SEPTEMBER 10, 2021
We all hear rags to riches stories from time to time.
The stories of great athletes, startup founders, political leaders, artists, and many others inspire us to go after our dreams and achieve them. They show us all that we need to do to achieve success and get to the level of elite performers.
But, what after that?
What happens after we get to our goals and our dreams? What do we do next, relax or go after another goal?
That’s something we don’t talk about a lot, and that’s why we don’t hear riches to rags stories that often, even though they are equally important.
Riches to rags stories tell us what we should avoid after we achieve success.
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What happens after we achieve success?
Inspirational success stories are enough to get you to your goals, but after that, you need to do something different.
You can’t just get to your goal and then stop taking any action. You need to do your best to maintain your success.
Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and other successful people are at the top not because they do one big thing but because they keep improving and progressing.
Always remember—just becoming successful once will not help you succeed throughout your life.
Consider this, you get an award for being the best dancer in the world, and as you receive the award, you stand in one spot, and the spotlight fixates on you. What if you just keep standing there because you think you’ve succeeded, and the spotlight should be on you forever?
Does this make sense? Will anybody ever do this?
No. Achieving success once does not guarantee you lifelong success.
What Happens if you don’t maintain your success?
When you don’t maintain your success, you toss all your efforts into the dustbin and become another riches to rags story.
If you work hard and get a gold medal at the Olympics, you can’t just stop there and celebrate all your life. To become truly successful, you must aim to win as many medals as possible in your career.
Many people who win in reality shows aren’t able to maintain that success. That’s why very few of these winners make it big in their industries.
In the same way, you can create an enormous business empire like Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple, but if you don’t maintain that success, your business will go bankrupt, and you will become just another riches to rags story.
Why are people unable to maintain their success?
Most people are unable to maintain their success because:
- They stop taking action. If someone loses 30 kilograms by exercising and dieting, they’ll gain that weight back if they don’t continue following their routine. Similarly, if you stop doing the things that made you successful in the first place, you will be unable to maintain that success.
- They have a weak foundation. Many successful people let their ego take over them and forget their values which eventually causes their building of success to collapse.
- They stop learning. In today’s fast-paced world, things change every moment, but some successful people think they know all about their work and stop learning. They don’t grow and start preparing for their downfall.
- They lack a vision. Most people chase fancy things and results like money and fame but don’t have a clear idea of what they truly want. That’s why their success becomes short-lived.
How to Maintain Success?
It’s simple, do the opposite of what you read in the previous section.
Along with that, you need to understand how to do that as well.
- Be consistent. To maintain your success, you need to take even more actions than you did to achieve that success.
Jeff Bezos is the wealthiest person in the world not because he didn’t limit Amazon to just a book store and scaled it to the world’s largest e-commerce marketplace.
Michael Phelps became one of the greatest swimmers in the world because he took massive action and didn’t limit his achievements to just one medal.
In the same way, you need to be consistent in whatever you do,
- Be humble. Don’t fly high in ego and instead focus on building a solid foundation.
If you create a hundred-story high building, which area will you give the most time and effort to strengthen? It is the foundation.
In the same way, if you want to achieve success and maintain it, you need to create a solid foundation.
Even when the strongest winds come to knock down your building of success, it will stay put because the foundation is strong.
- Have a growth mindset.
When Amazon became successful, Jeff Bezos did not think, “My work is done, and now I can just sit back and do nothing.”
Instead, he focused on growing Amazon even further, which makes him and Amazon continuously successful.
It does not matter what kind of work you do. You should focus on growing more and more and scaling to a larger level. When this happens, you keep creating success again and again.
- Have a clear vision.
Most people set goals like, “I want to get a job for 10000 dollars a month, and I’ll be successful.”
“I want to build a 100 Million Dollar Business, and then I’ll be successful.”
But have you ever thought about what you will do after that and how your life will change?
For most people, the answer is no, and that is a problem.
You need to have clarity of what you want to do and your next goals because that is the only way you will be motivated to continue taking action and keep your success afloat.
Conclusion
Achieving success is easy, but maintaining it is difficult.
It will require passion, patience, hard work, massive action, clarity, and a positive mindset.
Now the choice is up to you. Do you want to become a rags to riches person and stay at the riches or come back to the rags again?
Partnering in your success, happiness, and growth,
Prabhsimrat