By Leland Pulley
A success story occurs when you do something right, good, or beneficial for yourself and/or others. You put in the effort and produce worthwhile results. Success stories can occur in all types of endeavors including activities, projects, responsibilities, investments, and relationships. These can happen on any day, week, month, or year of your life. Everyone should have many successful events in their lives.
Here are some illustrations of success stories.
- You find someone to marry and establish a strong marital relationship.
- You started college but did not finish. A few years later you return to college and get your degree.
- You have been trying to lose weight but have not succeeded. Now through many months of evaluation and effort, you have finally found a way to lose weight and keep it off.
- You have had a certain bad habit for many years and finally decided to get rid of it. It has taken months, but now you can say the habit is gone.
- You have a special needs child, and this has produced a lot of stress in your life. Interacting with other parents in a similar situation, you have become a member of a support group. You have checked all the available information on how to deal with your child’s special needs. Now many years later the stress is gone, and you have done a good job of dealing with this situation.
- You have a hard time living within a budget. You have never kept good financial records to keep track of income versus expenses. Rather than be unhappy with this dilemma, you have decided to put your financial house in order. A tentative budget for the month and eventually the year has been worked out. As the months have gone by, the budget has been slightly modified and adjusted. Now you have a realistic budget that you can live on.
- You have a job but are not fully satisfied with it in the long run. After checking around with other types of work, you have decided to make a career change. Some classes and training were required. But now after a year in a new type of work, you are much happier.
To be happy and content over the years of your life you need to have enough success stories. This will sustain a positive attitude and a good amount of optimism. Both are essential for good mental health.
What happens if a success story you seek does not occur as you want? There is some failure and perhaps a goal is dropped. Can this be considered a success story? It all depends. If you learned in the process and became a stronger individual, you can salvage some success even after a failed activity or endeavor. The important thing is to not lose hope nor confidence in yourself or life because of failures along the way. I have certainly had some failures in my life, but they were never as important as the various things I did right and good. Strive to have this same attitude in your life.
Sometimes success versus failure can be influenced by compromise. This is especially true in personal relationships, lawsuits, business dealings, and even government affairs. You do not get everything you want, but you do not lose everything either. Compromises can be success stories at the time because you gained more than you lost. Many times, we simply cannot get everything our way. The concerns and priorities of others must be considered also. Learning to make appropriate compromises will help you to make friends and keep them.
Another important area dealing with success stories is competitive activities. There are always winners and losers. Examples include sports or athletic events, political campaigns, business competition, lawsuits, and so forth. It is important to remember in such activities that not everyone can win. In some cases, coming in 5th place can really be a success story for you. Examine your abilities and determine where you can be competitive. Do not place idealistic expectations on yourself. How you play the game, or how you compete, is just as important at times as the final score.
Here are a few suggestions for dealing with limited success and or failure.
- Seek to be prepared for various situations and circumstances that could come into your life. Always take care of your health. Have some financial savings and strategies to handle unemployment. Keep some extra physical goods on hand like food and water. Keep your skills up to that date and developed not only for the job, but for what you and your family may need. Anyone prepared is always in a better position to make wise choices that will lead to more success stories and less failures.
- Develop a support group for yourself. This could include family members, friends, neighbors, coworkers, etc. These individuals have knowledge and skills that you may not have. They can offer encouragement and advice, especially in areas where they have more experience than you. Some of these individuals will actually assist you and work with you to resolve a problem or deal with a dilemma or some negative circumstances. Do not be too proud to share some of your problems and challenges and burdens. Let others help you and in the process both of you benefit.
- Do not fall into the trap of being too comfortable in life. Avoid mediocrity. Do not use too many excuses for your performance and behavior. These types of things put you in an unprepared and weaker position. It is then harder to sustain good efforts over time. It is easy to be caught off guard and have additional failure where failure was not even necessary.
It is important to remember that success stories should be more controlled by you than others or your environment. This is very difficult for some situations and circumstances, especially things beyond your control. But over time what affects you the most is not the natural disaster or job loss or early death of a loved one. It is whether your track record shows far more success stories than failures. And the longer your track record shows this, the more able and confident and happy you become as an adult.
They say it is important to love others and yes love God. But to do this well, love must begin with yourself. You will never love yourself as much as you can without a track record of success in all types of things in your life. So, strive to make the best choices you can as things occur in your life. Be patient and tolerant and put forth the best effort you can. This is all that anyone could expect of you. And in doing this over time, you will be a successful individual.
For reference, refer to the Perspectives page of this website, and read the perspective labeled success.
Key Words – success stories, failure, compromise, competitive activities, be prepared, support group, avoid mediocrity, your track record, love yourself
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