How to Become Successful

“What’s money? A man is a suc­cess if he gets up in the morn­ing and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.“
– Bob Dylan

“There is only one suc­cess: To be able to live your life in your own way.“
– Christo­pher Morley

In truth, when one seeks an exter­nal form of suc­cess, what a per­son truly seeks is its essence such as hap­pi­ness, peace of mind, a sense of ful­fill­ment, and so on. What is suc­cess with­out any of these anyway?

Think about it. If one seeks to earn a mil­lion dol­lars, is it the money or the secu­rity that is sought? Is it the mon­e­tary value or the peace of mind? Is it the cash or the com­fort? Peo­ple do not seek to achieve goals but to achieve the essence of their goals. It’s not results, mate­r­ial pos­ses­sions, or accom­plish­ments but the value peo­ple attach to them that are aimed for.

Is hap­pi­ness this thing far out there that dan­gles in front of you like an elu­sive car­rot? Is your think­ing such that hap­pi­ness only occurs when you’ve reached a cer­tain goal? Should you feel ful­filled only after you’ve achieved a cer­tain level? Obvi­ously, if suc­cess is the rea­son for your hap­pi­ness and not the other way around, then there’s a change in your think­ing that must take place.

If goals, for instance, rep­re­sent an inner yearn­ing for hap­pi­ness and peace, and if you are express­ing it through your desire to achieve your goals, you are in fact ignor­ing that which you already have. A ful­filled goal will never give you a sense of ful­fill­ment. Never. Remem­ber that it is only a sym­bol of your potential’s expres­sion and it is not the real thing. A sense of pur­pose comes from within while goals are merely tools to help you remain on pur­pose, to remind you of that which you already are in truth. They should be guides, not goals.

A goal is not an end but a process. I’m not say­ing that goals, suc­cess, or the trap­pings of suc­cess are dis­hon­or­able or wrong. It’s your feel­ings about your goals or your attach­ment to them that are wrong. To know if this is you, ask your­self: “Am I addicted to sym­bols of suc­cess? Do I feel that I’m not pros­per­ous unless I’ve accu­mu­lated ‘X’ amount of money?”

In Bud­dhism, they say that the cause of all suf­fer­ing is attach­ment, and I feel that the path to true suc­cess is detach­ment or free­dom from attach­ment. In other words, suc­cess doesn’t come from that which you crave.

It’s OK to desire or to want. It’s OK to achieve and acquire that which rep­re­sents suc­cess to you. What’s wrong, though, is to turn those wants into needs or to let your crav­ings become crutches.

You can rec­og­nize the same meta­phys­i­cal mean­ing when you study one of the Ten Com­mand­ments, which says: “Thou shall not wor­ship any other Gods besides the Lord thy God.” Jesus him­self said that you can not wor­ship two mas­ters. “If you wor­ship money, you can not wor­ship God.” If you wor­ship that which you desire rather than who you really are, the spirit of God within you, you will truly be liv­ing a life of hell. You will live a life of unhap­pi­ness and slav­ery because you are giv­ing your power and con­trol to some­thing out­side of you.

I’m sure you’ve heard that “money is the root of all evil.” Money is not the root of all evil but the love of money is. If you want to reach a goal as in mak­ing a lot of money, buy­ing the lat­est sports car, or tak­ing a lux­u­ri­ous cruise, that’s won­der­ful. The uni­verse is abun­dant and it is your right to acquire all that you can. But if you attempt to reach a goal out of a yearn­ing to feel a cer­tain way, or in other words if your hap­pi­ness always lives in the future, then your suc­cess will always be a step ahead of you. You will never feel ful­filled no mat­ter what.

True suc­cess is not about reach­ing goals. It’s about being. And this is where most peo­ple become frus­trated since goals can become extra­or­di­nar­ily decep­tive, not to men­tion addictive.

The abil­ity you have to man­i­fest the suc­cess­ful­ness that lies within you is what will bring that sense of ful­fill­ment to your life, and it is not so much what you do or have but who you are right now. This abil­ity to con­nect with the high­est that’s within you is your true suc­cess, and abil­ity is more of a choice than it is an actual skill or competency.

Your full poten­tial can never become a real­ity because you wouldn’t be able to deal with its infinite­ness. You can only tap into it. You are today what your poten­tial was yes­ter­day, and so on. Since the essence of your being is beyond space and time, your source of hap­pi­ness and ful­fill­ment are thus avail­able to you right here and now. You don’t have to search for it or wait for it to hap­pen. The source is within you.

Here’s an old Hindu story. I may be para­phras­ing it a lit­tle bit because I don’t remem­ber it exactly. But its mes­sage is truly appro­pri­ate at this point.

Shortly after the begin­ning of man, the gods were debat­ing on where to hide man’s divine essence in order to pre­vent him from ever dis­cov­er­ing who he really is (either out of jeal­ousy or fear of mutiny, I sup­pose). So one day, the deities con­ferred with Brahma, the god­head, and said, “We should hide it at the peak of the high­est moun­tains.” Brahma answered, “No, for man will even­tu­ally go there and find it.”

“Let’s hide it deep inside the dark­est forests,” another sug­gested, “or how about the low­est depths of the ocean? Surely, man will never go there,” another one added. “No,” Brahma retorted, “man will even­tu­ally find it there also.” Per­plexed, the gods asked Brahma, “Where, then?” “We shall hide it where man will never think of look­ing for it,” Brahma replied. “We will hide it deep within their own selves.”

So, you don’t need to seek suc­cess and hap­pi­ness for they were never out­side of you in the first place. You can not find that which you already have. But if you truly want to be happy, if you truly want to be suc­cess­ful, then stop look­ing for sym­bols to make you feel suc­cess­ful and start bring­ing your sub­stance, your inner you, your God­force, into expres­sion. Stop search­ing and start knowing.

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

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