7 Secrets That Steer You To Success

With graduation, you finally get to start on your path to success in life – success or failure, whatever happens, it’s now up to you.

Everyone wants to succeed, but most don’t want it enough to learn how to bring their dreams to life. But you are here at Monster investing in your future; you’re already ahead of the competition.

Here are seven secrets that have helped steer countless people to success.

1. Decide What You Want

You need dreams to motivate you and goals that help you work steadily towards them. What do you really want your life to be like? What do you want to achieve? What house will you live in? What car will you drive, how will you dress, will you have children and where will you take vacations? Your answers, no matter what they are, all have one thing in common: they cost money and getting what you want out of life requires money and that demands a successful career. So decide on what you want out of life and then commit yourself to a practical plan for its achievement.

2. Find Your Backbone & The Fire In Your Belly

There is so much opportunity in the world today that most of the dreams you have for your future are almost certainly achievable. But starting out, you’ll usually have nothing to lean on but your backbone and there will be tough times when there is nothing and no one to see you through but the fire in your belly.

So the big question is whether you are prepared to make the sacrifices required to bring your dreams and goals to life. Make a sacred vow to yourself to invest the time, sweat and tears to get what you want out of life.

3. Have a Career Not A Series Of Same-Old Jobs

Most people get a job, and then a few years later, another and another. They never learn what it takes to break away from the pack, and by the time they reach 40, they don’t have a career, they have just had a series of very similar jobs – and a future that looks like Groundhog Day.

With graduation and the first few years of professional life, the party’s over and real life has begun. Are you willing to recognize and leave behind the people and behaviors that will drag you down? It could mean the difference between getting what you want out of life – or not.

4. To Reach The Stars You Need A Plan

Life flies by while you are making plans to have one. If you intend to bring your dreams to life, you can’t procrastinate, you have to start now. Define your goals, focus and stay on task:

1. Set concrete long-term goals and envision a path that will take you there.
2. Break these goals down into the strides that will take you along the path to reach them, “To get to ______ by the time I’m 35, I’ll need to be able to do _______ by the time I’m 30 and that will mean gaining ____ experience by the time I’m 27.”
3. Then break those big strides down into ever smaller steps, until you have steps broken into tiny enough tasks that one of them can be started and maybe completed today.

There’s no mystery to achievement, it’s just having a plan of attack broken down into these small enough tasks so that there is always something you can do – now, today, even in the next 10 minutes as you wait in some dumb line.

5. Embrace Your Defeats and Failures

People who never make mistakes, who never experience failure or suffer defeat, are the people who never do anything.

When you have places to go in life, you’ll make mistakes and experience countless defeats and failures along the way and this is where most fools give up. I’ve written 17 career books that are published all over the world, but the first one was rejected by 65 publishers – and those 65 defeats, after so much effort, taught me what it takes to survive until you succeed.

You will always learn more from your mistakes, failures and defeats than from your successes. So don’t let them overwhelm or sidetrack you from your goals, see every setback as another signpost that re-directs you towards the path of success.

6. Keep Up With Change

You must keep pace with the changing demands of the employment market for your profession. Every day, technology changes the skills you need to compete, and if you are not consistently developing new skills, your economic stability is eroding with the passing relevance of your existing skills.

At least twice a year, visit Monster and collect six job postings for the job you have today and six job postings for the job you want next. Look for in-demand skills that you don’t have and then set about developing them. Your job will be safer, you’ll be more desirable to other employers and you’ll develop the cutting edge skills that will speed your path to a successful life.

7. Success is a Marathon – Not a Sprint

If you know where you stand today and where you want to stand someday, then you can build a path that takes you there. Getting what you want out of life, being able to live a successful life as you see it, isn’t achieved overnight, but it will be achieved – when you want it badly enough.

If you are serious about success, then whatever your goals, the sooner you start toward them the better. Start that journey today and never let anything distract you from earning the life you want.