Pray that success will not come any faster than you are able to endure it.
Elbert Hubbard
Recently I was driving with my 17-year old daughter when she asked me a very important question. You see, while we were driving, we were listening to my Spotify playlist which features classic metal from the 1970s. Aerosmith was playing and Allie mentioned that she heard the band was breaking up again. I told her Aerosmith, like a lot of bands, went through periods of success and failure all through the years mainly because they got caught up on drugs. In other words, they weren’t mature enough to handle success.
That same scenario plays itself out in professional sports and usually in the lives of lottery winners. All of us long for success, but what happens when we actually get it? Will we be prepared for it?
It’s never too late to start over if you’ve had a poor start or are failing. I’m betting nobody wants to be less successful next year so if you want more success, are you preparing for it? Here are some questions to ponder:
- Do I have a strategy for attaining success? Everyone I know wants success, but do they have a plan to get it? Wanting and doing are two different things. I want to expand my business this year and do less traveling but making more money per day. That won’t happen unless I take active steps to get it done.
- What will I do if and when success happens? Do I have a plan to leverage it? Imagine if you were a farmer and had a “bumper” year. You’d have to store all that extra produce right? You’d need a process for selling the extra. Are you ready for success?
- How will you duplicate success? If you’ve done something innovative that has great results, can you recapture the magic? Carefully track what you do so you can repeat the process next time.
Success, when properly prepared for, is what we all want and need. Getting takes work but keeping it is the real heavy lifting. I’m putting my plans in place for next year right now. I hope you are too!