Your Personal Success Formula

“To be nobody but yourself – in a world which is doing its best night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.”
- EE Cummings.

Not all tools and success formulas will work for you

He was a little boy, but he was smart, and he was bold. He was intelligent and courageous enough to reject something that worked for a more experienced person, simply because he knew it wouldn’t work for him. I’m referring to biblical David who refused to fight the giant Goliath with the weapons of his king, Saul.
Hear him:

“I cannot go in these…because I’m not used to them.” So he took them off. 1 Samuel 17:39b

No wise man would attempt to re-invent the wheel. It’s a veritable element of wisdom to build on the experience and wisdom of others. The experience of other more accomplished individuals is an invaluable asset for your own success in life. Only fools stumble through life wasting time and energy trying to learn and do things from their own experience.
Yet, you need to have the willingness, boldness, and mental acuity to embrace the fact that not all tools and success formulas will work for you.

David had his own personal success weapons with which he had already killed a lion and a bear in the wilderness, and with which he eventually killed the giant Goliath. He had fine-tuned these skills, and tools in the wilderness – a place of silence, solitude, and self discovery. He had taken advantage of his time in the wilderness to tune in to himself…to discover his own uniqueness and personal success formula. He became so established in the awareness of his own individual uniqueness that neither family nor national expressions of the status quo could intimidate him.
Consequently he was able to bring a new dimension of divinity into reality.

Don’t be cowed by successful personalities and their accomplishments

Successful people have successful personalities. Successful personalities exude intimidating aura. This is why it’s so easy to live in their shadows. It takes a great deal of courage and self awareness to retain your uniqueness in the face of an obviously very accomplished and highly celebrated person.
Furthermore, successful people are often very generous individuals. They want you to succeed too. This is why they share their stories, their experiences, and their formulas. But what they are often blinded to by their enthusiasm to help others is the fact that their formulas will not work for everybody!
You must appreciate this blindness so that you don’t lose yourself in their enthusiasm to help you.

We know from elementary maths that every formula has at least three basic elements – constants, variables, and outcomes. It is no different in the case of formulas for success in any arena of life.
Today there are so many tips, keys, and formulas out there on practically everything! There are success formulas for marriage, web traffic, wealth creation, blah…blah…blah. Ensure that you understand the fact that these formulas have features that are constant, and those that are variables.

Certain features of the formula for success in any field are constants, while others are variables. Develop your intuitive ability to discern these nuances and distinctions.

Will Guy Kawasaki’s personal success formula work for all micro-bloggers? I don’t think so.
Will Steve Pavlina’s personal success formula work for all bloggers? Nah, nah, nah.
Will Warren Buffet’s personal success formula work for all investors? No.
Will Bill Gates personal success formula work for all entrepreneurs? Of course not!
Will Billy Graham’s personal success formula work for all evangelists? Not at all.
Will Yonghi Cho’s personal success formula work for all church pastors? Definitely not.

You = You + Unique

Don’t try to be another Warren Buffet…or Steve Pavlina…or anybody else for that matter.
That would amount to a waste of who you are!
Be bold and go for you!
Aim at being you!
You =[You +Unique!]

Take a deep breath..look inwards..discover your own uniqueness; be bold,then do only what works for you and then discard all other prescriptions!

You have your own unique formula.
Don’t try to be someone else.
Don’t waste the person you are.
Be bold and be the best you.

Arise and guard your uniqueness!
Do not be intimidated by the edited story lines of ‘successful’ people.
You can only make it by being you!

I believe that certain features of their success formulas are universal constants that apply to everyone in their respective fields. But there are aspects of their success formulas that are unique, and personal to them. In this case, it would be a mistake for you as, say a church pastor, to try to succeed by duplicating Yonghi Cho’s personal success formula for mega-church growth. It will not work for you simply because, you are not David Yonghi Cho!

I love the way Saddleback’s Pastor, Rick Warren frames it, “Your uniqueness is a scientific fact of life. When God made you, he broke the mold. There never has been, and never will be, anybody exactly like you.”

Discover your personal success formula and guard your uniqueness

Whoever you are, and whatever be the career path that you’ve chosen, I dare you to discover yourself, discover your personal success formula, and by all means, and with all your might, guard your uniqueness.

“Knowing yourself is the most difficult task any of us faces. But until you truly know yourself, strengths, weaknesses, know what you want to do and why you want to do it, you cannot succeed in any but the most superficial sense of the word.” ~ Warren Bennis

Life is full of bullies. You cannot defeat the various giants and bullies of your life with another man’s tools regardless of how accomplished they may be.
Like David, you must discover your personal success formula and apply it in life’s tough challenges.
This demands answers to introspective questions such as those I’ve already dealt with in other posts on this site, like:

• What is the core of your expertise?
• What are you good at?
• What inspires you?

What is the greatest challenge you are faced with in your bid to be no one else but you?
Who is your number one obstacle?

Tags: success, personal success, success formula uniqueness

Tags: discover-yourself