Success. Something every one of us strive for in life. Many people think that just hard work will result in success. Work for 12 hours a day, 14 hours a day. But hard work alone will not lead to success. Smart working combined with proper planning and discipline will result in achieving your dreams. Visualizing progress is the main task here. If you have a company to run, you need to visualize what it will look like in the next 5 or 10 years. If you are just starting your career you need to decide what you want to become and visualize yourself in that position.

Here are 5 ways in which you can figure out your pathway to success.

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1. Identify Your Passion

Discover those things which you do which make your heart flutter and your mind buzz with excitement. Those are the things which you can do in life without getting tired and without giving up on the way. Only when you find that one thing which you love doing will you be able to set it as a target for yourself and work towards achieving it.

2. Set Clear Goals

Most people often have vague goals. “I will work in the fashion industry.” Or something like “I will make a billion dollars in 10 years.” How you will make a billion dollars and what role you will play in the fashion industry are questions which need to be answered. Clear goals look like “I will be the CEO of Google.” It could even be something small like “I will score x percentage in my upcoming exam.” Whatever goal you set for yourself must be precise and accurate. Only then will working towards it become easy and it will be an achievable goal. 

3. Intermediate Baby Goals

Baby steps are what it takes whenever you start out on something. Set small intermediate goals which finally lead to the larger goal. This will serve as checkpoints on the way which will make sure you are working on the right path. Achieving a goal isn’t an overnight task. It takes months and years of hard work. Setting small goals along the way will train your mind into not diverting from the larger goal. If we do not do this, our minds will lax away from the goal at hand and we will not work towards achieving it.

4. Seek Accountability

There are always speed bumps on any road. Similarly, there will be hurdles on your road to success. Sometimes a situation needs to be judged and something some critical points need to be analysed. Seeking external help at this point of time will aid in making a better decision. A third person’s opinion will always broaden your outlook towards a certain matter. It may also lead to some ideas and certain lines of thought which may not have been considered before.

5. Turn on That Switch in Your Brain

A car will not start unless the ignition is turned on. A light will not come on unless the switch is turned on. Our brains will not start functioning in high capacity unless we turn on that switch in our minds which will make us go on full throttle till we achieve what we want. Find that switch and turn it on. Unless the motivation to achieve what we want comes from within we cannot get to where we want to be. External factors can motivate us only to a certain extent. After that it is all up to us. People can come along with us on this path only up to a certain point. After that we are all on our own. We need to learn to work without that external push. The fire should move from being at your legs to being inside your stomach. That’s when success can be achieved.