The secret key to becoming a success

Welcome to the New Unleashed Podcast with Femi Aknemi, the podcast where we explore how to unleash your potential in the workplace, your hustle, and life in general with practical steps. Sometimes I use stories from my past, and trust me, I have got some stories for you. Sometimes I'll just share stuff I've learned over the years, and other times we get people who know a lot more than we do. Trust me, I know a lot of people know more than I do, which is always a great thing to know. We'll get them in here and we'll chop it all up, break it down, and hopefully, they'll make an impact on all of us and help us become unleashed in this journey that we call life. This is podcast number eight. I have become a believer that done is better than perfect, so it's all about keeping the show on the road and getting better as we go along. Please don't forget to like this podcast on all the regular platforms Stitcher, Google, Apple, and even Ancore itself. Share with your friends and leave some feedback on the page. We'll be sure we'll be sure to take note of it and hopefully use it as we go along to get better. With that being said, let's get right into it today. Success. That word for a few of us brings a feeling of satisfaction. Yeah, that's me on every level you're thinking I'm successful. Well, if you're one of those people who is successful, I congratulate you. I salute you and I say, crack on, my friend. Don't cut the podcast yet, though, thinking there's nothing here for you, because I'm sure there is. But for a lot of others, though, that would elicit some sort of emotion, all sorts of emotion from us, and for those of us, or for some of us, it's a feeling of regret, a feeling of having wasted your best years and feeling like you're just cruising to the finish line whenever that is. If that's you, stop, pump the brakes, and hold up. Because before you run off thinking you're not a success, that you're not where you want to be in your career, in your business, or any other thing, you think you need to take a step back, and I think you need to take a step, you need to take a step back just to make sure you're grading yourselves properly. And we've all been there, we finished high school, secondary school. There was a slum book, and you were gonna be the first person to do this, the greatest accountant ever, the next CEO, and 40 under 40, or the top 40 under 40, and you know, there's all sorts of definitions in the world today, the top 35, under 35, and they bring roll out all these things, and they're designed to make a few people feel on top, and those of us who are not quite there feel like we're not there, and all of a sudden we feel like failures, pump the brakes and just stop. Because before we run off thinking we're not successful or anything, we need to kind of make sure we're grading ourselves properly because let's be honest, it's a grade. Success is a kind of targets we set for ourselves, and success is obviously something we all want, and like any exam, you don't want to fail, right? We all want to kind of make it and be successful, so we should really make sure we set the right targets for ourselves before we we kind of go off and call ourselves failures because most of us, without knowing it, haven't even defined success for ourselves. So before we run off thinking we're unsuccessful, we look at what other people have done and think I haven't done what this person I went to school with has done, so I'm not successful, or this person I know has four, five, six, seven, eight cars, houses all over the world, and they're on the face of it successful, and I just have this little thing, so I'm not successful, but that's not the way it works. I'm here to break it to you. So, why don't we start at the very beginning? What is success? Now, this is important because it hangs off everything. The moment you get a good understanding of success and you have a good success philosophy, you've made a great start. Now, Glenn Bland, um one of um motivational speakers, defines success as the progressive realization of worthwhile goals, stabilized with balance and purified with belief. Now, repeat that again, and you might want to get a pen if you think you need to, and if you can remember it's good. He defines success as the progressive realization of worthwhile goals, stabilized with balance and purified by belief. While Miles Monroe, um, the late preacher and pastor defines it as the fulfillment of your ultimate purpose. Now, there's a lot going on in all these different definitions, but we can pick up a few things and zero in on them. Number one, success is progressive. This means as much as you have a destination of where you want to be and where you want to go, it is also a journey. Success is a is a journey, it's a course, and as long as you know where you're going and you are on the path, then you're a success. The point we're trying to make here is day by day, as long as you know what you want to be and where you're trying to get to, every day you inch closer to it, you have a success. Look, I hate to break it to you, but we all know we will leave this earth, and none of us know when we're going to leave this earth. Now, I pray for you, I pray for myself that we all live at a ripe old age. But if you know someone who can guarantee that we're going to live at a right ripe old age, I want you to introduce them to me because I could do with a guarantee as well. Look, if we don't know when we are going to go, then we should at the very least enjoy the journey and appreciate each step of the way. The point I'm trying to make here is that success is a progressive realization. Every day you get closer to it, you're a success. You can't tell a student who is looking to finish primary school that the moment they get from primary one to primary two, the fact that they haven't finished primary six or year six means that they're a failure. The fact that they're from year one or primary one, and they're now in primary two means they're progressively being successful, and it's the same for us. Age has nothing to do with it. You can meet a lot of people that die very young at the in the early 40s, and they are huge successes because they achieved their life's purpose, and you commit people who are in their 90s who did nothing with their lives, so we need to be careful, it's a progressive realization. So, my my my my my my thing to you here is if you know where you're going and you're chipping away at it slowly but surely you are a success. Number two worthwhile goals. Whatever you're chasing, it has to be worth it. And no, I can't tell you what is worth it because it's your own goal, and it has to be worth your time, your energy, your blood, your sweat, your tears, and bring joy to you. What is a what wild goal to me is not a worthwhile goal to you. What is a what got wild goal to you may not be a worthwhile goal to me, and so on and so forth. So, the worthwhile goal has to be something of value, a thing of notes, of note. Now, for sure, there are some things that clearly universally are good goals, like helping the poor, like mentoring others, inspiring others, but that then again may not even rock your boat the way another goal rocks your boat. But the key thing is make sure whatever you're gonna spend your blood, sweat, energy, and your tears on has to bring joy to you and joy to others. So, number two, make it a worthwhile goal. Number three, balance. This is perhaps the big one. The pursuit of success has to have balance. A religious person, for example, with no idea of the real world, can end up a zealot who has no idea of context. A money-focused person probably works hard with no time for family or friends. So you can focus too much on financial goals, physical goals, career goals, and all to the exclusion of the others. You have no balance and you'll be worn out, and at the end, you wouldn't have achieved much in other spaces of life, and then that particular thing you've achieved won't mean much to you. So, whatever it is you're looking to achieve, try to have balance. I can give you some four easy ones: financial goals, you do need to have financial goals, spiritual goals, you should have because this is where you get your peace and your focus from. Physical goals you need to look after yourself. If you have a clear goal among these four, and you have an idea and you achieve it, you've done well. It's much better to have goals for all these four that are not as high as say, so let's give you an example. Having a goal of earning $200,000 and being spiritually healthy and go on a holiday once a year and be physically fit is a lot better than having one single goal of being worth 10 million where you burn yourself out and you don't achieve anything. So the point here is define what you want your success to be across all of these and more, and then you'll have balance because you're not just all in one side. Number four, belief. You have to have something that guides you, a belief system that helps you make the right decisions, a moral compass, if you will, that helps you maintain your sense of right or wrong. This is critical, as you need something to fall back on when the pressure is on, and you need to make tough decisions. Because trust me, in this pursuit of success, there will be times you have to make the right decision, there will be times when you ethically you have to be correct, when you have to say do or something do or make a decision where if you get it wrong, you would violate your core values and your core systems. So you need to have a belief system. Me personally, as an example, I am a person of faith. So when I know that when times get tough, I have my faith to lean on, and that helps me and guides me to make the right decisions. All these four things that I've said to you can help you formulate your own idea of success. A plan that is goals that are progressive, so you know that you prog you're chasing them progressively, they're worthwhile, they're worth your blood, sweat, and tears, they bring balance to your life, and they're purified by belief. Because when they're pure, they make your goals pure. So all these things can help you formulate your own idea of success, your own target, your own place where when you get there, you can say you are successful. The point of all this is don't measure yourself by others, don't make others' idea of success your own. You'll end up spending a lot of time and a lot of energy chasing something you don't want in the first place. Many years ago, I used to dream of being of working at Canailleworth in London. This is like a fancy location in London where the big banks are, and all the all the people who dress nice go wearing pinstripe suits, lovely brogues and shoes, nice shirts, um, waistcoats, straight nice ties, and I used to dream of working there. Guess what? I got a job there, and when I got there, I realized I hated it. The culture I worked in, the company I worked in anyway wasn't good. People will cut you down to get to the top, and the culture was toxic. Plus, I realized I hated wearing ties. I hated wearing ties for longer than a few hours, and that's when I thought, this is not what I want. This success I think I have is not really what I wanted. True success is balanced, it's pure, it's worthwhile, and it's progressive, and you achieve it day by day. To wrap this up, I just want to say this every day you get closer, you're a success. Don't wait for the end because no one knows when our number is up. The joy is in running the race because you find when you get there, it's not all it's cracked up to be. There's a lot of reasons why a lot of people start things, get to the end, and go, you know what? I have a feeling of anticlimax, and that's the thing. We have to enjoy the journey of waking up every day, working hard, helping people, grabbing opportunities to grow and making an impact on people every day with a smile. And that's my challenge to you. Create your goals, goals that are balanced, that are pure, that you can progressively achieve, and goals that are just give you that peace of mind, that joy. Listen, guys, this life is the only one we get, it's not a rehearsal, so let's live it. Don't be an extra in your own life movie, be you and just go for it, backed up by putting in the work. I hope you enjoyed this episode of You Unleashed, where I've shared ideas and of how to rocket in the workplace and life. Don't forget to share and like our podcast with your friends and let us know what you think. We are not where we want to be, but we are definitely better than what we used to be. Done is better than perfect, and episode 8 is in the books. Get unleashed and stay unleashed. Have a great week.