PART 11. SUCCESS – 5 Principles of Personal Possibilities

So far, we have seen that there is incidental success and there is permanent success. Incidental is cherry picking anything you can find in your life to label as a credit to you. Often this is also mistaken for gratitude. But gratitude is thankful to a power greater than you for what goes well and what doesn’t. So, that mistake is only for beginners. However, no matter what stage of life you are in, from beginner to advanced, it is so easy to fall into the trap of incidental success by taking credit for what happens on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

TAKE NO CREDIT TAKE NO BLAME 

Real Success, then, maybe defined tentatively as the achievement of best interest of self and other of evidence that we are on the right path. Treating achievements as stepping stones rather than stopping stones.

In Nepal, during May, you’ll frequently meet people who have just climbed the highest mountain in the world and usually at costs of over $100,000 and three or four years of training. When you meet them and chat, and ask about the climb, they quickly thank the mountain for allowing their success (real gratitude) but quickly swing the chat to the next adventure (stepping stones).

Success may be defined for the individual as physical, intellectual, financial, social, political, moral, and so on through the long list of the fields of effort.

When we make self interest, plus other interest the test of success, we begin to discover certain facts, which are usually obscured by bad thinking. 

This obscuring thought causes a vast amount of perplexity and trouble in people’s lives.

Some facts about success

1. A persons success engages, and is limited by, their endowments, their opportunities, their environment, their relation to life, and their future vision. 

These factors are involved in any measure of success. It is also true, that we cannot transcend these factors. They constitute limits. But observe, one may achieve the degree of success, which engages, partly or fully, the above factors, some or all of them. Yet, at the same time, they may seem to be unsuccessful, in their own opinion, relative to their own ambition, or, in the judgement of others. Because we can create our ambitions, and others can project their ambitions for us, when we or they look from the point of view of various possibilities, and non-existing relations in life,

“SOMEDAYISLE – is not an Island in the Whitsundays”

Therefore, success must be determined by the consciousness of the fully awakened individual considered in context to, and in reference to, conditions as they are now, not as they might be, and never with reference to the judgement of others. This instance of the living consciousness may involve mistakes, but those are irrelevant.

2. The five fold concept of success

1. If one is using their personal power to the very best advantage for them, so far as they know, that is success.
2. If one is seizing the opportunities in the best possible way for them, so far as they know, that is success.
3. If one is endeavouring to fulfill their life relations, as well as they consciously can, for them, that is success.
4. If one is honestly striving to adjust themselves to their environment, and so striving to improve that environment in the completest measure possible to them, so far as they know, that is success.
5. If one is industriously and intelligently, endeavouring to make the present vision of a better future real, doing as well as they can, so far as they know, that is success.

So we can honestly say these attainment or efforts constitute success, no matter what one’s mental, depression, self expectation, fantasies or dreams, or the opinions of others may be.

“I’ll go anywhere, pay any price, do whatever it takes to deliver my service of love to the world”

3. With this definition of success, we discover a broad ground for encouragement (Reward)

• The effort to be healthy, may fail in the ideal, yet prove successful as a good fight.
• The struggle for brainpower and academic knowledge may fail in the ideal, yet become successful by developing strong personality through that struggle.
• The battle for moral character and usefulness (wealth) may fail in the ideal, yet demonstrate enormous success because the energy and effort put into it have invariably been multiplied.

What you appreciate grows. If you cannot appreciate the small you will never arrive. 

If you are waiting to achieve success in order to believe success, you’ll be waiting a long time.

Nothing is ever missing just changes in form

4. Out of every honest undertaking people pull the product of themselves multiplied into the effort.

• There is no such thing as a half hearted success story. 
• The effort alone is the reward
• To every thing there is a season
• If you put yourself up people will pull you down
• A person who does no make an honest wholehearted effort attracts calamities, disasters and humbling circumstances until they do make a whole hearted effort.
• People treat you as you treat yourself, no better, no worse.
• The purpose of a relationship is not happiness. It is support and challenge …

5. The person who is unsuccessful failed to attempt the best use of their powers, their opportunities and their environment, they ignored right relations to life, and lived in the moment, regardless of their ambition for the future.

Even financial success, which is the lowest known form of success, considered solely in itself, induce the test of the statements. Financial success costs the smallest particle of best self or it is intentionally jeopardised. Financial success, with even the least real interests of others at heart, is a failure.

If you build your “SELF” up with Self Satisfied Success, Someone will bring you down and humble you.

Financial effort, which minimises self interest, but adds to the welfare of others, even though it might prolongs the agony of an individual staying in relative poverty throughout a lifetime, is a success.

6. The golden legend of success; there is no absolute success, because, if such were achievable, we would instantly discover a possible higher form of ourselves, and would therefore cease to be on earth. 

Success, therefore, is always relative;

1. To individual endowment
2. To actual opportunity
3. To existing, improvable, environment.
4. To personal relations in life
5. To the attitude of the present towards the future

So whoever strives, honestly, and with willpower to fully explore these factors has achieved success, no matter what the product/result may seem to be to others or themselves.

So we come to the first recommendation of this program, on success: 

TREAT YOURSELF AS A LIVE, AND A SURELY SUCCESSFUL PROPOSITION, DERIVING ENCOURAGEMENT FROM THE GOLDEN LEGEND OF RELATIVE SUCCESS.

With this statement and applying it to your life and yourself, you will develop what is called the mood of success.

But encouragement should never be taken too easily. And this leads us to the third intention of this work on success. Inspiration. 

You are now confronted by certain questions, which are designed to put you to the test.

Test questions

1. Are you actually using your personal power to the best advantage known to yourself? “Throw the energy of reform into your mood of success”
2. Are you seizing your opportunities in the best possible way, so far as you know? “Throw the energy of reform into your mood of success.”
3. Are you honestly trying to feel your relations to life as well as you know how? To partner, parents, children, neighbour, employees, employee, employer, club, community, party? “Throw the energyof reform into your mood of success”
4. Are you really endeavouring to adjust yourself in the best manner to your environment, so far as you can discover? It is mean and unfortunate? Multiply yourself into it for its improvement. How does one know that they would achieve greater success in any different environment until they win success out of the present? “Throw the energy of reform into your mood of success”
5. Are you making each day so far as you know, a short prophecy of a better future? The only short test of one’s ability to achieve greater success under improved conditions is the measure of success, one achieves under poor conditions.”Throw the energy of reform into your mood of success”

With this background, we might try to give success a new definition

Achievement, considered relative to endowments, opportunities, environment, life relations, and the future, which demonstrates itself in the best interest of the individual and, therefore, of others, whether such achievement be more or less, according to personal ideals, or friendly, or hostile judgements of others.