing to make?
*Hard work: This, you simply cannot ignore. You must be willing to work extra hard to make a success of life. Nothing pays like hard work, they say, and its true. A lot of people dread hard work. It totally and completely puts them off. For many, anything that takes them out of their comfort zone is a no-go area for them. They don’t like challenges. They don’t like stress. Yet, they desire to be successful. It is no joke when people say that, despite his massive wealth and status as richest man in Africa, Dr. Aliko Dangote still works very hard to make more money. In fact, he works harder than most people who are still struggling to get their break in life. He has said in a couple of interviews how he goes to sleep late and is up early in the morning and ready for work. With all of his enormous riches, he could afford to skip work a couple of days in the week and that won’t stop the millions from hitting his account every passing minute. Money is like a spirit, it only respects those who work hard for it and more often than not stays with them for as long as they still breathe. But if you haven’t worked hard for it and cut corners to get it, it is more than likely that it will leave you sooner than you know it. Its the same thing with success, it only comes to those who have worked hard for it. And stays with them.
*Discipline: One thing that has become obvious to many is that, it is not that a lot of people lack the ability to be successful in life, what they actually lack sometimes is the ability to maintain and sustain the little success they have achieved. This is why you will find a young entrepreneur who, because he or she has landed a couple of mouth watering deals, goes to town, expends his profits on designer clothes and exotic cars, rather than plough back the profits into the business. And then months after, the business is grounded. Its back to square one again. Ask those who have met Aliko Dangote before, they will tell you his native outfits are made of fabrics that those of us who love to look good can pick up in the market. Same with his sandals. Many of us own far more expensive phones than Dangote’s. Even his house is not littered with cars. He is moderate in everything. He believes he has nothing to prove to anybody. The only person he needs to prove anything to is himself.
*Determination: This is possibly be the most significant of them all. This is critical to the success of anything you embark on. If you have got all the others mentioned above, without determination, you could still have problems pushing through. The road to success is never rosy. It is usually always rough and thorny. There will be bumps. There will be obstacles. Most times, you meet obstacles that leave you terribly discouraged and disappointments that leave your confidence in tatters. But you have got to keep keeping on regardless of these set backs. You’ve got to keep pushing on and keep knocking on doors till your own door is thrown open for you. Truth is, the moment you stop believing in yourself, the world stops believing in you. And doors will start slamming in your face because you have lost the confidence to engage people and keep them listening to your ideas. Determination is key, don’t stop trying, don’t stop believing in yourself, once you let this happen, then your dreams are as good as dead.
– AUTHORED BY WALE LAWAL
