Reflection: On Success and Success Factor in life

Everyone likes success. Nobody likes to fail. Nobody likes to fail in life.

Even the failures hate themselves for making a mess out of their lives. They do not want to take responsibility for their failures in life. They want to inflict pain and hurt on others so that successful people will feel like failure.

When we talk about success factor, we generally think of management studies. The textbooks have too many examples of success factor for career, success factor for project management, success factor for business and success factor for many other business-related aspects.

Hardly anyone uses success factor in conjunction with life. If we want to have a successful life, we need to have a list of success factors. The only time to measure success in life is at our death. However, the success factor for life is not determined so late in life.

The first success factor in life is to understand ourselves. There is no right and wrong in many things in life, including our personalities. Some people are natural pessimistic in their outlook in life.

There is nothing wrong with that as long as they set a limit to the pessimism. Over-optimistic is not a success factor in life. Over-pessimistic is not a success factor in life. The best is to strike a balance between pessimism and optimism.

The ability to control our mood swing is another success factor in life. We often get angry and over-react for nothing serious. Some bosses fly into a rage when their employees are late for five minutes, and yet they forget to show appreciation for employees who stay late for five hours after the end of official working hours.

That is a failure factor for life, and not a success factor. Life is fair to everyone. If we have a success factor, we will get reward accordingly. If we show a failure factor in handling of our relationships with others, we will get the bad result too.

The moment we detect the demon of our emotions getting control over us, we should learn to kick it off, and let reasonableness takes over. That is a success factor in life. Successful people are those who know themselves and know how to control themselves.

The third success factor is to learn as much as we can. We do not just learn technical knowledge. We learn about life, and building lasting relationships with people important to us.

Our family is important to us. Our colleagues are important to us. Almost everyone we meet in life is important to a certain degree in our lives. The success factor in life is to have lasting relationships with those who love us and whom we love.

Knowledge makes us humble. The more we learn, the more we find that we do not know everything. The quest for knowledge and to rejoice and share in knowledge contributes to the betterment of mankind. We should view gaining and sharing knowledge as a success factor in life.

The most successful people share their knowledge. If they do not share their knowledge, we will lose many great things in life. The writers of the Bible shared their knowledge of God. Confucius shared his knowledge and influenced millions of lives throughout history of China. Napoleon Hill interviewed the richest persons in his era, and wrote books to share his knowledge with us. All of them understand that a success factor in life is to share.

The fourth success factor in life is to set a goal in life, and set many different goals for different parts of our live. Life goal is sometimes easier to set than various goals for different roles we play in life.

Some people set their life goal as “Be Good”. This goal contributes to a successful life. It is the key success factor in their lives.

Some people set the life goal as “Serve God”. This goal governs nearly all their actions in life. It is the most important success factor for their earthly life.

There are many small goals in different aspects of life, such as career goal, health and wellness goal, relationship goal, and goal for riches and wealth. Every goal needs some success factors to turn it into reality.

So folks, how do you define success in life? How do you define the success factor in life?