The four keys to success

The four keys to success

Imagine that you become the top student of your school. Your friends cheer at you, and your school presents you a sparkling trophy and a nice certificate to declare you the star of your school. After all the hard work, you enjoy the sweet taste of success – your dream has come true.

We all know that success is achievable, although it might be a bit difficult at first. As long as we are persistent in pursuing our goals, we will be successful.

To manifest success, first we have to create a vivid vision of how our success looks like (example in first paragraph). We then set clear goals and plans before taking action to make our dreams come true. Success is the result of our effort.

Vision –> Goals –> Plans –> Action –> Result

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There are four keys that will bring success to our life if we use them wisely. They have helped turning me into a star student before, and I hope I can share my four keys of success with you so that your chance of enjoying the honey of success will increase tremendously. I present you the four keys:

A – C – E – S

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1) Attitude

Our inner quality is essential to our success. That’s why building a successful attitude and mindset is necessary. The world inside us will determine how our outer world looks like.

Successful people have positive attitude. Being happy alone is not enough, we have to be optimistic. An optimist sees the world as a place full of opportunities. He welcomes challenges and improves himself for a better tomorrow. This attitude helps us not to give up easily and move forward.

Successful people have a lot of self love. Self love doesn’t mean that we are selfish and care only for ourselves. It simply means we really care for our own progress and development. We give ourselves all the support we need so that we can stand firm on both legs and face the world. Love and support is important, and we must learn to give them to ourselves. Let’s just say most self improvement freaks have sufficient self love to make their life better.

Successful people are great motivators. They know how to make themselves move forward through tough times as if they are powered by unlimited Duracell batteries. They apply the principle of “people respond to incentive” and motivate themselves through reward and punishment system. What’s nicer than rewarding yourself a nice cup of ice cappuccino after completing your homework?

2) Capability

Successful people always match their vision with their capability. They don’t set an over ambitious goal that they can’t achieve. They are realistic by having reasonable, achievable goals that match their abilities and knowledge.

They don’t just stop there. They constantly upgrade themselves so that they will have more capabilities to do much more things. They read, they learn, they ask around, and they do anything they could to improve themselves and become more capable than before.

Successful people brush up their physical, mental and emotional conditions to cope with harsh reality. They exercise to enable their body to function properly and cope with long hours of work. They do mental exercise to increase intelligence and keep their mind sharp. They control their emotion well and keep cool all the time even in bad times. These top notch conditions enable successful people to reach their goal more easily.

3) Efficiency

Successful people work efficiently enough to put in less resource (time, effort, money, work force etc.) to bring better result. They create a way of doing things or a management system that is efficient, so that they can get their work done quickly with less effort and cost. They also constantly improve their system so that they become more and more efficient over the long run.

Successful students study smartly so that they can study less yet perform well in exams. Since they study less, they free up their study time so that they can do things that they like, such as reading books to increase their knowledge. They waste little time by having effective time management to keep things done on time, every time. They also learn new things efficiently by converting raw knowledge into information that can be absorbed easily. This enables them to recall information easily during exam.

Successful businessmen constantly run their operation efficiently to achieve high production with low cost. They earn more money as the cost is low enough not to eat too much into the profit. They sell more quality products and services and keep their customers satisfied while staying ahead of their competitors who are less efficient.

4) Strategy

Successful people create their goals and lay down their plans properly. They observe the situation and environment and make careful judgement that will increase the chance of success. If there is the need for change, they can quickly adopt to new alteration. They put action into their plans without fail and slowly move towards their goals.

Successful people know the importance of being street wise. They understand that things might not be straight forward and they have to be a bit “cunning” to make things work. They may use spies, diplomacy, loop holes and other means to leap forward. Whatever you do, don’t cross the line by hurting other people, because people are also important to your success.

Successful people accept other people’s help to reach their goals. They maintain and expand their social network by having a lot of friends who are willing to lend them a hand. They also give something back to their friends by being helpful and attentive, because they always think of WIN-WIN scenario, where everyone benefits from cooperating with each other.

Smart and successful students are brilliant strategist. They ask around to understand the exam structure so that they can lay out an effective study plan. They befriend lecturers and friends, where they can gain a lot of useful information (exam tips, pass year questions etc.) about the subjects they study. They have effective study groups to share knowledge and strategy to tackle exam. Sometimes when they can’t cope with exam, they let their lecturers know about it and quite often, the lecturer let them pass on border line, which is much better than a big fat FAIL (passing exam is also a success, depending on one’s goal).

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Finally, I hope by applying the four keys of ACES, you will achieve your dream – and don’t forget to take a picture with your sparkling trophy.

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Readers’ contribution:

Frode H

Just read your post.
“Vision –> Goals –> Plans –> Action –> Result” – This is where a lot of people fail, they do not have a any of this “steps” and base more or less on luck. As a friend of my once said, luck can be planned.

Almost any company today have a vision, and goals, but lack the plan and action. If anybody at first establish a vision statement, it needs to be followed through with goals, plans and actions to become reachable.

Positive attitude is also very very important. I recommend this book by Dr. Rao Srikumar – A life changer about positivity.

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Tagged as: self improvement, study, success