How To Succeed In Your Career

Success is sweet and everyone wants to succeed in his/her chosen career; but success does not just come on a platter of gold, it has to be worked out. Getting to your desired goal or destination in life depends on how you map out your journey and how well you stay focused to see that your goals are achieved.

Success, they say, has many parents but failure is an orphan. Therefore, no one wants to be a failure and live in isolation or be intentionally segregated by friends and family. Having made up your mind to succeed there are steps you must take to achieve your desired goals irrespective of the area of life you choose to follow. There are no areas that are entirely bad; what is needed on your part is the determination or the zeal to be the best of what you want to be. The following steps should be judiciously followed if you are to make it in your Endeavours.

1.Acknowledge your weakness: The first step to success is to acknowledge your areas of weakness and your areas of strength. In other words, you should know the areas where you are not good and you are aware that toeing such path would lead you to failure. Also know your areas of comparative advantage. What edge do you have over your peers, friends or competitors? Where are you doing better, maybe in your academics, crafts, or talents? Find out things you do easily and very well without struggling.

2.Determine to succeed: Determination is one of the greatest ingredients to success. You may have an area of comparative advantage, or you may not even know where you have an edge but determination to make it in whatever sphere you have chosen can propel you toward success. If you have all the other ingredients but lack determination, any slight distraction or challenge can make you loose your steam and drop out.


3.Stay focused: Once you have made up your mind on the direction you want to go, you must maintain your focus and never drift from one plan to another. If you allow people to persuade you to leave your chosen career you may never make it and sometimes you end up in a place where you will never be happy because you are convinced that you are in the wrong place. Once you make up your mind resist all influences – peer pressure, or parental indoctrination and move ahead in your line of conviction.

4.Make research: Find out if there are prospects in your chosen area e.g. if you decide to work in a particular company and develop your career there, what prospects have you to develop your career further? What are the possibilities of rising in your position in the next few years? Would your impact ever be felt? Do you have the possibility of making any input as far as the decision making process is concerned? If there are no such possibilities look for a place where you can advance to a higher level in the future. Also find out if the kind of profession you wish to go into has any societal value or recognition. Don’t just study any course for the purpose of acquiring a university degree, but think of what impact you can create in the society with your degree. Think of taking professional courses such as Engineering, Law, Medicine, Nursing, Accountancy, ICT, etc. The other areas you could also think of are theater arts, music, fine arts, sports, etc. While you do your research find out areas you can easily establish on your own with little resources should there be no job or loans from banks. You should develop a career that makes you less dependent on people, government or companies before you can make a headway in life.

5.Associate with successful people: Make friends with people who have succeeded in the same profession you wish to go into or similar professions. Find out what they did right to come out with such great success. Even associate with those who have made it in business or managerial positions. Success does not come in isolation; it comes most times by influence. When you tap from their knowledge you add it to your resources and you come up with something tangible and worthwhile.


6.Take action: When you have gathered all necessary information the next thing you should do is take action. Information without action is useless; it is like a piece of computer with the latest software but is never powered for people to make use of. It is your action that co-ordinates all the information for a purposeful achievement. Make up your mind and take a bold step toward bringing your dreams to reality. Unless you move into action your dreams remain within you and would never materialize for the world to see.

7.Take stock: Having taken action and you have moved in the direction you dreamed of, take time to take stock. Find out if you are achieving your dreams. Find out if you are at the place you hoped to be at a particular time in life. Check your results; find out areas where you need to improve; check what principles had worked for you and the ones that never worked.


8.Repeat your success: When you determine the principles that gave you positive results repeat them over and over again. Discard the useless ones and build more on the ones that would keep bringing positive results for you. You discover that each time you set targets using the same working methods you will always achieve your desired goals and dreams.