Most people who, when talking about success in getting whatever you seek in life through some form of goal setting and achieving technique that they normally would charge to teach you, would focus only upon the aspects or dimensions that deal with yourself and your action.
Yet one of the strongest and most effective ways to getting whatever you want in life is to help others get what they want, whether or not what you want and what they won’t happen to be similar.
I believe you’ve heard of the golden rule – Do to others what you would want others to do to you.
If you’ve been living your life from a selfish or self-centered philosophy so far, and you’ve found yourself extremely successful living that way, good for you.
But let me tell you that your success in life will be magnified and grow manifold if you now choose to perhaps focus a portion of your life, your actions, your thinking, your time, and energy towards the benefit of fulfillment or others.
Take a moment to briefly and generally examine the situation of your life right now. Ask yourself these questions:-
What is missing in my life right now?
What do I feel is missing?
What else do I want or need to make my life more complete or fulfilled?
What are the goals that I still have to achieve in order to move forward in my life in the context with which I have defined it?
If I already know my self-defined life purpose, will I say that I have successfully moved forward in realizing that purpose more fully?
If I have not yet known my life purpose or do not yet have a clear one, how can I find out and know what my self-defined life purpose is?
Once you have asked yourself these questions, proceed to take a look at your past:-
Had there been any incidents in which I had successfully achieved what I sought out to achieve because I had helped others achieve what they wanted to achieve?
If there were a few such incidents, how did I help those others who had sought my help in attaining whatever they had wanted to attain?
If there were none, then, perhaps there had been incidents in which I had not succeeded in getting what I wanted because I had refused to help some people who really needed help from me in getting what they wanted, is this true?
If true, how can I make amends by helping those people who had needed my help or helping others who will need my help in the future, to the best of my abilities?
If false, was my success in a particular endeavor in the past due to some selfish maneuvers or a little trickery on my part? If so, had there been any negative consequences of these unethical actions of mine?
Alright. That was perhaps too many questions for you. If you find yourself very engaged in this process and your answers or ideas that are flowing from your mind seem to be a bit too much to handle, you may want to write these questions down and the answers you have found in your journal or some piece of paper.
Remember what Socrates said, which was also what one of my Imams (I am Muslim, but this teaching, in particular, applies universally to every human being) had said, ‘An unexamined life is not worth living’.
How many days of your life have you lived in which you have missed examining your actions, thoughts, and attitudes?