The Overlooked Secret To Success In Career And Life
We all want to be a success, right? And there are a ton of opportunities out there and ways to do it, but how do we know what path is right for us?
How can we gain clarity on what we should be doing in terms of our career and life? Let me tell you something that I’ve discovered about success that has changed my whole approach to life.
Success is defined as reaching the goals that you’ve set for yourself. The key is in that definition, you have to clearly set your goals and your vision for success.
However, we often get distracted by the expectations of others and the general symbols of wealth and status. A lot of the times we end up having a pile of unrealistic expectations that may even contradict each other.
This overwhelms and disorients us. We often don’t know what to prioritize and simply freeze, carrying that baggage of expectations and feeling worse about ourselves for not pursuing them.
That’s not a great way to live your life, right? Whether these expectations are coming from your family, friends, colleagues, the society or whoever else externally – or from you, internally.
We need to get rid of them and define what success means to us from a clean slate. A clear and detailed vision for that destination that we’d like to reach. That’s the secret to success that many people don’t take the time to do.
The moment you define it, it feels liberating. It becomes much easier to select which opportunities and projects you should pursue and much more fulfilling when you achieve certain milestones – because you know what exactly you were aiming for.
You can’t embark on a journey without having a destination in mind – you will simply get lost or distracted. And while that journey and your definition of success may change throughout your life, this approach gives you clarity and maximises your satisfaction from life.
I have been doing a ton of research on the subject and I’ve created my own theory behind how you can define success. I’ve created a course on the topic taking you through the full process with a ton of awesome exercises.
I’ve also created a free course which has some of the exercises from the full course and will be great for anyone looking for more clarity on their definition of success.
Both courses help you get rid of expectations, share my theory behind success and help you define the 3 foundational pillars of success: Long-term success (your life priorities and goals), Short-term success (feeling successful every day) and Fulfilment (fulfilling your purpose in life).
I believe that those components create a full picture of what you should aim for in life and setting goals in those areas will give you that clarity that you are craving. Try doing it yourself and if you’d like to have a more structured approach check out the free course.
The reason why I started this work is because I had a pretty conflicting moment in my life. I decided to leave the conventional trajectory to success: I was working at Google, the company of my dreams, living in London where I had a ton of friends.
I was working on awesome projects, travelling a lot and got to see my family in Russia often.
From the outside, it must have looked like I was super successful, but on the inside I was empty. I was in a long-distance relationship with my then-boyfriend, who was in Denver, Colorado with no end in sight.
We were doing long-distance for around 3 years at that point and saw each other every few months. We both looked for opportunities to move closer to each other, but nothing seemed interesting in terms of our career growth.
Until one day when this one program ended up in my email. It was the Global Entrepreneur in Residence at a University in Colorado. The description was vague and it looked like it was very different from what I was doing at Google.
But it looked interesting and it was part-time, giving me time to work on my business. So I’ve applied and ended up getting in!
My friends and family didn’t understand what I was doing: I was leaving a great job at a great company with awesome opportunities for something completely different? Was I throwing my career away?
I was confused too, but something inside of me knew that I needed to give our relationship a shot (we just got married, so I guess it worked out!) and the entrepreneurial side of me woke up. I’ve always been curious about entrepreneurship, but I’d suppress it because I thought I wasn’t good enough to do it.
I’ve realised that conventional paths to success aren’t for everyone. In order to maximise our happiness we need to explore what it means to us. So I ended up doing that exploration for myself and my course is the result of all of that research.
Since I’ve been able to define what success means to me I’ve been so much happier. I don’t try to fit any particular mould. I’m able to filter out the right opportunities for me from those that will distract me from my goals.
I urge you to try defining success for yourself in a structured way as well. Both of my courses will help you do that – you can start with the free one and once you’re ready for the next step and a deeper dive, you can always do the full course. Which, by the way, once you get it, you will have the full access to!
Don’t let life get away from you, the earlier you do this, the more successful you will be. And successful on your terms, enjoying life every single day.
Let me know in the comments if you’ve been able to get rid of all of the unnecessary expectations and define what success truly means to YOU! Again, here is the link to the free course!
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