Success (A Perspective)

I've been thinking a lot about success and achievement lately.

I've come to believe that our success is not something that
“just happens”. Our success or lack of success is a direct result of the decisions we make.

If we want to become wealthy, we must make wealthy decisions.

If we want to become part of a healthy relationship, we must make healthy relationship decisions.

If we want to become physically fit, we must make physically fit decisions.

If we want to become more spiritual, we must make spiritual
decisions.

This may seem overly simplified but this is where it starts. It starts with motivation. And motivation generates decision. The problem enters when we allow our emotions to interfere with our logical decision process.

Example: If you want to lose weight, your logical
decisions should be to eat less and exercise more. Simple.
Right? It’s simple until you allow your emotions to help
make your weight loss decisions.

When your emotions enter the picture, you’ll soon notice that you’ve “decided” that “one piece of pie won’t hurt this one time.” After all you love pie. And then 2 pieces of pie and a bowl of ice cream later, you “decide” that you’ve already blown your eating habits to lose weight so what’s the point anymore.

You must keep your emotional decisions and logical decisions in check.

Example 2: If you’re trying to build wealth, you must
make logical wealth building decisions. Simple again, right?
Well let’s see… You’ve been making good decisions and
sticking to your budget that is designed to definitely
lead you down the road of wealth.

But you’ve been renting this apartment and you know one day you want to buy a house. So instead of waiting, you go on ahead and start looking. You see a house you like and grow extremely attached to it. It’s got everything you’ve ever thought you might want in your dream home.

So you get pre-approved and qualify for more than you ever
thought you could (of course). Even though this house is more than you were going to spend, you go ahead and make the offer, then the counter offer. You end up purchasing your dream home.

But at what cost? You're now are back to where you started –
stretching to make ends meet and living paycheck to paycheck.

Your emotions bled over into your logical decision making
process.

Farfetched?

I don’t think so. I know someone who actually did this. And it or something frightening close has probably happened to you or someone you know.

This is a crucial point to success. We must keep our emotional and logical processes of decision making separate if we want to succeed in our own predetermined endeavors.

Don’t get me wrong. Emotions have their place and are a great source of successful living. But when we need to make logical, life-changing decisions, it may be a good idea to keep emotions and logic separate.

Until next time keep looking and living forward.