Success, though defined differently for each man, is comprised of the same two ingredients.
How can you expect to be successful unless you are intimately acquainted with, and think very concretely, about these two ingredients?
The two ingredients are:
1) You set a goal for yourself.
2) You achieve that goal.
Seems so simple, and it is.
So why do we feel so unsuccessful at the end of the day?
It’s for a couple of reasons.
By nature, men are goal striving creatures.
(And if you don’t like the word “goal” because I know so many contrarians out there tout that they don’t set “goals,” they “work their habits” or whatnot, you can supplant that word with mission, vision, desire, habit, etc.)
But I’m just gonna call the thing you want to be, do, or have a “goal.”
And part of the reason we don’t feel successful at the end of the day, is because men are naturally goal striving creatures, yet we stray from this tendency.
We get distracted, we make 50,000 goals instead of one simple, clear one, we muddy our own waters.
We don’t even know what our goals are!
And it seems an obvious oversight, but it’s not so obvious: day in, day out, constantly, obsessively, we must keep our goal at the forefront of our mind, know it inside and out, eat, breath, drink, and sleep our goal.
And you can’t do that when you are trying to reach a million goals at the same time.
You have to focus on just one, your most important one.
It’s ok to have more than one goal (I’d be disappointed in you if you didn’t), but make a list of all your goals, and put them in order of importance.
Start on the most important one first, and once you achieve it, then you start working on the next one.
If you have goals of getting fit, making more money, finding a girl, buying real estate, learning how to cook, and getting a graduate degree, certainly there are behaviors (habits) you can implement daily that will overlap for reaching more than one goal at a time.
But don’t let efficiency of habits distract you from making sure that you get the day’s work done on your most important goal first.
The other reason we don’t feel successful at the end of the day is because our ambition, our drive, our desire, is constant.
It’s not a bad thing.
But it can be counter-productive, sometimes.
Because what happens is that our one main goal is usually broken down into a bunch of smaller goals or tasks, and it might take a while to reach the goal.
Maybe weeks. Maybe months. Maybe years.
But after we complete the day’s work, we don’t celebrate that small success, which is a very necessary and important part of the large success.
We feel like a loser at the end of the day because we are still fat, aren’t rich, or still have a mountain of paperwork that has not even been touched yet.
But being successful, and feeling successful are two separate things.
If you have your clear goal in your mind, firmly decided, and you took action today to complete small steps in working toward that goal, that is a goddamned win!
But we start looking at instagram at all the hustle porn and hot chicks who apparently like guys with nice cars, and then we don’t feel successful, we get discouraged, start surfing the internet for faster ways to make money, some magic pill, or the next big “opportunity,” and we betray the goal we once strived so hard to reach.
So remember the simple path to success:
We must know our goals with insane clarity, and we must cultivate the feeling of success and celebrate the small victories each day which incrementally draw us closer to that big, clear goal.
Paul Denni