All of us are striving to achieve success. Like the degree we hang on the wall or the nameplate we put on the door, success is something that weve been taught to understand as a tangible thing. In other words, success is a noun, right? Wrong!
Ok, maybe in the world of Schoolhouse Rock it is, but I can tell you from experience that in the realm of professional and personal development, success is a verb! Why? Because success is action – planning, working, connecting, choosing, deciding, risking and re-imagining. Living Success means being engaged in every aspect of our lives and our careers.
Whether or not we realize it, thinking of success as a something well eventually achieve actually causes us to push success out of our way so that we can focus on our immediate responsibilities, get our day-to-day work done and, some days, just plain survive. It becomes the future carrot that makes us willing to endure all kinds of sticks and yet, as we work harder and harder, it always seems to move further and further away. Why?
Success is not a thing we can get someday; its a state of being in which we must live every day.
How do we Live Success? There are many small steps we can take each day, but here are a few tips to get you started:
- Own Your Career Now, Not Later – Living Success means taking responsibility for ourselves and our career whatever our circumstances. I often hear disgruntled employees say, “Ill never be successful in this company.” Translation? Im going to wait to “find success” once I find a better job. With all the writing and speaking Ive been doing about companies who dont foster employee engagement, I can understand this defeatist attitude. But when we Live Success rather than look for it, we remain open to learning about ourselves, our colleagues, management styles and the best way to build relationships in every kind of work environment. Feeling disengaged at our workplace doesnt give us permission to be disengaged from our career.
- Make Performance Count – My friend Pam is a top executive within a firm overseas. Shes also an African-American from a family of five who was raised in the 1950s rural South. I cant tell her story here, but I can say that she never set out to find success. Rather, she chose to live it every day through her job performance. Facing unimaginable obstacles, she focused on her ability to perform rather than the limitations of her environment. Thats what living success is all about: finding the opportunities to become the exception rather than the rule in our every-day work experience. Pams performance got her noticed by future mentors and gave her enough confidence in her abilities to launch her amazing career.
- Take Calculated Risks – Success doesnt stand still and successful people dont either. Living Success means always looking for the next challenge. Many people create plans to achieve success, like its a box to be opened sometime in the future. But changing our mindset from understanding success as an action rather than a thing gives us courage to move beyond plans, trust our guts then take the leap. Each time we change positions or companies were taking a calculated risk that brings with it the possibility of failure. But the flip side of the risk of failure is the opportunity to succeed. When we Live Success, we keep our careers in perpetual motion.
Pablo Picasso once said, “Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.” When we think of success as a thing well get one day rather than a way well live every day, all too often it becomes the thing that is unfortunately “left undone.”
Theresa Valade is the founder and CEO of Success Trek, Inc., an award-winning company that partners with organizations struggling to leverage the best of their people, communications, and work-flow systems. Theresa brings to her clients over 20 years experience in business operations, strategic sales, marketing, finance and human resource management. Valued for her contagious energy and remarkable ability to connect with others, Theresa inspires individual employees, management teams, departments and executives to open their eyes to the critical gaps within themselves and their workplace, work together toward real-world solutions and build in accountability structures to support an engaged and productive business environment. Ultimately, Theresa takes what feels difficult and makes it simple!
Individuals and organizations looking for ways to move forward rather than excuses to sit still, please visit http://www.success-trek.com to get started!
