Chase your own version of success and sustain your energy

23 Sept

Written By Meg Smith

Chasing success on your own terms is infinitely more satisfying than working towards someone else's goals. Over the last few weeks, we've been talking about success and how to work out who you want to be, what you value, and how you want to design your life.

Now that you have a clearer idea of what success means to you, in this final email in our series on Success we'll look at how you might start going after it.

How can you test your theories to work out if what you think you want is what you actually want?

Find someone who is living in the future you hope to have. Talk to them, find out more about their experience. Ask if you can "ride along" to observe their day. Prototype your plan.

Make the barrier low, try stuff and learn quickly.

Reprogram the voice in your head. We've had to shift our mindsets from trying to avoid failure, to accept that it's ok to fail. In fact, it's not only ok, it's required. Failure is a necessary part of innovating and learning.

So how do you make sure you have the resilience to keep getting up and trying again?

Practice.

Not for the outcomes, but for the process. Build on the small successes until you have momentum.

It's much easier to redirect an object in motion than one that isn't moving yet.

Have a bias to action. Ask yourself, what's the best next step?

"And, will you succeed?

Yes! You will indeed!

(98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed)"

• From Oh, The Places You'll Go

Write down your impossible, audacious dreams. Be specific and ambitious, then focus on consistent small steps.

We downplay our goals for fear of not achieving them. But if it's what you want, think about which resources you have to play with.

Maybe you have time to invest, maybe you have money or the opportunity to learn a new skill. Like us, you might find you're just as happy to achieve your goals in twice (or even 10x) the time you originally planned.

Thanks for being part of this series, we can't wait to see you succeed.

Next week I’m kicking off a new series on Learning, focused on how we can use AI to help us become learn-it-alls.

AI SkillsSuccess