Some people are under the delusion that success is a thing that just happens to people who are in the right place at the right time. That might be true for some small percentage of successful people in the same way that some people win the lottery. You can’t win without buying a lottery ticket. But buying lottery tickets is a lousy plan for success.
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While it is true that successful people tend to also be the beneficiaries of good luck, it is the kind of luck you have to make yourself. You can’t just hope you are in the right place at the right time. You have to put yourself in the right place at the right time. And that means you have to know exactly where and when that is.
Successful people also are the beneficiaries of a detailed plan of action that takes them from where they are to where they want to be. They develop habits that lead to success. They train themselves to think like a successful person. Everything they do is with a particular goal in mind. If you also want to be successful, start with a plan. Here is how to make one:
Define Success
If you want to be successful, the first thing you have to do is define exactly what success means to you. It is not enough to say you want a good job that pays well. You need to know exactly what you want to do and exactly how much you want to be paid.
If you want to be a computer engineer, it is not enough to say that you want to graduate from college. You have to set your heart on graduating from one of the better computer engineering colleges. You have to be specific about what you want. That specific goal will guide the rest of your plan and keep it on track.
Once you have defined success as owning a 2,000 sq. ft. home in the range of $300,000, the rest of your plan will include ways to reach that goal. No success plan can stay on track without being maniacally focused on what success specifically means to you.
Make a Plan You Can Control
You want to move into your new home in 12 months. Great! But that is not a goal you can fully control. There are a lot of factors such as the housing market in the area where you want to move. There might not be any homes for sale at that time. Or the value proposition might not be right at that time. You can’t control those factors. So you need a better plan for moving, one you can control.
You can plan to save a certain amount of money every month. Once you know you want to move into a home of a certain price at a certain time, you can know how much you need for the down payment. Subtract the amount you already have from the amount you need, and that is the amount you need to save. Divide that amount by 12 to see how much you need to save every month. If that is a realistic number, then it is a plan within your control.
Contingency Planning
If the pandemic has taught us one thing, it is that we all need better contingency planning for emergency situations. Humans are really bad at thinking about the worst-case scenario when things are going well. We just assume things will always go well. We simply have no ability to plan for disaster.
Successful people buck the trend and plan for when things go sideways. You want to be a computer engineer and have decided which school you want to attend. What happens if you are not accepted? What happens if you get sick? What happens if you have to take on more hours at work? The average person just gives up because they didn’t see any of that coming. The successful person has already considered these possibilities and can see a clear path through to the other side where their success awaits.
You will not become successful by accident. What you need is a manageable plan. That plan must include a clear definition of what success means to you, action items within your control, and contingencies for when things don’t go just right.
