In my last article I invited a professional to share her thoughts and experience. As this is an online magazine for young people I thought that it is important to write about the experiences of young people, therefore in this article I will be sharing my own experience as a young person in business.
It is very important that I point out before you read on that my blog is very much a platform for sharing ideas/opinions/experiences. So whilst this article may not be fully evolved it was created to act as a catalyst for wider discussion.
People view success in a number of different ways; whether the achievement is small or big, handling success is vital in any profession.
My experiences allow to me to talk about achieving success within the business world. When someone achieves something it is easy to ease up on your work levels, however it is very important that we view successes in the correct light. I will use business as an example, however the message behind this article can be carried over to any industry.
There are two morals that I was taught, firstly to learn how to tap yourself on the back and thus not to expect other people to do this for you. Secondly that you should always question what your achievement will subsequently allow you to do. I do not necessarily mean this in a financial sense but in relation to wider goals. For example, when I started my company I managed to gain funding, this, in my eyes, was a major achievement, however I could not allow myself to be engulfed by the feeling of success but see it as a gateway to achieving other, wider, objectives. It is so easy to be enveloped by this, positive feeling, however I believe you should always view this as a temporary sensation, this allows you to maintain a more strategic mindset. I view business as an ever changing, and evolving set of experiences, each one can bring success but should never be viewed singularly, but as a significant part of the wider picture.
I can imagine that some of you think this article is quite negative, and possibly ‘playing-down’ peoples achievements. However I am merely trying to put forward the idea that success is temporary and should be viewed in the correct light in order to get the most out of each accomplishment. For example, people may view cooking a new recipe correctly as just a necessary task in order to survive, without dwelling on it or viewing it as a success. However many people view perfecting a new process at work, or gaining a promotion as a major achievement, both vital to survival, albeit in different spheres, but viewed very differently. Why is this? Why do people view success differently in their working life and their personal life? I believe this comes down to context, a promotion may appear more significant to their survival but often forget all of the smaller tasks that they achieved in order to gain the promotion.
This is the principle that I use most often when building my company; when I deem myself successful I analyse what and why I have achieved and try to recreate the process in my subsequent tasks.
I would love to hear your opinions on this subject, please feel free to email me your responses to marc@inspiringyoungpeople.com and I will strive to answer them all personally.
Thanks for reading!