The Secret Mantra of Success

The approach of a new year spawns many desires to fulfill dreams that could not be in the past year. So why do we seem to fail each time in accomplishing something big?

The failure is not because we aim for a big goal. On the contrary, shooting for an unrealistic goal is the hallmark of successful people. Unless one dreams big, one may never achieve anything significant in life. The timid would look for excuses to not even try anything big. Yes, it is true that if you have smaller goals that are easier to achieve, you might end up achieving them and get a sense of accomplishment. But those who hesitate to go big due to the fear of failure would hardly ever do anything significant.

Why aim for bigger goals in life? When you enlarge your goals and strive towards them with sincerity, the doors towards your success swing open one after the other. It is rightly observed that those who worry about paying their monthly bills end up just paying those bills their entire life. But those who set their goals higher eventually achieve them.

So why does not everyone achieve their lofty goals?

When you set a lofty goal for yourself, say to earn a few million dollars, what happens next? First, you start dreaming about how you would spend the million dollars. The cars you would brag about and the beach houses you would buy become the focus of your thoughts. Now, this is just an example for the sake of discussion. But what happens is that we focus on the goal and its results. As another example, students aim to pass the exams, and some aim to ace them. However, they constantly worry about what will happen if they fail the exams. And, by doing so, they do fail.

So, you might ask, what is wrong with staying focused on the goal? Shouldn’t one’s focus be always on the goal?

No, the focus should always be on the steps to help you achieve the goal rather than on itself. For example, if a farmer’s goal is to harvest a bumper crop, the farmer has to focus on tilling the soil, sowing the seeds on time, keeping the pests at bay, etc. He will get a bumper harvest if he is doing all these steps well. Just dreaming about the riches that a good harvest would bring would lead to nothing but the fizzling out of those dreams.

Therefore, keep your goals high. But focus on the little steps you need to take to achieve those goals. Aim for the big, but focus on the small tasks on hand. That is the secret mantra for success.