ELEMIYA PHIRI
IT IS a known fact that every person strives to succeed in many aspects of life. These may include education, business and employment.
Many people aspire to get the best out of life. To yearn for good things in life is one thing and knowing how to get them is another. Given this scenario, it is imperative to know the success tips that would enable you succeed in every facet of life.
Thinking of success without taking appropriate action or applying the success tips is like daydreaming or merely building castles in the air and this will not help you realise achievable goals.
In your quest to achieve something worthwhile, you might have flunked at one time or the other. This is normal. Moreover it is said that failure is not failing but failing to rise when you have fallen. Hence, the need to keep on trying. This is vital as quitters never win and winners never quit.
However, success is not synonymous with a certain category of people. There is nothing like Jim was born to succeed and Jack was born to fail. It is a matter of applying the success tips in your life. Ultimately, these will bring forth the intended results.
The following tips will certainly make you succeed in every endeavour of your life:
(a) Passion:  If you want to succeed in anything, you need to be very passionate about the thing that you want achieve in life. Many successful people have been driven by passion in the midst of hurdles. For instance, Bill Gates had the passion for information technology, Martin Luther King Junior had a passion for justice and our very own first president of Zambia, Kenneth Kaunda had a passion for humanism.
(b) Discipline: This is very important as it is personal code of conduct which guides you in everything that you do in your journey towards success in any undertaking that you pursue. Through discipline, you be compelled to do something in any given time frame without procrastinating it. Furthermore, doing something within the stipulated period will result into positive results. Without it, you will panic, thereby doing things in haste and fail in the end.
(c) Belief: It has been said from time and again that man is a product of what she or he thinks. If you think you are successful, then you are bound to succeed and the opposite holds true. This means that you need to be positive-minded about everything that you want to do. Through the power of belief, you will be able to achieve anything and consequently succeed.
(d) Work: There is no substitute to hard work for anyone who aspires to succeed in life. You need to work very hard if you want to succeed. Moreover, the best results manifest from the input of someone who has the desire to succeed. In an event of lack of hard work, the person cannot succeed. Some pupils and students alike who don’t work hard before writing their examinations, tend to resort to examination malpractice in a bid to pass with flying colours. The repercussions are that the performance of these candidates will be dismal.
(e) Integrity: Success demands high levels of integrity. This entails doing things with some measure of honest devoid of deception. Lack of integrity in whatever you do will make it very difficult for you to succeed. For instance, you will lose business opportunities when your clients discover that you are not honest. This same should apply in work environments. If you are not honest in the manner you execute your duties, your boss will lose trust in you and she or he may fire you.
(f) Team work: For someone to succeed there is need for other people to give the much needed support. This support comes as a result of “spirit de corps”. This team spirit promotes sharing of ideas for mutual benefits. When people are working as a team, everyone has every reason to gain something through success.
(g) Role models: These are the people we look up to. They inspire us by giving us the courage to move forward and achieve their goals. If you want to be a successful businessperson, you need to interact with people who have succeeded in business. And if you want to succeed in a certain career, say marketing for instance, you ought to be found with professionals in the marketing field. You need to learn what it takes for someone to succeed in that career.
(h) Focus: Without focusing on anything, the chances of you succeeding will be negligible. On the other hand, focus entails doing one thing at a time and doing it successfully. This can only be attainable by pursuing a realistic goal. I recall vividly when I was pursuing my accountancy course, there were students with whom I started the course and in the second year the switched to other courses. Worse still, some of them kept on switching from one course to another.
Success is not a rollercoaster affair as many people think. It calls for discipline, passion, discipline, focus, team work, belief, integrity and above all, someone to work hard. Go out and believe that you can succeed because you’re destined to succeed by following the success tips highlighted above.
The author is an accountant and business executive based in Lusaka.