8 Essential Qualities For A Successful Life

Some couple of months ago, my buddy and I were just chatting, and then somehow our discussion changed to a more serious one as we started sharing our individual passions in life. We discussed what I now called “the essential elements for a successful life”. The time we spent together was very productive, and I gained some fresh perspectives on the subject through the conversation I had with my friend.

The time we spent together was very productive, and I gained some fresh perspectives on the subject through the conversation I had with my friend. I felt obliged to share the same information on my page to those out there that are willing to take the next step and truly start living a more productive life. If you already know about these elements, this will be a refresher for you, if you don’t I hope the points below will guide you as you take the next step to discover your passion in life. Below are the essential elements needed for a successful life:

Vision

“Where there is no vision, the people perish” (Proverb 29:18). This implies that God expects us to have a vision of what we want to become in life. Your life’s vision statement is a roadmap that will guide you in the journey of life. Without any form of aspiration or desire to achieve something or move forward in life, then the purpose of creation is defeated. There are so many distractions in our society today, it takes the grace of God and some courage to fight those distractions to keep one focus and to develop a personal vision statement. Top organizations all over the world understand this concept, and that is why companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple are outperforming their competitors. For example, The Amazon vision statement is “to be earth’s most customer centric company, to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online”. Amazon is truly living its vision, the company was started as an online bookstore, but today there is virtually nothing that you cannot buy on Amazon! I believe it is this vision crafted by the founder that has made Amazon to be a successful business today. You too can learn from these top performing organizations and develop your personal vision statement. I will encourage you to be bold, let the vision be bigger than you so that it can stretch you out of your comfort zone. Indeed, a life without a vision is not worth living.

Plan

As good as having a vision is, the next important thing is to put a plan in place to execute the vision. I will also add that a plan without some form of action to back it up is like a bird without wings. It is simply a hallucination! Therefore, when you have developed your personal vision statement, you need to put a plan in place to implement the vision, and back it up by action. For example, no one can have a vision of losing weight without having a plan for exercise and nutritional changes. If your vision is to make your marriage work, or build a better relationship with others, follow it up with a plan and action to execute it. If your vision is to participate or even win the next Boston Marathon, your plan of action may be to join a marathon training program. If your plan is to amass a million dollar before retirement, your plan of action may include proper budgeting, calculating where you are and finding out how much you need to save each year to reach that goal. If you plan to climb the corporate career ladder in your organization, your plan of action may be to find out the essential skills you will need to get there, take on more responsibilities, and find a mentor that can guide you in the journey. The point here is that whatever your vision statement is, break it down into a yearly, monthly or even a daily task, and take the appropriate action to accomplish them.

Team

Majority of the big achievement around us are done by groups of people who came together for a common cause. No man is an island. If you want to go far, you will need to learn how to work in a team. The next thing to do after you have developed your plans of action is to put a solid team together. It is critical that each member of your team have the same passion and ready to give their all to make the team successful. If you have any member of your team that is not performing as set out in the team code, do not be afraid to isolate or fire him. Trust me, you don’t want a “toxic” person in your team, he will drain the energy off the other members. An effective, efficient, collaborative, committed and dedicated team is essential for your success, choose your team wisely.

Competence

After building a good team, you need to ensure that each of your members is competent and they possess the skills and experience required to get the task done. Not having the right people with the right experience will only end up leading to failure.

Diligence

To be diligent means to be hard-working. Whatever you want to achieve, you will need to put some efforts in order to complete the task. Proverb chapter 6 gives a very powerful narrative about the importance of being diligent. Proverb 6:9 says “But you lazybones how long will you sleep? When will you wake up? This is an indication that God actually wants us to be hard-working. To be successful in life, you may sometimes need to put in extra hours, go extra miles while others have stopped, make more sales pitch, sometimes close late at the office, read more if you are a student, whatever your situation may be in life, make sure you go above and beyond and strive to attain excellence in all you do. 6. Perseverance — This is your ability to march forward in the face of difficulties or opposition. Perseverance measures your staying power at achieving your goals and objectives. It is very likely that you may encounter some challenges on your path, if you want to complete the task and be successful, you will not only need to persist when confronted with challenges, you will also need to be creative and develop a system of overcoming those challenges.

Time

Every worthwhile goal takes time to complete. There is no such thing as an overnight success. You need to understand the time factor in whatever you plan to achieve. Every pregnant woman understands that it takes nine months to come to full term. If the baby comes before then, such birth will be termed “Premature”, so also every achievement takes time. Stay focused, remain patient as you wait on God to help you to make all your plans work.

God’s Favor

This is perhaps the most important element for a successful life, without it all the other elements may not result into fruition. According to Ecclesiastes 9:11- “I have seen something else under the sun. The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all”. This shows that it is not necessarily our hard work or plan that makes us successful (although without those, failure is but sure). There are many hardworking people who are not actually getting ahead in the race of life. So, God’s Favor is what we all need as leverage for our vision, his favor can help us to achieve an optimal result with minimal efforts. One way to acquire his Favor is to surrender your life to God and continue to live according to his will. Accept Jesus into your life today and make him your Lord and Savior, and you will see his favor working for you.

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