Success, simply defined, means getting whatever you want. However simplistic that definition may be, most people would agree that a person who is successful in a certain field or area is so because he or she has managed to achieve something specific, and that something specific is a target or object which he or she had been wanting or desiring for prior to his or her attaining it.

Before we find out how to get anything you want in life, we must first get realistic.

What are some of the things which we may want but we truly and honestly know that we will never, ever get? Once you’ve got that list of impossible, unachievable things in your head and eliminate them, we may proceed.

Some examples may include: flying in the air by flapping your arms, make a pink mammoth materialise out of thin air, breathing in outer space, squaring a circle, etc.

Now what are those things which you’ve always desired yet have never come around to try to attain? These are things which you know are achievable for you, with a fair amount of effort on your part, yet something is holding you back from achieving them, either consciously or unconsciously, deliberately or not.

In order for you to get anything you want in life, you must make the rational decision to concretely define what you truly want and need. It is futile in the long run if you keep getting things out of your whims and impulsive desires rather than out of what you truly need to move you forward in life, in whatever context and whatever way you define that for yourself.

You can begin by asking yourself a few hard-hitting, honest questions about the direction your life is headed and your true motivations for desiring what you seek to have.

What do I truly want?

Why do I want it?

What are my true motivations for wanting it?

What are the real reasons for needing it?

What will I see after I’ve gotten it?

What will I experience after I’ve attained it?

What will change after I’ve achieved it? What will not change?

Who or what will I become after I’ve acquired it?

How will it affect the others around me?

The truth is this: getting what you want is extremely easy. It is already happening to you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. But it is the decision to truly define what you actually want that is hard for most people.

That excludes the actual process of going about attaining what you want, the prevention, evasion or overcoming of obstacles that hinder you from getting what you want and then keeping what you want once you’ve gotten it. Some things which you work for will simply slip away from your grasp if you don’t do certain things to make sure they stay with you.

This is called maintenance.

Now that I’ve given you a harsh and much-needed reality check on what you truly want to get, let me address the basic elements or ingredients that go into making up the process of getting what you want.

1. A clear mental impression of your target. You already have this, hopefully, if you’ve asked yourself those questions suggested above effectively and ruthlessly. It is much better if your mental impression is materialised in the form of a written paper stating your goal or an actual visual image of your target (photographs, pictures, drawings, etc).

2. A concrete step-by-step plan of action to get towards your target. This action plan must have been used by someone else to attain the same or similar thing to what you now want, meaning, it must have been proven to work. It must be duplicable, i.e. anyone on Earth with the same resources available must be able to achieve the same thing.

3. Action. Things won’t move by themselves to work for you until you move them yourself, unless they are moved by someone else. Most people fail at this stage either due to a lack of motivation to move on after encountering a minor or mediocre setback. Or they fail to start at all - the problem of procrastination.

That’s all there is to it - Target, Plan, Action. We need not go into the minuscule technical details of each and every element in this recipe for success as they are all just that - technicalities - which you will be able to find in more thorough goal setting textbooks, courses and materials.

Author's Bio: 

Mohamad Latiff is the Author of the Ultimate Secrets of Success blog where you can grab the 21 Secret Scrolls of Success email course and read more of his original articles on Success, Self Improvement, Goal Setting, Time Management and Spirituality.