Strategies that will hasten your success

By Bayo Ogunmupe The path to success is a long and arduous road. The reason why many people don't achieve their ultimate aim in life is because they lack the discipline to maintain their focus on their end goal. To help you remain disciplined and focused, here are five strategies you must adopt to achieve success. One, choosing a goal; in the choice of your ultimate end goal, it is only after you have chosen a goal that you start working on baby steps you need to take to inch yourself towards your particular goal. For example, Nigeria's only Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, early in his career as a university teacher, academic and researcher, focused on winning the Nobel prize. To achieve it, he took the first degree in English Literature two times in order to qualify as a university teacher After a first class degree, he didn't bother for higher degrees, they ultimately followed later. He then settled than to writing, acting and writing plays as a dramatist. He covered all the known genres of literature: acting, writing plays, novels, poetry, translating Ogboju Ode Ninu Igbo Irunmole to the English language. He then brought forth the cultural practices of Nigerians not known to the world at that time. He is perhaps the first person to bring to the world that Nigerians have culture and belief systems distinguishable from those of savages. He wrote more than 50 books: plays, poems, novels, essays, criticism and newspaper articles. Eventually he was given the Nobel prize for literature in 1986, the first black African to be so honoured. Thus he eclipsed his contemporaries who became vice chancellor of universities. Nigeria has had more a thousand vice chancellors since 1986, but we're stuck with only one Nobel prizewinner. That's the importance of accurate goal setting. Two, breaking your goal down into small and easily achievable steps, that will not overwhelm you. These steps need to be simple, clear and manageable. By breaking your end goal to smaller bits you ensure the ultimate achievement of your ambition. Three, by breaking your goal into smaller steps you are now left with going into the action of actually executing your goal piece by piece. In your race for excellence, never compare yourself to another person. The destiny of the other person is different from yours. Just simply aim at executing one task after another. That way you see yourself making progress. Four, celebrate every achieved milestone, no matter how small. Each celebration serves as a motive force in your achievement of the next milestone. The celebration of one milestone emboldens you with greater confidence to hit the next target and ultimately your end goal. However, the bottom line is, always have an end goal in mind. by celebrating every time you cross a milestone, the achievement of your ambition becomes inevitable. Finally, the confidence gained crossing each milestone changes the way you treat yourself. Self confidence gained by achievement makes you realize it isn't your job to change yourself in order to become someone else's idea of a worthwhile human being. Think better, live better. Don't allow the opinion of others to dominate you in the present. You are not what others say about you. You are not what happened to you. You are what you choose to become at the moment. Permit yourself to meet your own needs. Choose to honour your feelings and emotions. Choose to make self love and self care your top priority. Choose to think better about yourself, so you can live better in spite of the circumstances you face. Heal yourself by refusing to belittle yourself. They conquer who believe they can.