You may be stuck in a rut, with a reality you can’t seem to shake off or move forward from. The burning question in your heart is, how do I build the dream life I desire?
It is said that success is not about nature but about nurture, with the right guide, map and vehicle, you can create the dream life you desire.
It is a given that when you gain awareness about the success pathways you need to follow, taking consistent action will give you momentum and propel you forward firmly in the direction of your dreams. With that in mind, I will like to share what I believe to be the key characteristics that anyone on a success journey should adopt to carve out their success pathways.
These are the 5 R’s of Success
1. Relentless
2. Research
3. Resistance
4. Resilience
5. Rest
Relentless
Sounds like the title of a song doesn’t it? It is definitely the sort of song I would write. Even as a child, one memorable fact my father would say to people is this, “if Patience wants something, you are unlikely to sleep or eat until she gets it”.
As a child, I was horrified to be described in that way by my dad to another adult, he was effectively saying to them ‘watch out she is stubborn”. Which in a climate of discipline and respect wasn’t going to make me popular.
As an adult, who has made an entrepreneur journey and is helping others develop the right mindset to make theirs, I think this is a compliment. So, what does it mean to be relentless, and how do you become relentless?
It is said “if you stay at the table long enough, the chips will come to you”. Therefore, to be relentless you:
· Decide what it is you want your life to be i.e. your Why and What;
· Decide to pursue the path that leads in the direction of where you see yourself, and
· Decide to stay the course and develop the grit and knowledge to work for what you want.
Being relentless, requires decisions and is a mindset developed over time, sustained and fuelled by a nurturing and encouraging environment, or people in your life that help you commit and deliver the outcomes you desire.
Research
You can’t just commence a journey to an unknown destination without looking for the map, knowledge, and information about your destination or how you get there.
Quite often, where you plan to end up gets expanded the more you grow and transform due to embarking on your dream journey. According to the English Dictionary, “Research is defined as the systematic investigation into, and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions”. The key words here are “establishing facts”, reach new conclusions. Basically, in layman terms “it is going on a learning journey”, that allows you to shorten the learning curve with time, gain clarity required to build your dream life. Entrepreneurs discover new inventions, new ways of doing things and ways of solving problems. Getting facts will require time, money and effort hence going back to the first R which is being relentless. But doing your “homework” is a necessary part of achieving success.
Resistance
There are two ways of looking at this, first resist the things that hold you back, then don’t resist the stretch that brings about growth, change and progress.
Resistant action due to fear leads to failure and paralysis. You have to resist fear and replace it with the fuel for creativity which is hope and faith. Every artist starts with a blank canvas and brings to life the images plucked from nowhere.
By faith, they create a new world. Resist being paralysed by the fear of the unknown. Resistance can also be used to describe the “rubber band effect”. My mentor John Maxwell states that: “growth stops when you lose the tension between where you are and where you could be”, so never resist growth, invite and celebrate opportunities to grow, for where growth stops, death is operating.
Resilience
It is important for me to take you on a bit of a scientific journey to explain this piece.
There is a saying attributed to Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of England that states: “success is the ability to go from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm”.
For success to occur it is not necessarily about Intelligence (IQ) although (it does play a part in it all), but about Emotional Intelligence (EQ). EQ typically consists of 4 components which are: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness and Social Skill. Although all 4 components are important, it is the ability to manage one’s self, give yourself a command and take action that leads to success.
A key part of self-management is resilience which is defined as “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness”. To succeed in life, you have to be willing to get up each time you fall, to try again each time you fail, and to keep moving forward past the feelings or when you don’t feel like it.
Rest
There is no point to it all, if we are unable to rest and find time to effectively enjoy, the things we have worked for. Some see rest as just a docile activity i.e. do nothing, but it needs to be much more. It should include self-care such as working on our mental health, looking after our bodies and being mindful of what makes us happy and fulfilled and building that into our success journey. It is also about building relationships that make us happy and help us celebrate our success.
To create a success pathway, you need to be willing to define what success means and plot the path step by step, being mindful of these 5 things.
I hope that these have given you some food for thought, to help you plot your success pathway as an aspiring entrepreneur or start-up