Heart

Success Element Two: Heart

Heart refers to your relationships and how you interact with the world around you. How you generally feel about life, family, friends, co-workers and the world at large.


Family Relationships-

Ladies and gentleman it doesn’t get any more important than this. Your personal connection with your spouse/partner, children and family greatly impacts your quality of life and the levels of success you can obtain. A nurturing and supportive environment to come home to each night works wonders on the psyche. You can hardly call yourself successful if the relationship you have with your family is strained. Does it take effort? Absolutely. Do you need to allocate time to focusing on and strengthening these relationships? Absolutely. But in the long run it the rewards will be some of the best you will ever experience in your life.

Friendships-

Let’s just be honest – good friends make life more fun and more interesting. Whether you have a few close friends or a wide social network, friends have a way of helping you keep things in perspective. Depending upon the situation and need friends lend support, comfort, or laughter. Friends help pull you up when you are feeling low and make the highs even better. Good friends want nothing more than to help and to see you succeed.

Successful people surround themselves with other successful people. It becomes next to impossible to stay positive and focused on moving forward if you have “friends” that are pulling you down. If you have “friends” that don’t quite match the preceding paragraph you need to find some new ones. You will not find the success you are capable of achieving if you are surrounded by people who are not interested in helping reach the stars. Some people are frightened by success and afraid that if those around them move forward they will be left alone. These people want nothing more than to maintain the status quo. You want more than that. You want to grow and achieve. Sometimes it can be hard, very hard, to make changes in your social group, but in the long run you will find that you’ll be much happier and moving much more quickly to achieving your success objectives after you jettison those who are holding you back.

Respect for differences-

How you react to and react with the world around you greatly influences the level of success, satisfaction and enjoyment you will get out of your life. Throughout your life you will encounter people from all ages, all ethnicities, all levels of education, and a range of different cultural backgrounds. Judging people against your criteria and biases only creates negative relationships. Appreciate the diversity of people and ideas around you. As great as you are, the world would be very boring if everyone was just like you.

Integrity / Character-

No one lacking integrity is ever truly successful. If you are moving forward at the expense of others, in one way or another, you are not worthy of being called successful. There are many other words that could be used to describe you, but successful would not be one of them.

One of my favorite quotes is from Thomas Babington Macaulay:

“The measure of a man’s real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.”

Your actions when no one is around speak volumes as to the level of your integrity. Do you do the right thing because it is right, or only when others are watching or the situation benefits you? Truly successful people do the right thing because it is right.

Faith-

I would include faith as one of the factors in your relationship with the world (or better yet, the universe) at large. It does not matter if you believe in God, Muhammad, Allah, a divine being or just that things will work out – faith is an integral part of success. There are successful Protestants, Catholics, Muslims, Christians, Jews, agnostics and atheists all around the world.

Dreams / Desires-

Your dreams and lifelong desires are part of the inner you and belong with this success element. Your dreams are part of your attitude toward your life and the possibilities that you see. Your hopes and dreams come from your subconscious. They are strong messages from within that you need to pay attention to. One of the best ways to start focusing on these messages is to write them down. Keep a journal and write down your thoughts. Make it a regular habit. If not daily than weekly find some quiet time to sit, reflect and then write down your thoughts, hopes, dreams and desires. Do not edit yourself; just write down what you are thinking and feeling. The journal is for you and only you will read it. Over time you will see definite patterns emerge. These patterns should help guide you to areas in which you will find the most success and to areas that are slowing you down. Use this information to make a plan of action, a plan of change, so that you take control of where you are headed and of the quality of life you will experience going forward.

2 comments:

  1. Good quote for you: “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated”

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  2. An excellent quote from Mahatma Gandhi. Thanks for contributing.

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