Everyone wants to succeed but how on earth can you succeed without first establishing what success is? What is a football game without goal posts? What sense does it really make to get busy walking towards nowhere specific?
Today I posted the front cover of my book “You Will Manage: 7 Keys to a Life of Perpetual Victory, Unstoppable Success and Doing Impossibilities”. As several people made their comments, a one Mr. Byaruhanga Bruce whose profile indicates that he is a “Sales Engineer at Water Giants” inquired as follows,
“In a few words, kindly define success for me please. I would like to get a copy once I understand. Thank you.”
Having encountered this question many times in many places, I chose to offer a response through this post so that many more people can benefit from my two cents instead of Bruce alone.
To begin with, defining success in a few words is a very uphill task. But I will dare say, like I once learnt, that success is Faithfulness, Faithfulness and Finishing well.
Let me now go beyond the few words and explain because besides this being a question many have asked allover the world, there will probably never be a universal definition apart from the dictionary trial. This is because in reality, success means many different things to many different people. For example:
- For a single mother whose husband died when the three children hadn’t joined high school, success is having the last born graduate from university!
- For a young man who never experienced the love of a father while growing up, success may mean overcoming childhood deficiencies and successfully offering what he missed to his own teenage children.
- To a community whose members have been walking 4 miles for the last 57 years to fetch a jerrycan of water from a distant well, success may mean seeing solar powered water pipes in their own compound and fetching water from their veranda for the first time ever.
- To a nation whose majority of the population only know life below a dollar a day, success may mean attaining middle income status.
- And to a CEO of an organization who has been struggling with human resource gaps for 9 years, success may mean finally being able to have more than 5 “fully baked” leaders within the organization who have been amply mentored over some time to easily lead the organization even better than him at any time.
- Yet still to some young girl in her mid twenties, success may mean getting a good job one month after graduation.
- Even to a parent, success may mean raising well-disciplined chidren.
- Some pastor will tell you that success is living a godly life and finally “going to heaven”.
- Some businessman will tell you that success is being able to bag profit amidst bad economic times or listing his company on the stock market, or franchising his 11 year old business, or even opening new outlets in a new country.
Therefore, I believe that success is much more defined in relationship with one’s set goals in the first place. If you set a goal for yourself and you achieve it, someone will be right to say you have succeeded in that goal. But to go back to the “few words” at the start, I learnt from Neil Cole – a Californian author – about seven years ago, that success is three things: Faithfulness, Fruitfulness and Finishing well. Let me explain a bit, in my own words:
- Faithfulness: Have you been faithful to your life’s purpose (if at all you’ve discovered it already in the first instance)? Dr. Myles Munroe defines the greatest failure as “succeeding in the wrong assignment”. Stephen Covey talks about those who climb the ladder to the top only to realize that it had been leaning against the wrong wall all along! Have you been faithful to your word, to yourself, to God? That’s success.
- Fruitfulness: Have you been productive / fruitful in your life, in your leadership, in your work? Are there positive results to show for your years of breathing? Have you empowered others, thereby reproducing your effectiveness in other people? John C. Maxwell warns us against confusing activity with accomplishment. Oprah asserts that it is not about being busy but what you’re busy at. Success in this regard is ensuring there’s movement in your motion!
- Finishing well: Have you finished well? Whatever you’ve worked on in life, have you come to completion stage or you always leave things halfway? Half-read books, half-finished projects, half-completed degree courses, etc. But mostly at the end of your life, shall you finish well or your life will end up a mess? Robert Clinton shares from his research that one in every three leaders (about 33%) finishes well in their life. The other 2 in 3 (i.e. 66%) are derailed by 6 factors: (a) abuse of power, (b) misuse of money, (c) pride, (d) unresolved family issues, (e) sexual irresponsibility, and (f) plateauing — no longer growing or willing to learn. If one jumps over these potential explosives, chances are high that he will end strong in life — and that, ultimately, is a success story!
Having said that, John C. Maxwell challenged me several years ago not to only focus on success but go further to pursue significance, something that Munroe calls being “a person of value”. But that’s a talk for another time.
And now, even after sharing all this, someone will say, “No way; that is not true. Let me tell you exactly what success is.” And I hasten to suggest that he will have a point in doing that. I’ll gladly lend him an ear and learn further. I only hope that this has added value to this success discussion. What do YOU think? To you, what is success? Please share. Iron sharpens iron.
#YouWillManage
| Live . Love . Lead |
