Regardless of the plans we make for our lives, we all want to be successful. Despite all of the self-help and motivational speakers at our disposal, no one can outline a guaranteed path to success. If you were to read 10 self-help books, you would learn 10 different ways to improve yourself and achieve anything you desire. Those self-help books, although quite different, are all correct and have a wonderful message; that we can accomplish anything we set our minds to. However, success is not as easy as simply setting our mind to reaching our goals. Hard work is only one factor in success; it also takes dedication and determination. In fact, there are countless key factors required for success, and none of them come easy. There is one thing, however, that can make the path to success not only seem easy, it can make the hard work required to succeed as fun and enjoyable as the feeling of accomplishment we get. It is the only thing that can guarantee some level of success in anything we do, it is also the one thing that is sure to be mentioned in all of those self-help books. It is, of course, ATTITUDE! On our journey to Black Belt, attitude comes into play every step of the way and can change very rapidly, so it is important to always be aware of your attitude and know what affects it for the better or worse and to never let your attitude slip. This not an easy task, but it is truly the only way to guarantee some form of success.
As I mentioned earlier, there is no guaranteed path to success. Unfortunately, sometimes no matter how much hard work, dedication and determination we apply to reaching a goal, we can still fall short. Failure is part of life and more importantly, a part of success. It is how we deal with failure that will help solidify future success. If we allow failure to get in our head and affect our confidence, we make it much more difficult to pick ourselves up and keep moving forward. It is our attitude towards failure that will determine how it affects us and our ability to bounce back. A poor attitude will stifle us and a positive attitude will help us to see failure as a mere speed bump. Either way, attitude is the single most important aspect of anything we do. It can make or break us without us even realizing. If you are striving for straight A’s in school but focus on how much you dislike a specific subject, you are defeating yourself before you even start working. Looking for the positive, no matter how hard it is to find, will keep our determination and dedication levels high. Dwelling on anything even slightly negative can lead us off of our path and can end up becoming an obstacle. If we are stuck in a negative mindset, that obstacle will become bigger and bigger, and our desire to overcome anything in our way can get smaller and smaller.
Guaranteed success in reaching our goals does not exist, but achieving success in our failures is very real. We must look at everything we do regardless of how unimportant it may seem, or if we were successful or not, and use it to our advantage. This is very applicable in our Martial Arts training. Every single class holds challenges for us. Sometimes we leave a class feeling like we can do anything, and sometimes we can become discouraged because we struggled with a certain technique. I can remember times when I felt like the entire class was breezing through something that I was struggling with. Maybe they were, but it didn’t matter how the rest of the class was doing because I was there to do my best and comparing myself to the other students was pointless. It is not always easy to keep a positive attitude, but the longer we keep a negative attitude the more things seem not to go our way. The same is true in reverse. No matter how bad things seem, the fastest way for things to get better is to keep a positive attitude.
Life is full of ups and downs and remaining positive can certainly be a challenge, but it is truly the one way to reap success in everything we sew. We can’t always get what we want, but if we stay positive, we can continue to move closer to what we want by learning and growing from both our successes and failures. Staying positive starts small like in the way we speak. By simply changing our vocabulary slightly, our attitude will change before we know it, referring to problems as challenges, failures as learning experiences. Don’t set goals–make plans. As long as it is reasonable, if you look at something without the slightest possibility of failure, you will find a way to make it happen because success is the only ending you allow for. Attack life with passion and never stop planning, you are the only one who can give you anything you want.
Success is relative, we all have different ideas of what will make us successful in our lives, just look at your friends. My group of friends consists of a Doctor, an Accountant, a Television Producer, a Business Administrator for a school district, a few School Teachers, an Accountant, an Actuary and of course some of my very best friends are Martial Arts Masters/Instructors. Some of us have families, some of us are single, some of us travel while others enjoy nothing more than a nice quiet early Sunday morning. We all took different paths to get where we are today, and each of us is successful in our chosen field. How do we know we are successful? We are happy!
