Besides measuring wealth or fame, personal success goes very deep into what matters to make life meaningful and joyful. Therefore, it is considered personal success to live authentically—align with one’s values, pursue passions, and create goals that set a fire under one to motivate action. For some, this may mean having a successful profession or establishing a company and mastering a particular skill. For others, this could mean self-improvement, good relationships and attachments, physical and psychosocial health, contributing to societal welfare, etc. Thus, in the end, personal success is a polished definition by society, but it is, in fact, that feeling of satisfaction, fulfillment, or joy that fills your own life.
Most people might need self-awareness, resilience, and adaptability to become personally victorious. It deals with intentionally achieving balance in the important life areas, family, health, and leisure while setting meaningful goals and sticking to them. Celebrating even the smallest accomplishments and striving continuously to progress should also be part of it.
Defining personal success
Simply put, it is the achievement of what are essentially one’s self-defined goals and aspirations. These may include tangible, intangible, professional, or personal goals. Success could mean owning a luxurious home and a multi-million dollar job for one person. For another, it might mean having a balanced personal and professional life.
The determinants of personal success include:
- Set clear, specific goals: Having clear, measurable goals is the first step toward success. Research findings show that people with specific goals are more likely to stick to them and eventually achieve them.
- Perseverance – Consistent effort: When consistent efforts are applied, the best foolproof plans fail miserably.
- Self-belief: All success is built on the ability to believe in oneself based on one’s abilities and skills. When one believes, one can turn any challenge into an opportunity for growth.
- Social Networks: Having a network of friends and family who are with you on your journey can make a huge difference.
These people are often the most successful people from positive interactions with others.
The role of learning and personal growth
Growth and improvement are the twin keys to success. Successful people often seek out new sources of knowledge and reinforcement. Some of the things that drive personal growth include studies, courses, and feedback.
Key characteristics of learning include learning from one’s own experiences. While failure is part of growth, it can also provide important lessons. Analyzing mistakes and trying to avoid repeating them can improve the path to success.
Establishing a lifelong learning habit is important for sustainable growth. This can include daily study time:
Reading books, articles, or courses on topics that advance personal and professional goals, taking online or in-person classes, and learning from others through feedback from colleagues, mentors, or friends by using their ideas to improve performance.
Strengthening Soft and Hard Skills
Individual success depends on a combination of technical or hard skills and communication and management or soft skills. Technical skills include the knowledge and ability to perform specific tasks, such as programming or data analysis, or the use of job-specific tools or other tools. These are generally learned through formal education, work experience in the field, or specific short-term courses, and constitute an important component of professional success.
Soft skills are still an important dimension of success. They include the ability to: communicate, behave in a team, manage time, and manage conflict. Often, it is those with the right soft skills who build strong relationships in and outside the workplace and perform better in challenging situations.
Hard skills can be developed by enrolling in specialized courses, reading relevant materials, and practicing continuously. For soft skills, interacting with other people, accepting feedback, and participating in personal development workshops are ways to improve them. This complement defines the balance of a person and progressive experiences in at least two aspects of life.
Success and Balance in Life
True success can only be achieved with balance in all areas of life. This includes:
- Health: Healthy eating, daily exercise, rest, and taking good care of your body and mind.
- Relationships: Building meaningful relationships with family, friends, and partners.
- Finances: Creating a proper system for managing money that ensures financial security without taking too much away from your quality of life.
Life does not require too much effort or too little effort. Self-awareness comes from careful planning and self-preparation. Balance makes most people feel satisfied with their lives and move energetically towards their goals. With balance, the quality of life becomes richer, because a person has to experience and enjoy more before reaching their goals.
Conclusion
Personal prosperity, as I see it, could well be the most wholesome and internal pathway, one that has a different meaning and definition for every person. Satisfaction with life is today’s most common synonym. In reality, it relates to goal achievement as well as enjoyment in the developmental and effortful process. It embraces the continued improvement of the quality of an individual’s life by balance of many, and in its dimensions to many, there is no endpoint.
It requires laser-focused determination, immense fire, and endurance above near possible measures of adversity to get this. In short, since this is a process, we cannot say that full success lies within the result attained but rather also in how well one engages in the “activity” mentioned that changes what complete satisfaction has been with life.
For example, a person can learn a new language during this journey while participating in other similar cultures, including self-growth. Such experiences do add to the feeling of competency in person and value the process itself.
So one’s definition of success ought to be as concrete and real as possible within one’s dimensions and not just from outside. Then spend your life striving toward it. For further insight into the thinking and approaches of successful people concerning their objectives, read our post How Successful People Think. You might be able to catch a good glimpse of these mindsets, plus how they can define your path.
