In this video Psychologist Dr Becky Spelman talks about how to be successful. What really counts as success, how to know where to draw the line and how to know if you are spending your time in the right away. Although success doesn’t happen over night Dr Becky discusses how to set realistic goals for success.

Video Transcript

Hi. I’m Dr. Becky Spelman. I’m registered psychologist. I often get asked by people “How can I be more successful?” or “How can I find success in something that I focus on?” In being successful, there are a few tips that I give people.

Number one is decide what you want to put all your energy and focus on. It should be something that you are passionate about. If you want to be successful, you have to pick a somewhat realistic goal but you can have creativity in that goal as well. You can have a vision to create something big from a passion or love that you have. You have to really pick one thing, and spend a lot of your working life on that one thing or a lot of your time on that one thing. Don’t jump about too much. Really stay focused on that thing that you want to be quite accomplished in. This is something you’re going to need to consistently work on.

First of all, when you’re new to this area, you need to be working on it a lot of the time. And that might require throwing your life a little bit off balance initially; putting an obsessive focus into something and consistently, on a daily basis, working very, very hard in that area but then to continue to be successful, you have to also look after yourself. That includes your own well-being, having some enjoyment in your life and looking after your mental health.

Some people get mistaken in thinking that actually they become a workaholic, they spent all their time working, they’re going to be successful. But is someone really successful if they’re not successful in the rest of the areas of their life such as in their relationships and their friendships? Just because someone establishes a great level of financial success, are they really successful if they don’t have full rounded success?

When we talk about success, I’m not just talking about career success. I’m also talking about anything that you want to be successful. You do need to really focus on it. You need to be highly motivated to accomplish this. You also have to believe that it can be accomplished. If you really do want to succeed, then all of the time and effort that you put into something will pay off as long as your goals are realistic. Just stay persistent, and don’t let anyone else’s opinions or doubts get in the way of your belief that you can actually succeed.

This is particularly difficult for my clients who work in the creative industries. For example, I’ve been working with a client who decided to be full maker. She kept coming to me questions like “Do you think I’m doing the right thing?”, almost kind of wanting that reassurance from me that actually her chosen career was something that she should be spending time on. The advice that I gave was “Well, has anyone else made a career out of this?” Her answer was yes. We were trying to work together in helping her decide whether her goal was realistic and then, we looked at well how long could she spend on that particular career before actually realizing it wasn’t working. She realized that actually because she was able to make a living and she had enough money to pay her bills, she was actually able to really spend a lot of time in her chosen area. We looked at some of the things that were affecting her motivation. Some of these have to do with belief in herself and also going against the grain. Her family members didn’t work the creative industry and that was something that she really struggled with.

So sometimes, our self-talk and our beliefs can actually get in the way or sometimes, our fear of failure can get in the way. Don’t let your fear of failure affect your decision making and affect your drive, motivation and behaviors in terms of trying to be successful. If you do have some fear of failure which is quite common to someone who is going down an entrepreneurial route or going into a creative industry, then that’s fine. That’s quite normal to doubt yourself and to be afraid that it may not pay off or may not work but don’t let those fears stop you from taking the action in the first place. Be prepared to fail because a lot of people who have had failed businesses are now incredibly successful because they have learned a lot from their failings.

Myself as an entrepreneur, I didn’t succeed straightaway. I didn’t do everything right. In fact, I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my business dealings but I’ve never looked at any of those mistakes with regret because I’ve learned from every single one of them. So if you really do want to be successful and deem yourself not there yet, pick a topic that you’re going to focus on. Set aside a lot of time to focus on that. Set targets on a daily basis. What are you going to do on a daily basis in order to work towards your goal and what’s your timeframe? When you going to say “Actually, this is something that has now paid off enough and I can keep doing it” or “I need to now, and I need to focus on something different because this is not a viable success route”?

I hope you found some of these tips helpful. I’m Dr. Becky Spelman. And if you got any questions about anything in this video, you can get in touch.

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