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The Science of Achieving Success
xTreme Success Training
By S. M. Zakir Hussain
(www.eduSolutionsBD.com email: smzhussains@gmail.com)
Watch for Zakir's full book on the Science of Success - Coming Soon!
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The Science of Achieving Success
xTreme Success Training
By S. M. Zakir Hussain
100% proven and guaranteed success strategies,
with an assurance of ten times more confidence
and level of achievement than before
‹ If it’s a long way, then it may be the wrong way.
What Does Success Mean?
Without any jargon or philosophy, success means the achievement of the purposefully set goals through purposefully planned and well-directed work. It is of two types:
- Task-related success
- Ongoing success
Obviously, task-related success refers to the achievement of a specific objective, which is not necessarily part of one’s philosophy of life. For example, Paul tries hard to catch a bird and continues trying to do so until he is in a position to say that he has become successful. For the save of clarity, we can say that it is a task-related achievement, a specific return of the investment made in terms of time, efforts, intelligence, perseverance, etc.
Ongoing success is the achievement, ongoing achievement, of goals, which inevitably leads to the meaningfulness and fulfillment of life, through the achievement and increased probability of achievement of life’s long-term objectives, mission, and vision.
The Focus of this Training Course
The focus of this training course is on On-going success, which is naturally followed by all types of task-related success instances.
What You will Learn in this Course:
Ironically, we learn what we cannot do, so that we can eventually do it. In this course you will not learn to talk about success or to think about success. Rather, you will simply learn how to permanently fail to be a failure. In other words, you will learn to be successful starting from the next week, and not just think success. Or let us correct ourselves so as to be more appropriate than correct: you will learn to do, not just think – and be, not just do. We are confident that while in the middle of his course your idea of who you are will change because you will definitely be somebody else, so that ultimately you can be who you dream to be.
You are as big as your dream – true, but you are really also not – never! – as small as your misconceptions about yourself.
So, after this course has been over, you will learn to find the unique place in the world where you belong.
The Game of Life
Is life a game? Definitely it is. Life is the only game on earth. But – efficient players should rejoice! – it is not lottery!
And now we must keep a note reminding us that games exist only in order to let players have an opportunity to win. And it must also be borne in mind that winning in a game is a result of planned action, not of a random selection or lottery.
Thus it is obvious that life is a game and this game is not for losers, because losers become inactive spectators, not players. In other words, only winners can discover the potential and meaning of life.
What does it Mean to Be Successful?
Obviously, this question is very important to everybody. And we usually tend to come up with a comment as an answer: Success means different things to different people.
Right, and that is why the question is equally, and uniquely, important to everybody. Thus the comment is not an answer; it is only a way of pointing to the importance of the issue.
So now we have the consolation that the question has not been answered verbally. In many cases, an answer tends to put a stop to the igniting potential of an issue, so we are not going to be satisfied with a commonplace answer collected from the folk attitude. Rather, a question arrived at the end of a meaningful discussion is better than an answer – a ready-made one – supplied in the beginning. In fact, the question ‘what does it mean to be successful?’ has its answer in really being successful, and more significantly, in continuing to be successful.
Let us even go so far as to say that success is more than achievement. Yes, definitely. For example, Alex can say that Ronnie is successful because he has earned a lot of money, but Ronnie might say that that is one of his achievements that are expected to make him feel satisfied and thus successful. Likewise, Binoy might say that Shukla has become a successful singer but Shukla herself might say that if that is true then she has only become successful as a singer, whereas she – though pleased – is not satisfied with that achievement because she feels she has just became successful like ‘many others’ while what she is still trying to do is be herself – a unique person, so that she can occupy the unique, singular place in the world where nobody else is exactly like her.
Everybody on earth is unique. If any two persons were the same then only one of them would really exist and the other would be redundant. Then again, which one would be redundant? Both! Because if you wanted to identify one who is different from the other, the idea of difference – however small it be – would come into the scene, and then they could not be identified as identical.
To be successful means to reach a level of achievement where everybody in the world would consider you unique.
Success is a journey, not a destination – true,
but no journey is meaningful without a destination; rather, it is the destination that will make the journey possible.
The Plan of the Journey
It is to be borne in mind that there is no correct or incorrect plan if there is no contradiction in it. What is there is an appropriate or inappropriate plan. If the plan is inappropriate, the journey will be either impossible or a fatal deviation from the destination.
And to be able to make an appropriate plan of the journey of your career or life, you will need a lot more than what we usually call inspiration. Every success traveler must bear in mind that:
Inspiration only sets fire to the candle. If one does not have the tools and techniques to move ahead along unknown paths, the candle will expire in the midway.
What tools and techniques will you need and why? The first thing that you will need is a map of the expected achievement path (EAP).
You will need the tools and techniques (T&T) to construct, and continually update, this map. So let us start learning the techniques and using the tools so that we can make the map for ourselves. But before proceeding any further, you must – with utmost importance – keep in mind that this map is the most secret map of your life.
So it is nothing to gossip about. We can share our vision or mission with others, but not the plan, unless they are our group partners and we are striving to achieve a common goal.
Your Secret Map is very sacred because your life is most valuable to you, if not to others. So treat it with commitment and consider every segment of the path an important phase in the reality of your own universe.
So before setting out on the journey, the things that you will have to carry with you include the secret map and the other tools and techniques. Bad success travelers make inappropriate maps, and many of them do not make any map at all, while some of them think of making one while in the journey. There are some who make fairly good maps but do not consider them secret. All such travelers eventually prove to be failure travelers. Is it not paradoxical that somebody has made a plan of a journey without managing a map of the probable paths?
Making Your Secret Map
The very starting point of this project comes from the future, not the past or present! The following steps will describe the process.
¨¨¨ 1. Be aware of your vision:
Everybody has a vision. One who is not aware of it faces it or nurtures it merely as a dream full of desire without commitment, or enjoys it in playful daydreaming. This weakens the mind instead of strengthening it because the mind wants to rush toward it in slumber, avoiding the ‘hazy’ or ‘chaotic’ reality.
On the contrary, one who is aware of his or her dream tends to wake up if he or she is provided with the tools and techniques of constructing the secret map for him or her. Now the question is – how is one to be aware of his or her vision? Yes, we are going to learn how, but that should start with a clarification:
A dream lives with and is fuelled by desire, while a vision lives with and is fuelled by purposeful awareness. A dream fills the mind but stays inside it, while a vision, having its roots in the dream, opens the windows of the mind and starts communicating with the external reality. A dream is a bird without wings, while a vision is a bird with energized wings, though not skilled yet.
Being aware of your vision involves asking yourself this question:
What do I want to do in the long run?
Sorry, let us be more appropriate:
What do I want to BE in the long run?
Each person will want to be something different than others, so the possibilities are many.
You want to be a doctor.
Your sister wants to be an engineer.
Your friend wants to be a pilot.
And so on and so on.
These are career-related goals. Achieving these goals is not easy but such achievements do not put an end to the success travel. I have seen many doctors who have said that they have to work harder to be successful doctors. I would have been happy if I had heard them say that they had to think and plan in an organized way and then work harder if necessary. The bottom line is:
Even when you have become what you wanted to be, you will see that being successful is a great deal more – and different too! – than being anything.
And you must also keep in mind that success is your own way of measuring the levels of achievement of your goals (which may, and does, conform to the way of measuring levels of achievements observed as social standards). So you can attach this measuring standard to any instance of achievement. And it is in this way that goals will come in front of you and become history when achieved but the desire for success will always stay alive, more enkindled. That is because your past instances of success will always benefit the world but your future instances of failure will make a lot of your past success instances useless to you. Success achieved becomes an asset to the world and the success dreamed remains a secret to the individual.
Invariably, the quality of the secret map depends on the quality of the awareness of your vision. Having a vision does not help set the goal unless the basic dimensions of it are clearly identified. So the following information needs to be collected and recorded in writing.
¨¨¨ 2. Identify the Dimensions of Your Vision:
1. What do I want to be in the future?
[The answer must be in a single word or phrase.]
2. What adjectives will people possibly use to describe me?
[Here a list of adjectives or descriptive words should be recorded.]
3. Do I know of a person like the one I want to be?
[If yes, how will I describe him or her?]
4. How far is the future I am thinking about? How many years / months from now?
These questions will help you identify your vision. Once identified, it needs to be analyzed too. In order to do that you need to ask another set of questions to yourself:
5. After, say, 2 years hence, why will people consider me important?
6. How will my success in achieving the mission become an asset to the society?
7. What will my success be based on – physical ability, intelligence knowledge, experience, social communication, dutifulness, competitiveness, creativity, courage to sacrifice, etc.?
Analysis of Vision:
Ask yourself these questions:
1. If I can be what I want to be, which of the following strengths will people see in me?
a. Positional Power: 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10
b. Charismatic power: 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10
c. Expert Power: 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10
d. Financial Power: 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10
e. Usefulness: 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10
f. Trustworthiness: 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10
2. How popular will I be to people?
1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10
3. Imagine a person who has achieved the goal that you are pursuing. Now describe his personality.
a. How intelligent did he need to be?
1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10
b. How hard did he have to work?
1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10
c. How creative was he?
1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10
¨¨¨ 3. Calculate the Expected Value of Your Vision
Now you can calculate the expected value of your vision. This value will work as a good reference point later.
EVV = Sum of scale values identified above / 10
¨¨¨ 4. Calculate the Hidden Assets in You
We invest assets, earn profits, and reserve part of the profits as assets in different ways. An ongoing business itself is also a great asset.
In order to be great in life or successful in achieving any mission, you need to invest some assets, which are far more than what we call money. What are the assets that you have?
You should start thinking now. I have seen many saying, “I’ve nothing special. I just know English moderately well and I’m good at basic mathematics too” ... and so on and so forth.
But I must say that you have a lot more than assets like these, though you many not know it. Knowing your real assets means being able to use them. So let us find them out and make a useful list of them.
Let us take a nice example. Because it is very difficult, and in most cases misleading, to observe the mental dynamics of oneself, it is more informative to observe another person. For example, in the case of diagnosing your own diseases by observing symptoms, you will most probably come up with wrong findings, with even the probability of reaching no conclusion. However, if another person becomes your doctor, the diagnosis will probably be far more accurate and decisive. So is the case with our observations of our own inner assets. Achievements are simply the outcome of the investment of your inner assets. Hence the need for observing another person with a similar mental makeup or observing yourself from a distance (OYD). The following analogy will provide the main mechanism.
Look at a boy playing with other children of his family. While in play, does he become aware of himself? If yes, how much? Is he aware of how much he is taking from the others and how much the others are taking from him? Is he, and can he be, aware of where his joy comes from when he is joyous? How much joy is he creating and how much is he sharing without even knowing who created it?
These are interesting questions, but too basic to require answers. So rather than looking for answers, let us consider the example of another boy who, for reasons that will be clear shortly, is aware of where he is standing. Suppose a boy has come to a place away from his family and relatives. He is among a crowd of people who are busy with themselves. Because nobody needs to look at him – and they do not have the time to – he cannot but feel isolated. And feeling abandoned, he will certainly look at a distance, waiting to see his dear ones come to him.
Now, suppose this boy is told that for unavoidable reasons his relatives will never come to him, nor will he himself be able to go back to his family. How will he feel?
Life continues. So when the established way collapses, a new one must begin. Let us assume that this boy is fifteen years old and the society he is now in is not destructively chaotic. The reality of life will, even in his disappointment, lead him to think anew for survival. He will have to find himself a place there. How? That he will do by trying to be useful to others.
How can he be useful? By using the assets he already has. He will have to:
¨ have the firm determination to survive and win
¨ have patience
¨ be trustworthy
¨ find out where he can be useful
¨ use any skill that he has in order to be useful
¨ be friendly and faithful
¨ be prepared to offer help for free to be an insider and to create a platform to stand on
¨ remove the negative impacts of the feeling of being an alien – envy, aloofness, arrogance, greed and so on
¨ refrain from wasting time in useless activities
¨ acquire more and more skills to have a firmer hold in the future
¨ look for better opportunities around
¨ divide his opportunities, time, and efforts into two phases – one referring to survival in the short-term and the other to the ongoing self-develop for the future
¨ save energy, time, and earning if any – to be able to work securely toward the achievement of long-term goals
¨ win in the new phase of the struggle of his life and at the same time longing to find his dear ones he has been separated from
I call this analogy the Abandoned Man Analogy (AMA). We have lots of people and things around, but unless we know how to utilize our own resources to meaningfully belong to the society, we, today or tomorrow, will be forced to feel that we are abandoned, so that we feel the need to enter into the society anew, with a complete future plan showing to ourselves how we are going to be related to everything around.
Do some homework to feel the import of the Abandoned Man Analogy. Use your imagination. Always think of a person other than you in such a situation but link your own past experiences and expectations. A life must start anew if it has to be planned. And a life must be planned if it has to continue to be successful. Our mythologies, dreams, cinemas, novels etc. all abound in stories based on this Abandoned Man Analogy. |
So we see that the beginning of the journey along the road to success is not the first step; it is your practical feeling that you are alone and your plan of how you are going to be valuable among others.
Being powerful starts with being useful and valuable.
Now imagine that you are an abandoned person – which you really are unless you are valuable, unless you are in strong relationships with others around. And you cannot be in a strong relationship by being dependent on others; rather, that you can be by having others depend on you. When will others depend on you? That they will do when they will need you. And when will they need you? They will need you not necessarily when they are in danger; rather, they will need you when they will have the conviction that they will be in danger if they do not keep in touch with you.
Why is the abandoned man helpless? He is helpless because he has nobody to help him. And why is nobody helping him? Because they are also helpless from one point of view or another, they will help you when they will believe that their helping you will help them.
So we are coming to the basic points again and again: You must be valuable. Here is how:
¨ Discover the assets that you already have in you. It may be your:
• readiness to sacrifice short-term pleasure
• skill
• knowledge and experience
• courage
• friendliness
• loyalty and trustworthiness
• reference value
• patience
• hard-working ability
• ability to identify opportunities and threats
• intelligence
• creativity
• education
• physical strength
• etc.
¨ Enhance the value that you have in you.
¨ Add new value to yourself.
¨¨¨ 5. Do the Gap Analysis
So far we have talked about the value that you already have in you and our starting point was the bottom-line – survival. When existence gets threatened, the ability to survive is a great success.
However, surviving and even moving around may not mean going ahead. It is only when you have a goal to reach and are accordingly working effectively can you say that you are going ahead. So now is the time to ask this question, to none but yourself:
How far behind am I from my goal?
No, this is not an inspirational question. Inspiration, as we are told by all wise hearts, without perspiration, is just a flush of energy waiting to meet nothingness. Rather, this is a practical question – a question demanding a commitment to quantify the focus.
And it is not in any sense a bad idea to take the liberty to ask this question a dozen times. The central question needs to be asked repeatedly so that its importance can be perceived. So ask it a number of times to yourself, with your mind’s eye focused on the goal.
Now let me tell you something encouraging: if you measure your goal on a 10-point scale, you cannot be more than 6 points behind your goal!
Suppose your ideal identity in the future is a famous actor or writer or leader or scientist or business person or doctor or educationist or anything. And suppose there is a legendary person like whom you want to be one. Given this ideal, let me tell you that you are at best 6 points away from him or her. So let us buckle down to measuring the distance.
The Measure of Your HIDDEN Potential:
1. How much are you prepared to sacrifice pleasures and small short-term benefits to achieve your ideal?
1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10
2. What is the probability that you will, even without being a specially privileged person, be able to achieve the goal if you are allowed 40 years time?
1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10
YOUR HIDDEN POTENTIAL (HIPO)
= Scale value of No. 1 + Scale value of No. 2
2
If your HIPO is, say, 8, then rest assured that you can achieve the goal. Keep in mind that if you think you can do something in 40 years, then just rest assured that you can do it in a few months or a few years.
If your HIPO is: |
|
You can achieve your goal: |
1 to 3 |
|
only if you are motivated enough so that you can feel that you can do it and thus the HIPO increases to 4 or more |
4 |
|
if you feel secure that nothing will change dramatically to hinder your goal-achievement |
5 |
|
if you feel secure that you will not have to leave your goal half-achieved |
6 |
|
if you are confident enough and convinced that other achievers will not make your achievement less important |
7 |
|
if you are given the tools and techniques for achieving it |
8-10 |
|
even if there is a lot of adversity |
The Measure of the Gap
We have seen that whatever the level of your HIPO, you can achieve your goal. The fact that you can increase your potential is perhaps the most encouraging message. However we are looking for a lot more than encouragement. The proven body of methods of success is a science, not occult guru-mantras. So every step we will take ahead needs to be planned based on measurement. And now you need to know the quantitative measure of the gap between your level of achievement of the goal (LAG) and the highest scale value, 10. This gap, which is basically calculated from LAG, will show you how much you are lagging behind from your goal. So let us calculate it.
1. The achievement of any goal requires that you make an effective long-term plan. How effectively have you done it?
1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10
2. How much have you worked to acquire the skill and experience needed to achieve your goal?
1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10
3. How much time have you saved from unimportant activities and invested in developing yourself for achieving the goal?
1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10
4. How much short-term pleasure or benefit have you sacrificed to work for your self empowerment or network-building?
1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10
5. How often have you written and revised or at least visualized your goal-achieving strategies or overall plans?
1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10
Once you have answered these questions, you are in a position to estimate the LAG value as follows:
LAG = Sum of the scale values from 1 though 5
5
How to Interpret the LAG Value:
The LAG value directly measures how much you are lagging behind your goal. If it is, say, 5.5, then you are (10-5.5 =) 4.5 points away from your goal. A graphical representation of your answers will also give you an overall idea of which areas should receive your special concentration so that you can bring about a constructive change in your lifestyle. Remember that:
Without a radical change in your lifestyle, you can never bring about a change in your achievement and the future value of your plans. |
Let us see an imaginary graphical representation of your LAG Measure:
¨¨¨ 6. Identify the Success Levers (sLevs):
I am sure this news will give you a dramatically constructive and invigorating push forward along the path of success:
The five variables described above are called Success Levers in this book. They are called levers because a very small change in the value of any of them will, in the near future, bring about a very big change in you life’s achievement.
Getting a clear picture of your LAG measure will enable you to assess yourself better than anything in your life. It will also show you in which areas you should concentrate at what time. However, it will only show you where, when, and why to concentrate more at a specific point in time as you go along the journey, but it will not tell you how to move ahead. In order to start the journey and get going, what you need to do is maintain an Identity Balance Sheet (IdBS), which will show you the important forces between which you must keep a dynamic balance. You can then start applying the necessary tools and techniques to deploy the success strategies appropriate for you.
¨¨¨ 6. Prepare your Identity Balance Sheet
Who are you? In the present context, you are a combination of what you can and cannot do, what you could do if certain conditions were fulfilled, what you have and do not have, what are the implications of what you have and do not have in view of the goals you want to achieve, and how much you are aware of who you really are and can be. The balance sheet comprises four states, which, together, can be represented by APIR, elaborated as follows:
A = Ability: What you can think, feel, do
P = Potential: What results you can achieve - for example in 10 years – by properly using those abilities, if you get the required opportunities?
I = Inability: What things you cannot do, do not like to do, and will not usually do unless in unexpected situations?
R = Risk: What are the risks that you are and will be exposed to because of these inabilities of yours?
It is to be noted that we are taking about those abilities and inabilities that will directly or indirectly influence your goal-achievement. And theoretically, A + I = P + R.
The Harmful Aspects of your Ability
It may sound paradoxical but it is a bitter truth that if you fail to use your ability properly, it will, today or tomorrow, cause a lot of troubles in your life, which may, truly speaking, be the main cause of your sufferings for the rest of your life. If you have even a single mature ability or a hidden aptitude that you have not utilized properly, it will, probably very soon, be a very big cause of your identity crisis. For example,
¨ you will see that you have lost many unique opportunities for not using that ability;
¨ those who wanted to see you successful will blame you for not being able to be useful to them;
¨ you will only find yourself to be a person talking about a glorious past and to be silent about the present;
¨ your remorse will kill away the rest of your time and confidence;
¨ you will try to attribute your failure to others and they will reject your explanations right away.
An ability unutilized becomes the cause of a massive loss in one’s life because the loss is compounded by a number of other related losses, including the following:
¨ the loss of past investment in terms of money and efforts made in order to acquire that ability
¨ the wastage of the present time when the ability could be used
¨ the loss of other skills that could be acquired using the skill under consideration
¨ the loss of the opportunities that could be utilized
In a word, it will not be an exaggeration to say that
A skill unused is equivalent to a dimension of life unlived.
[[TO BE CONTINUED… ABRIDGED VERSION. WATCH FOR THE COMPLETE BOOK COMING SOON…]]
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