Factors to Success: Where to Find Yours

Factors to success are those essential things that will play a role in making your planned path into reality. As with anything, you need tools to make things happen. Identifying and understanding the factors to your success can play an important role in making your life easier.

We all want to succeed in life. Even though the definition of success may vary from one person to another, we all want to be successful in what is important to us. We may want to be a great family member, we may aim at having the best career ever, or we may just want to fully experience the simple joys in life. To achieve anything that aligns with our personality, we need to understand what will take us there.

Success Factors

Success factors are so essential that businesses use dedicated software for their performance analysis. That’s how important it is to stay on top of them.

Factors to success in life cover the same grounds. They are the key components that will give you opportunities. They should be used, exploited and organized efficiently and effectively. That will put you in a prime position to get the results you are aiming for.

If your dream is to reach a certain goal, you will have to analyze what is going to take you there and what you need to build that path. Those will be the factors to success for that specific goal. They may be specific knowledge, attitude, skills, capabilities, and even external circumstances that will help you perform the way you want. Success factors are any tool that can make your life machine work perfectly or, at least, as good as it can.

If you want to reach a goal but don’t know which tools to use every step of the way, the path may be bumpy.

Factors to Success or Failure

With the right set of tools, you can build something new, and you can fix what’s broken. That’s the attitude you should have when thinking about success factors.

It is important to know that as we have factors to success, we also have factors that contribute to failure. Even the same set of tools, if misused, can lead to failure instead of success. That’s why it is important not only to identify them, but also to understand them.

After all, we have all known people who were equipped with the best of tools, found themselves in the best of circumstances, and did not achieve their goals. External circumstances always play a role, even though it is often said the contrary. However, success factors management is essential to the positive outcome of any project of ours.

Failure as Part of Life and as a Key Success Factor

How scared should you be of failure? It would be a lie to say that failure is desirable. it isn’t. Nobody wishes to fail in life.

However, our society has built a stigma around failure, aggravating the concept with a lot of misconceptions.

Failure is part of life. Anybody can and, most probably, will fail in life. Once again, the most important thing in such circumstances is management. How do you manage failure? What do you get from it? What did you learn and how can you use it to build upon it and reach your goals successfully?

If you fail, you might as well gain something from the experience.

Why is failure good for success?

Failure can give you perspective. It gives you knowledge about the process that you did not have before. It sometimes tells you that you are on the wrong path and saves you a lot of time.

Failure, if used conductively, can be an efficient guide. Should you aim to fail? No, but you should not be afraid of failing. This type of fear often leaves people stuck.

Failure is frustrating, sometimes it is extremely hurtful. There is no point in denying it. Sometimes you may run out of resources to build upon it. If that happens, it’s important that you strategize to regain resources and start again.

If what you got from failing, though, is fear of failure, you may end up dwelling there. Be intentional in learning what you can from the experience without developing a fear that will leave you stuck.

Sometimes, people think they aren’t worthy of what they desire. This toxic idea is also pushed by some influencers nowadays. Self-worth has nothing to do with the goals you reach in life. It has to do with whom you choose to be. That’s it. You are worthy of whatever you want to achieve (granted it doesn’t hurt others or yourself, obviously).

The only time when failure may be considered an actual defeat is when you learn nothing from it but decide to internalize it and let it define you. While this may be a natural short-term reaction to failing, letting this dynamic settle and be what defines you is not advisable.

Success Factors and Goal Setting

One of the hardest things to do for some people is to define a goal. many people know they want to be successful, but they don’t care about the “how”.

You should ask yourself that question and your answer should be rather specific. It is not enough to say: “I want to be financially independent”. That is a good start, of course, but how do you want to achieve that independence?

When you want to reach success, you should focus and define what success will look like for you. It’s not the same for everybody. Know what it looks like for you.

Remain flexible, though. You may think about success in certain terms now and have to adjust your idea along the way. We change and circumstances change, that’s normal. However, it is important to know where you are going right now, even if you will change direction one day.

Goal setting is the first step towards accomplishment. Once you know you want to go from point A to point B, you can figure out what route to take, and what vehicles will take you there. A “Success Life Plan”, with flexibility, is a central part of the journey.

Do not Become a Prisoner of Your Own Goals

It is important to understand that our goals may change, and we should be fine with it. Some things that seem extremely right for us at a certain point in life, may lose their relevance. They may even bring us frustration in the end.

Planning is essential to succeed, but do not go along with something just because “that was the plan”, when that no longer serves you.

The Trap of “Being a Quitter”

Another extremely toxic trait of our society is to define every single person who stops pursuing a certain path as a quitter.

Quitting something that is harming you or no longer serves you is good.

Having the ability to change when we understand our dream may become a prison or a nightmare is a signal of extreme strength. Very few people can do that. Many are afraid of peer judgment, some are just lost without a goal and don’t know how to handle the end of a dream.

It’s ok to feel lost, but that shouldn’t prevent you from doing what’s best for you.

This is not to say that you should quit whenever you encounter difficulties or feel frustrated. Not every situation is the same.

You should be able not to lie to yourself and understand what you feel. It is normal to encounter obstacles. it is normal to feel frustrated. It is not normal to feel like you are trapped in a life you don’t want.

Evaluate what you are feeling and don’t lie to yourself.

If you are making a change in your goals because they no longer align with yourself, then you are brave. It is not common to do so.

Many people stay within the structure they built in their heads years prior, even though they no longer are the same person. Can you change and still want the same things? Yes, of course. Does it always happen that way? No.

Where to Identify your Success Factors

Since goals are different from person to person, so are success factors. When we make our analysis to define what factors we will exploit, it is good to start focusing on the following four macro-groups.

Education
Money
Personal Development
Productivity

Education

Education, of any kind, is going to give you the specific knowledge needed in the context of your choice. Education may come from a school or from your personal studies. It may be conducive to a degree or it may be focus-oriented. It doesn’t matter. if you don’t educate yourself, though, it will be harder to understand and develop your path.

Education helps with all the other macro-groups listed. Nowadays you can get education from a lot of sources, even for free.

Learn how to transform notions into knowledge. Identify the best methods to optimize your learning experience. Those things will save you a lot of time. Time, effort and emotional involvement are all resources that you are putting into your projects: you should not waste them.

Learning what to learn and how to properly learn is one of the most powerful tools to have in your belt.

Money

Money affects all of us at different levels. Having money security and the ability to substitute money sources can have a huge impact on your life.

Trying different things to elevate your money situation could be a good idea. It may lead you to have more serenity and develop a healthy money relationship.

This doesn’t mean that one should be financially abundant before embarking on any project. It just means that you should keep that area in your mind and work towards its betterment alongside the other areas. Good money management techniques, to manage what you already have, are also a great asset.

Personal Development

It’s hard to change your circumstances if you don’t change yourself. The change doesn’t need to be radical, but even just taking a step toward the direction you want means making a change within yourself.

Personal development is often regarded as some new age thing by many people who believe to be more oriented to practicality than others. However, personal development is essential to success of any kind.

It is important to cultivate the innate personal traits we have that make us special and that may be that “something more” that leads us to stand out in a competitive context.

Similarly, it is essential to know how to manage several aspects of our personalities that may be working against us. Even something as little as being easily triggered may stand in your way when working towards your goal.

Developing emotional fortitude will be of great help in any context and it may be what keeps you afloat while navigating through difficulties or even when needing to manage quick success. Examples are endless. Personal development is essential, even when you do not clearly see its direct impact on a project.

Productivity

Working on increasing productivity is always a good idea, for any kind of project. It is the final touch that lets you put all the other factors to work.

Learning what makes you thrive when performing certain tasks will give you confidence and will make your life easier.

Productivity plays a role at every stage of your process, from planning to performance. Be aware of what you do and how you do it. Understand what you can improve. Several productivity tricks that may work for you. Choose the set that best suits you and what you want to achieve.