What is success in life if it doesn’t come with happiness?
Perhaps the best kind of success is one that is well-deserved. In its warm bliss, you feel like you could do it all over again.
Fulfilling success lets you accept your failures and stupidities as much as your triumphs and honors. That wholeness of your journey as you look back gives your life meaning.
7 Ways To Be Successful In Life (Success With Happiness)
You don’t have to sacrifice your happiness until you reach success. You may do happy things instead of waiting for happiness to fall into your lap.
Trust your ability to give your dreams and goals your best shot.
The following are the seven lessons about life success and happiness:
1. Let Yourself Be Happy At Your Successes.
Some of us fear being happy. This is called cherophobia.
They don’t go on trips because they will have to return to their dull daily life. They are afraid to rejoice at any good news since a part of them is waiting for the end of that happy moment.
Don’t be afraid that life will make up for your euphoric highs with dysphoric lows. Don’t hold back for fear of ruining the next.
When success comes into your life, the best thing you can do is let it sink in.
Elon Musk arrived at Twitter’s SF office carrying a kitchen sink, saying, “Let that sink in.”
Feel the joy and allow the thrill of fulfillment to wash over you.
Don’t wait to be happy until you get your success because one, you might be too old to relish things of enjoyment, and two, things you enjoy no more exist.
So, it’s important you let yourself be happy in between your work, and on your path to your goals. Do make happiness a part of the journey.
Let yourself be happy, even if for only a little while.
Sometimes, success may come at the wrong time in your life, when you are struggling with a thousand issues. Remember, even at such times, you are allowed to bask in it.
Joyful success in life is about a specific type of happiness, called eudaimonia, the happiness that lasts long after the thrill fades (which is called the arrival fallacy).
2. Luck And Connections Matter A Lot.
Seneca, the famous Roman Stoic philosopher, famously remarked that luck happens when preparation meets opportunity.
He was quite right. Opportunity is being at the right place at the right time, but it is backed up by years of hits and misses.
When a person is seen as lucky for one of their successes, people fail to see that what made them lucky was years of preparation and waiting for their moment.
Imagine, a chance presents itself, but you are not ready, then will not luck will pass you by? And if you are ready, but the opportunity does not show up, wouldn’t success elude you?
3 things you need to be successful: 1. Luck, 2. Opportunity, & 3. Preparation.
Success in life is built on strong connections.
Connections are important ingredients of success because success is not standardized. One person’s success is far too different from another’s.
No matter how many people tell you that if you follow the same steps they took, you will reach the same success. They are fooling you, and you are letting yourself get fooled.
Following their steps may get you success, or may not. Everyone’s success journey is unique. And what makes it really different is the connections they have in their life.
Success in life requires you to connect with influential and helpful people; don’t skip that.
People who have a strong social network with people who matter are more likely to be successful than those who do not.
Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success, the book that popularized the “10,000 hours rule,” reveals how successful people often had the advantages of unusual chances.
Those “freak” chances stacked up to create one-of-a-kind possibilities until they became experts.
Gladwell classifies outliers as people who achieved extraordinary success, like Bill Gates and The Beatles.
Paul Allen told the University of Washington Magazine that he and Bill Gates used to sneak into the graduate computer center while still in high school at Lakeside School in Seattle. Such opportunities are extremely rare.
The Beatles’ success was also the result of a series of exceptional chances.
“It was never an overnight success. It started in pubs; we went on to talent contests and then to working men’s clubs. We played Hamburg clubs, and then we started to play town halls and nightclubs, and then ballrooms. There could be as many as 2000 people in a ballroom, so if you did a gig there, the word really got round. Next up from that was theatres, and Brian took us through all these steps. When we began to headline bills on theatres, we felt we had really arrived. The next ladder to climb was radio.”
— Paul McCartney, 1963
3. Target Excellence As You Work Hard.
Work hard, every day. When you work harder than everyone else, you see what makes things fail. And you learn to surpass them.
But unless it is extremely crucial, do not work hard on your days off. Burnout is a real thing, and once it strikes, it can render you unproductive for long periods. So, plan your breaks and holidays.
Set your goals to be great at what you do. Learn meticulously how to set your goals.
Don’t be afraid to challenge the competition, however big it is. When you vie to be the greatest artist of your work, you find a space opening up for you at the top.
To achieve your desired success in life, you also need to be excellent at what you do. Excellence begins with believing in yourself, your goals, and your processes.
Excellence is not about being perfect; rather, it is about striving for perfection with all your might. The key lies in the effort, not in the result.
Pursuing excellence is the pursuit of the best, the utmost, and going beyond what is expected.
It is not a static state, but a dynamic attitude to life. It’s about being a person who looks for a better way to do things in every aspect of life.
4. Keep Your Mind In A Mindfulness State.
To be successful in life, you need a maximal focus on the present moment.
A success mindset, for successful living, stems from the realization the past is for learning lessons, not for trying to change it by overthinking how you could have done it better.
The future depends on what we do in the present. — Mahatma Gandhi
Mindfulness is about living in the present moment and not worrying about the future or overthinking the past.
Mindfulness helps people to be more productive because a mindful mind stays sharply focused on what we are doing in the present moment. It creates process awareness.
Mindfulness has been proven to help people achieve their goals faster and easier, and relieve them of mind wandering.
Here’s a 7-Step Beginner’s Guide To Mindfulness.
Mindful ways to be successful in life: • Lose yourself in the flow of the process. • Take breaks from time to time to sharpen your skills. • Seek quick feedback on your performance. • Polish your skills. • Go at it again. • Reiterate.
Stay strongly focused on the present moment. Success happens in the present moment.
Present focus gives you that mental field to dance. If you find your mind wandering, remind yourself why you started and put the spotlight back on your goals.
The past is not a compass for the future. Give yourself permission to chart a new course. — Stephanie Leigh Mulac
5. Challenge The Limits, But Stay Realistic.
Move beyond the set limits. Push all the established boundaries.
In fact, do not try to find out what the limits are in your domain. Set your own success perimeter, learn the ground rules, then break them whenever you find them caging you in.
But keep your dreams and aspirations realistic; don’t be grandiose.
Success in life does not always come easy. It can take years of perseverance and pushing the limits to achieve what you want in life.
- Steve Jobs, the Apple co-founder, said of this, “Overnight success stories take a long time.”
- Ray Croc, who bought McDonald’s in 1961, says, “I was an overnight success all right, but 30 years is a long, long night.”
- Benedict Cumberbatch, who rose to fame playing Sherlock Holmes, says, “I’m not an overnight success. I’ve been doing it for 12 years. It’s been lovely and varied so far.”
An undeniable fact about success is that it leaves you empty if you have no one to share it with.
Our greatest joys come from our cherished relationships. Don’t sever those vital bonds so that you have no one to celebrate your journey’s highlights.
Keep alive your bonds with the world around you while you move through life’s challenges.
Keep reminding yourself that good times and bad times both do not last forever.
6. Resist And Persist On Your Success Path.
This idea of how to be successful in life comes from Stoicism.
Be persistent. Keep at it until your stipulated time for a break arrives. Take a breather. Then come at it again.
Be resilient and persistent in your efforts. If things fail, pause, think, re-evaluate, and then go at it again. Take setbacks in your stride and never dither from walking up to the challenge.
Success won’t break you, in body or mind, if you think so.
More than a century back, Sigmund Freud proposed something peculiar that captured the imagination of people from the humanities, the popular press, and modern science.
Freud claimed that people were “wrecked by success.”
In a recent study, psychologists found that there was no link between a person’s success and unhappiness in practically every manner they could think of measuring it.
The authors wrote:
Both studies found that exceptionally successful careers were not associated with medical frailty, psychological maladjustment, and compromised interpersonal and family relationships; if anything, overall, people with exceptionally successful careers were medically and psychologically better off.
– Kell, McCabe, Lubinski, et al. (2022)
7. Love Your Work. Work For Love.
Love is an emotion, but it is also a form of social behavior.
It can help you become more successful and happier in life.
When love is affection, it can mean a deep attachment to someone or something.
When you love someone, you can strive to achieve things for them that you could never do for yourself.
Love takes you where nothing else can. (By the way, you can find your verve and happiness after any breakup.)
Success, when achieved for love, multiplies your happiness many times over.
Love can also give you a sense of belonging, which is not only a feeling but also an action. Success becomes more meaningful and complete when it is supported by love.
Because love, you know, will exist even if you fail.
On its part, love can give you the strength to get back up and go at it again.
Love to bits the work you do.
Think of what makes your work more fulfilling; do more than that. Love helps you stay on course longer when most have stopped or fallen by the wayside.
7 Practical Steps To Be Successful In Life
Here are seven practical steps to success in life:
1. Collect ideas
Ideas and thoughts come and go too quickly. You can’t possibly remember them all.
So, try to grab them before they vanish. Write them down or take voice notes as they appear. You may later modify or discard them.
2. Grow a writing routine
The best benefit of a writing habit is that it cultivates the discipline of thought.
Writing regularly will gradually allow your thoughts to get ordered. It will help grow the clarity of your communication.
3. Create an action habit
Constant rumination (overthinking) will not get you far from where you are now. You must take action.
Stop wasting time and get to work. Set your goals and act on your priorities one after another.
4. Read regularly
Reading is perhaps the best use of your time. It lets you learn from other people’s experiences without having to go through them yourself.
Read for 30 minutes a day. Carry a book. Of course, you can open your Kindle or Audible app at any time and start reading.
5. Examine your day
Spend ten minutes reflecting on your day before bedtime.
Contemplate the things you did well and the mistakes you made. This simple habit will help you change a few things every day in your daily routine.
6. Step outside of your comfort zone
Your comfort zones contain nothing novel to ignite fresh insights. You can’t go ahead until you get out of the box.
Most of your growth prospects lie outside the comfort box. So, find the zone that unsettles you a little and step into your discomfort zone.
One way to do so is to deliberately open yourself up for small failures.
Success hinges on your ability to accept failure. That quality of yours persuades people to support you.
7. Become more mindful
Pay attention to the world around you as it unfolds. There are many instances, thoughts, words, knowledge, mistakes, and experiences in the world. Absorb the details mindfully and use them to your advantage.
How to succeed in life?
In brief, to succeed in life, have a clear vision of what you want, work hard toward your goals, be persistent in the face of obstacles, know when to unlearn and pivot in another direction, keep growing as a person, and surround yourself with supportive and positive people.
Final Words
Download the PDF: “7 Lessons About Life Success And Happiness“
Let happiness precede your success in life. Be happy while you are on your way. It will ensure you handle your success well without letting it go to your head.
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Following your passion isn’t always the bridge to reaching where you want to be. What succeeds better is curiosity — find out why.
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Author Bio: Written and reviewed by Sandip Roy — a medical doctor, psychology writer, and happiness researcher, who writes on mental well-being, happiness, positive psychology, and philosophy (especially Stoicism).
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