What if success was actually intentional?

    We’ve socially and culturally been trained to see those who succeed at life as talented geniuses or as the luckiest few among us all. Yet, every now and then, seemingly out of nowhere, we hear of some new overnight success; this man or this woman we knew nothing about last year, but now he or she is the new sensation. And yet again, we instinctively attribute some special powers to them in an effort to justify why we could never be one of them.

   But what if instead we stop and question our perception of success. What is it? How does it come to be? Only then can we rectify our poor judgement on the matter. Earl Nightingale define ‘success’ as the progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal. Which means whomever has a goal towards which they are working is a successful person; anybody who knows what they are doing and where they are going is a success. You see, even by definition itself, those of us working on a goal are already on our way to success.

   However, we can truly get there only if we go about it in an intentional fashion. What do I mean by that? I’ll explain. The people who succeeded not only did they envision success, but they also had a well written plan that they had forced themselves to follow every single day; it didn’t matter the season or whether they felt like it or not. Their intentionality gave birth to discipline, perseverance, and to many sacrifices along the way. Intentionality makes success not only possible, but also replicable. From Martin Luther King Jr. to the late Steve Jobs, from great parents to a brilliant student in the classroom, from a wonderful employer to an outstanding employee... each one of those individuals owes their remarkable success to them having a dream and being intentional about it in the first place.