How to Always be Successful

That is a big title, right? Aren’t we all chasing success in some way or the other? But to claim that it’s possible to always succeed… well, hang in there just a second.

In order to capture the elusive success, we have to pin her down! Who is she, and when do we even know we have caught her?

It is actually far too common a rookie mistake—most of us have done it. You chase success, but you have not really defined what it is to you, so the chase just continues, unsubstantial and unmeasurable.

You need to define your goals in order to know when you have met them.

Another common mistake success chasers do, is to always extend their goals into the future. If you once dreamed of starting a business and have your first sale, you tend to move on to new goals once that happens, and not even take time to celebrate the win.

You need to define your goals in order to know when you have met them.

It is so important to acknowledge your own successes along the way—those small wins that most people wouldn’t even consider a win, but you do, because you know where you came from and how hard you fought to accomplish what you did.

But always? Really?

Can you really always be successful? What about the failures along the way to success?

Back to what I said at the beginning. What is success? How do you define it?

One of my personal goals is to enjoy the journey, not only chase end goals—so as long as I generally thrive when I help my customers build their brands on a day to day basis I am a huge success!

Enjoy the journey, don’t only chase end goals.

Right now, I also really enjoy writing this article—coffee in my hand, some blues-jazzy-I-don’t-know playing in the background, people bustling about in the streets outside. Success! My goal is met.

Sprinkle your big goals with simple every day goals, so that you can enjoy daily success.

I am not telling you to lower your bar—I’m telling you to set up a couple more bars at different heights and enjoy winning every one of them.

After all, more of life is spent journeying towards the big goals, than the actual fulfillment of the goals—so being happy while moving along in life is actually a huge deal.

Can you enjoy the slow progress?

Limiting your distractions

There are a lot of things that may hinder you from being in the moment and enjoying your work days. If you can eliminate some of these, you are far more likely to get in the zone.

Today I decided to put my phone in my backpack and not look at it until I was at work (I have a long commute). I pulled out my copy of Lord of the Rings that I’m currently reading, and I made sure to only do one thing. That was a really relaxing train ride to work, and I felt charged up and focused.

The days when I pull up my phone, check my mail, Facebook and Instagram on the way to work, I feel entirely different when arriving.

You know how your work day is full of distractions that split up that valuable single-mindedness? I don’t think I have to describe it more. The notifications, the questions people ask at the wrong time, the e-mail that suddenly seems so urgent.

There is only one way to fight it. Wake up before the distractions, and gain the upper hand.

Plan how to deal with it.

Here are a few practices I try to follow regularily:

• Spend some time every morning setting up an agenda, before you ever check your mail and messages.
• Set aside specific times for looking through e-mails, Instagram comments, Facebook notifications, messages, and sort everything you have to do into to-do lists—except the one minute tasks, get those off the table at once.
• Whenever you start working on a task, use the “do not disturb” (if on Mac).
• Put your phone on silent while doing specific tasks—you are probably not that important that you need to be available to everyone every waking hour.
• Tell your colleagues that you will be working on a task that requires your undivided focus for say two hours—if they have any questions, they can email you.
• Then you close your e-mail for those two hours.

This is a life skill that I will always get better at—I’ve in no way arrived at some kind of focus-nirvana—but I find that working on these things and reminding myself of doing them has a great pay-off.

At least I really enjoyed writing this article, and stayed focused until it was posted.

Success!

I hope it can inspire you.

All the best!