What Leads to Success?

In my professional life, I have experienced both tremendous success, as well as complete failure where no matter what I tried, I was not able to succeed. Spending significant time in reflection as to what in the past lead to success for me, I came to some realizations. I would like to share them with you as well as seek your thoughts on what has lead to your success, however you choose to define success.

For me, I can attribute success to 3 main factors, which are:

1. Clarity

2. Focused Persistent Patient Action

3. Support

Please allow me to expand on this. When I think of clarity, 5 aspects come to mind:

A. WHY am I doing what I am doing. What is the purpose, the driving force. This is important for at one point or another obstacles do surface and it is this clarity which provides the necessary fuel to persevere.

B. WHO am I serving. This allows me to spend my time and energy in the relevant places.

C. HOW I will reach my desired destination and clarity of what that desination looks like, i.e. roadmap.

D. WHAT are my primary products and services and of course having expertise on these.

E. IMPACT I want to have for when their is alignment between WHY and desired IMPACT, immense internal energy arises and it keeps us going in the face of difficulties.

In regards to Focused Persistent Patient Action, success takes time and it's important to spend one's time and energy in a focused way and to persist in the face of obstacles.

Finally, Support. As Brian Tracey once said, no one does it alone. It really helps to have people who not only wish us well but also put in the time and energy in helping us succeed.

What has to lead to your success? What lessons have you learned through your own trials and tribulations?