If you truly believe in yourself and in your capabilities, you will achieve all the things your heart desires. Success initially emanates from your heart and your mind, and more importantly, from your own belief. You have to believe in your strength, intuition and natural endowment. Most people usually fail in life because they tend to put chariots in front of the horses.

They do not render themselves a chance to dream, try and fail. They usually listen to other people when they say, “You will not make it because so and so have failed prior to you,” and so you get discouraged and stop trying. It is actually bad to allow other people’s thinking to drown your own thinking. Your intuition knows better than anyone. You should not undermine what your brain tells you; it even knows better than you. You should first give everything you can in order to execute the best shot before you decide to quit. You will find a great deal of mistakes along the way and maybe experience a huge failure. But, see this setback as a learning curve. Consequently, you will be able to learn from your downfalls. Hence, the next time you will be a success, but it is only when you believe in yourself and in what you are doing.

Leave out a cowardly mentality and give everything a try before you call it quits. Leave your comfort zone and initiate a change in your life. You are the only one determining your success and your failure. No one will leave their pursuits to lead you to success. Stand on your own and seek assistance where needed, but never entirely rely on other people. They will fail you when you least expect it. So, always put your complete thoughts on whatever you believe in and you will be successful.

We cannot deny the fact that there are circumstances and people out there who are quick to sabotage our plans and to suppress our thinking, but we should always try our level best to avoid their discouragement. Let us also avoid being people pleasers and messing up our future by listening to people who are normally encouraging us to throw away our ideas because of their own insecurities in life. Actually, we do not need their validation in our pursuits of success. We can sometimes decide to consult them to seek advice, but at the end of the day the last decision is ours. Alas, some of the people we are listening to have not yet achieved anything in life! Why, then, are we listening to their blind advice? Who is to blame when they pull you back in life? You will blame no one but yourself.

It is high time that every dog is for himself. You should, above all, believe in yourself no matter what. Then take risks, learn from your faults and bring change in your life. Quit saying you want to see certain changes being made for you; rather, initiate the change you want to see. You do not want anyone’s approval and validation in your way to success, but you need self-belief to put your ideas into action. And you should never give up without trying. It is more beneficial to fail trying than to fail not trying at all.

When you listen to the success stories of other successful people, you will find that they have a number of things in common: they have failed a number of times before, and from each failure, a good lesson was learned. Others have refused to throw in the towel when they were told that they would not succeed…suppose they did not rely heavily on their beliefs; perhaps they would not have achieved their success. They will also tell you that there is no success without failure and there is no such thing as an overnight success. Meaning, you always need to be patient.

Steve Jobs once said, “Sometimes the patient needs to taste the medicine.” I believe that every person should go through failure first to learn. For instance, a successful businessman who has gone through failure before, his business is not easily shut down due to mismanagement because he has learned from the mistakes he made during the growth stage of his business. However, once his business is transmitted to another person who is inexperienced, there is a high risk of failure.

When failure strikes, resist the temptation to quit. Stand up, dust yourself and start anew. I do think that failure is an essential ingredient for every success; failure is a foundation where everlasting success is built. Thus, the two cannot be separated. They all go together, hand in hand. You first fail, then you become successful, and as the saying goes, “There is no success without a failure.” People who have failed before become better people if they learn from their errors.

Some people are better at copying others, but most of the time they tend to copy bad things instead of the beneficial ones. Even though I am not a big fanatic of copycats, I can suggest that you copy successful people who first had to learn from their mistakes to become successful. I encourage people to align themselves with successful people and to learn from them if they too want to be successful. These people will pump a lot of good information into your brain. You should stay away from negative people, the ones who say you’re not good enough to make a success out of your life..

Each and every one of us should know our strong and weak points. Once we know what our weaknesses and strengths are, then no Tom, Dick and Harry can tell us otherwise. We are the ones who really understand our goals and clearly see our vision. If we admit to be manipulated easily by others and fail to become what we are destined to be, we are the ones to shoulder the blame. This is your life, so propel it and stir it in your own direction.

You should not be afraid to take the front position to showcase what you are capable of by being the example-setter, the trend-setter and the mastermind of everything you want to achieve. It is just when you are brave enough that you are able to tap into your think tank; you can be what you want to be and lead a successful life.

Never listen to anyone encouraging you to give up, trying and telling you that you cannot do it. You do not need anyone’s opinion and permission to chase after success. Since no man is an island, you can seek some advice from other people, but never have their own thinking take precedence over your own. You are the one to take a lead role in your journey to success.

If you can be one of the generation thinkers who do not only think for now and for themselves, but for tomorrow and for more generations to come, your success is assured. Every day you should make sound decisions and dictate how you want to visualise your life in the coming years. And surely one day you will be one of the most successful people, who took the initiative to modify their lives and the lives of others from the worst state to the better state.

You were placed on this planet Earth to be successful in any field your life is revolving around. You do not have to chase others in their pursuits to be successful. This particularly means that you can shine wherever you are, regardless of whatever you are performing. You should recognize your potential and try to become better in everything you are executing.

This draws me close to a success story of a mere Mosotho herdsman that I once heard, who had the opportunity to fly to Italy to share with the Italians his secret of success in his daily work of looking after the cattle and to learn from them on how best he can improve as the herdsman. This really demonstrates that if we can seriously devote our time and energy on whatever we are doing, we can achieve more success. We don’t need to do what everyone else is doing; we can shine wherever we are. You need to enjoy what you do and the rewards will just follow.

Trust in yourself, your strength and your abilities, and then you will achieve greatness.

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