12 Ways to Succeed

In your job, church, home, and other areas of life, here are a few things you can do in order to be successful.

1. Don’t be boring. God has made you unique, take what you like, what makes you uniquely you, and put it out there!
2. Know yourself. You need to be you. You will waste a lot of time in life if you are trying to be who you think everyone wants you to be. Keeping up appearances is exhausting.
3. Speak up! You can’t wait for others to ask for your opinion or to seek you out. Do you want to be involved at church? You be the one to seek out a place to serve until you are doing it. Do you want to meet someone, then get out there and be in the places where the kind of person you want to meet is. You want that promotion? Go get it, the worst they can say is “no” but at least they know you’re interested. Don’t sit back, it’s up to you!
4. Be consistent. Fads come and go, but a person who has a core of convictions, and is convinced of who they are is a breath of fresh air. Don’t allow others to change who you are, even if someone disagrees with you, they should respect that you stand for something in a changing world.
5. Be honest. One of the most important things in relationships (which is life) is to do you dead-level best to never deceive people. You will be amazed, over time, how far it will take you.
6. Don’t just focus on you. It’s important not to be self-centered. Though it is absolutely appropriate to focus on yourself to improve, after all, the only person you can change is you, life is not all about you. Be yourself, but let others know it’s okay for them to be them too.
7. Simplify. It is far better, and this is an understatement, to do a few things very well than to do a lot of things at an average level. Simply accomplishing tasks makes you no different than anyone else. If you want to succeed in life and conquer the day, you need to focus on the things that you can knock out of the park.
8. Get the details right. Little things really do matter. If you are going to do something, strive to do it so well, there is at least one aspect of it that you do really well that only someone interested in your field would notice, and even one further bit that might only get noticed and appreciated if you were to point it out (but don’t always point it out).
9. Don’t do life alone. God has made us as relational beings. He, himself, is relational within Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Being made in his image means that we too seek relationships. You need other people, other people need you, the unique you that God intended you to be.
10. Put other people first. We should count other people as more significant than ourselves. Not simply to be altruistic or self-deprocating, but because that’s what Jesus did for us. Jesus is more important than us, yet he stripped-down and washed the disciple’s feet. He died on a cross for the whole world, yet, he was more important than us all. That’s our model. Go and do likewise.
11. Listen carefully when people criticize. Haters are gonna hate, but rarely do they make stuff up out of whole cloth. As long as you know who you are, take other’s criticism in stride. If they are wrong and you know it, so what? Just let them vent and go on. Take joy in how much more self-aware you are than them. But always look for that grain of truth. Affirm what truth may lie behind their rantings, and try to better yourself as a result. We rarely see the things that need to change in our own lives, we need criticism to become better. What a blessing to have someone help you see how short of perfection you are! 🙂
12. Be on time. This is important. You manage your time, don’t let your time manage you. It shows great aptitude when you start things when you say and it demonstrates respect for others when you are there and ready to go 60 seconds before “start time” and you begin exactly when you should.

BONUS:

Be PASSIONATE!!! Life is an awesome gift, DO NOT WASTE IT! God has made you who you are and there is great potential in each of us. If are given the privilege of drawing breath and getting out of bed tomorrow, tackle the day and wrestle it into submission. Go all-out and don’t stop until you drop from exhaustion! Grab the bull by the horns and don’t let go until you have made it as far as you can along the path that is especially yours. Love God, love people, LOVE LIFE!

What do you think? What else have you found that leads to success in life?