Is it harder to attain success than to maintain it?

When it comes to success, most people believe that it is harder to attain it than to maintain it. I believe that it is equally hard to maintain it as to attain it. You can find examples in people who succeed young and hear how often they become dependent on drugs to keep up with their success. Michael Jackson exemplifies how hard it is to maintain one’s success. Another example you can find is from people who lose weight successfully just to gain back a few months down the road. It is not that easy to maintain success.

As Richard St. John said it, “Success is not a one way street. Success is a continuous journey.”

Most people whether consciously or unconsciously know this. Therefore, the fear of success kicks in. If you do not succeed, there would not be any pressure to maintain the success. The fear of failure is pretty much the same thing. If you do not succeed, you cannot fail. It is like; if you do not take the test, you cannot fail. You can go through adult life without taking any tests.

How do we then, overcome the fear?

One way to do it is to not focus on the success. We focus instead on what we want to do. If you love to do something, it is enjoyable even if you do it poorly. After doing it over a long period of time, you probably get very good at it, and success comes eventually. However, it is not easy to find out what one loves to do most. So far, I do not think that I have found out my singular passion yet.

Do not despair. If you are like me, focus instead on what you do not want to do. I know absolutely for sure that I do not want to go to work (work in this sense is defined as 9 to 5 on salary or wage). In order not to work, I had to work (and convince my companion to do the same) intensively for 7 years. We both remembered clearly the conversation in the early 90s’. I said to Richard that we should work for 7 to 10 years and save $100,000 and buy a small cottage in the country and an old truck. We would then make our living selling some kind of crafts. So far we have achieved more than what we have set out to do. Richard quit his work in 2002 and I quit mine in 2003. We are living in a semi-country setting and Richard drives a relatively new truck. I am selling beaded jewelry through C-Cassia. January to March every year, we leave Montreal to stay in tropical Sanya in China. Last year, we took a week detour in San Francisco and will do the same this year.

It is possible to do what you do not want to do as long as there is a time span, in my case it is 7 years. Most children know that. How many of them like to do what their parents tell them to do? They do them because they know (think) once they leave home they can do whatever they want.

We are now living our dream life because the goal we set in the past. Our new goal right now is to form habits that will allow us to live healthy and gracefully, which I shall talk about it another time.

Therefore, my conclusion is that the most important aspect of attaining and maintaining success is to continuously set and re-set goals.