How to be Successful in Life

How to be successful in life?  Is it your desire to live a successful life?

To achieve the goal of a successful life, you have to define and measure success.  Without a clear definition of successful life, you will not know what you are aiming for.

How to be successful in life? This question will depend on what you want in life. The moment we get what we want in life, that is a successful life.

To put it more accurately, that is successful life at that point of life.

Your goal in life changes, your measurement of successful life changes with your goal in life.  At one point in life, money might be the most important thing in life for you.  Successful life means able to make enough money, and be financially free.

At other point in life, family might be the most important thing in life for you.  Successful life means able to spend time with your family, and make your family members live a happy life.

At some other point, a quiet, peaceful and predictable life might be the most important thing in life for you.  Successful life means living a peaceful and quiet life.

So a successful life is not measured when you are breathing your last breath.  A successful life is measured on a minute by minute basis.  The minute that you get what you want, that is successful life at that point of your life.

For example, a school girl wants to score well in the examination.  She wants to win the scholarship.  So she studies hard and wins the scholarship.  That is meaning of successful life for her.  For a school girl, successful life is measured in term of academic achievement.

Obviously once she completes her formal education, her goal in life changes.  She will set a new goal in life, and with it, the measurement of successful life changes.

While you may refuse to admit that you use wealth as a measurement of successful life, you are quick to conclude that your friend is successful because she upgrades to a bigger and nicer house than yours.  Wealth is a measurement of successful life.

So is wealth, in particular money, a good indicator of successful life? To a certain extent, money is a measurement of successful life.

For example, the champion in the marathon race gets the bigger prize (in term of monetary reward) than the second best runner.  The best worker in the company gets more salary and more bonus than the rest of the workforce.  Money is a measurement of successful life.

However, money is only a measurement of successful life in the short run.  In the long run, the record setting is the ultimate goal of every professional marathon runner.  The knowledge, experience and skills of a worker is a better measurement of successful life in the long run.

Wealth is obviously not the only indicator of a successful life.  You will agree that having a healthy body and a healthy mind is another indicator of a successful life, especially when you are able to maintain our good health despite living beyond a century.  The longest surviving person has a successful life.  After all, the whole world envies the person who can claim to be the oldest man or woman alive.

In life, there are many regrets.  There are many things you should do and you did not.  There are many things you did when you knew that you should not do.

All of us, including you, have regrets, many regrets that we cannot undone and atone for.

Even Almighty God has moment of regrets.  “And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.” (Genesis 6:6)

Having regrets does not mean that you do not live a successful life.  Since you cannot change the past, all you can do is to live with the past and aim for a better tomorrow.  Bear in mind that even God did not undo the past.  He instead took the action to cleanse the wicked world in Noah’s days.

The only way that stops you from having a successful life is this: If you drift through life, always jealous and envious of others, yet do not know what you want, you definitely will not have a successful life.  An aimless survival is hardly successful no matter how you measure it.

How to be successful in life?  Start by making short term and long term goal now.