Ingredients of success

If you ask me what is the most essential ingredient for success, I would say it is belief. Belief that you can make it, belief that you can and will achieve it.

Belief triggers reactions in the brain and makes way for things to happen. Having said that, only belief does not move the mountains. The power of belief clears the way for you and makes the pitch ready for you to strike. In other words it creates the opportunity for you to execute your actions.

Once you believe that you can achieve your goal, then you need to take continuous action “that counts.”  I am an avid supporter of hard-work but I do not support unfocused perseverance. Bluntly put, hard work without a proper direction, focus and belief is useless. You need to optimize your efforts. Identify your strengths and weaknesses, do not worry too much about your weaknesses, concentrate on your interest and focus your strengths around it.

So the required qualities are

• Belief
• Focus/Optimization
• Hard-work/Perseverance
• Reason/Desire/Purpose(which is obvious for any successful endeavor)

The above 4 qualities are not steps and they should be working simultaneously and always in “on-state.”

While you are working on these 4 qualities, a 5th important but dangerous practice comes into place :

Visualization/Fantasy. I am not saying visualization is bad but it is a double edged sword. You should know how to use it or the sword will cut you. To the people who might be thinking what exactly is visualization- it is the deliberate imagination of the outcome of your process and deriving pleasure from it. In other words it is fantasizing about what might happen if you succeed. Suppose you want to become a sports star. Visualization is thinking about fan clubs, star status and partying around with sports cars and lavish hotels. Coming to the positives, visualization helps in adding confidence which in turn helps you strengthen your belief, it also reminds you of your goals whenever you fiddle away your time or procrastinate. But the problem comes when you visualize your result/outcome too much instead of the process it takes. By visualizing the process that it takes to success, you are actually chalking out strategies and mentally preparing how to overcome future challenges that are bound to crop up in your journey. In fantasy you only think about the positives but not about the challenges.

Visualization is good but too much of anything is dangerous.

—Raviteja Visakoti