To anyone who has encountered this work previously in the Introduction, you’re aware by now that The Study Of Success is broken down into two main sections: the principles, and the practices. What follows below are the principles, a summarization, with links to each principle’s own specific page. The practices are found as posts on the site through the menu bar at the top, through the front page, and are occasionally linked to from the principle pages.

The Study Of Success is based around the distillation of eight key principles from empirical observation of known cases, as well as my own experience, as first recorded in written form on June 3rd, 2020. They, and their summarizations are as follows:

Definition

Success on its own is just a word; success as it pertains to this work has a specific definition. That definition is somewhat of an enigma, but follows the general idea of success being “a deliberate state of being, one where we as human beings remain aware of our desires, the outcomes of our interactions with our reality, and constantly direct ourselves toward a better and greater fulfillment of our potential and dreams”. Success in this definition is not an accident, it is a deliberate focusing of one’s attention in a manner that is consistent with the nature of our world and our universe, of constant growth and evolution.

The Principles of Success

I – Origin / Motivation

Success that can be observed always has a point of origin. Success is a state of being that is ultimately the effect of some type of input or motivation. People are rarely born successful, instead, as they gain autonomy, independence, and the ability to survive on their own and provide for themselves, it’s a trait they develop. In most cases, this state of being was at one time observed or imagined, and the desire for it was called forth out of necessity from some significant event in that person’s life.

Success is more than merely the ability to provide for one’s self, which at its bare minimum is merely a state of homeostasis, stagnancy, for lack of a more flattering term. Success is the consistent reaching for and manifestations of one’s desires and dreams as they unfold, and that is a state that always traces itself back to some seminal and pivotal moment or experience. it’s something that their observation of life tends to call from them as a desire and a way of being something greater than they presently are. 

There’s always something calling continued expansion and growth from us. Success is that state of being that’s observed when we’re keeping up with that call for expansion, and the flow of new desires. It’s people observing and saying “he’s doing so well, everything always works out for her, they just have a way with making decisions, she is very wise and her life shows for that, he has been a great leader”, and the original motivation for that state of being is at the heart of all successful people.

Successful people have a reason, a “why”, a reason for dedicating and pursuing their dreams. OR Successful people have a reason, a “why”, an experience, or something else that happened to them or they experienced that inspired them to reach for personal fulfillment and to seek their own greatness.

II – Perspective

As human beings, we live in a physical, linear world where things are always changing, unfolding, and moving in a forward direction. The basic elements of our reality are things, and there are also interactions, and there is time. Success is a simple result of a complex process, namely, of making the right choices; a result of interpretations, reactions, and decisions, which are influenced by our perspective.

Our lives, and everything that happens within them, every last occurrence and experience, they are all neither bad nor good, but rather, subject to the meaning we assign them through our own interpretation. We begin to learn at a very young age about our world, through firsthand experience, and also what we are told and taught. These moments are the source of our original beliefs about the world, and the genesis of our perspectives. Our perspectives are merely our collection of beliefs, which work in tandem with one another to add meaning and context to one another and enable us to interpret all of our experiences to make sense of them and benefit from them.

Our perspectives and the myriad of beliefs contained within them enable us to keep up with the rapid unfolding of life, making it easier for us to interpret, judge, and respond to our world. Our success in life is dependent upon the appropriateness and alignment of our beliefs and our perspective as a whole with that which we desire.

By consistently contemplating the outcomes in our lives, and the decisions and beliefs and perspective that led us to make those decisions, we can further refine our outcomes. OR Successful people are aware of the importance of their perspective to their success.

III – Indifference

Success, and the perspectives and actions that produce it are a series of deliberate and careful choices, made in a state of indifferent resistance to the constant primal beckonings and tempting influences of our environments and the structures and administrations and entities and people within to respond and react emotionally. Indifference is our discipline to contemplate before acting, and to avoid knee-jerk responses and actions.

Those who are successful find greater ease in their journey toward success than others because of this indifference, this filter, if you will, to the outside world and its many and varied, passionate appeals to our minds to react in a preferred manner. OR Successful people know the power and potential of each and every decision, they know that there are many influences at play all with their own motives, and they remain indifferent to the world in order to contemplate and make the best decisions possible.

IV – Identity

Success is always unique to the memories, events, and circumstances of each individual’s life experience – past, present, and future. Success is unique and each successful journey toward it is influenced by the awareness of and the specifics of each person’s innate interests and preferences. Following the guide and path of someone else in full in lieu of discovering and honing your own path can unintentionally result in roadblocks and impedances (impediments) being built, not only creating bumps along the way, but also preventing you from reaching all of your goals and desires and getting to a place in life where things just unfold, one after another.

It is essential to seek and uncover the details of your own unique journey, and embrace that state of constant seeking and discovery. This is the problem with so many success books is that they either look at specific journeys in great granular detail that is specific not only to them but hyper-specific to their field and recommend that people follow in similar manner to too great a degree for literally any type of journey, OR they espouse more generic and ambiguous principles derived from their experience that are not truly universal. I have discovered that the most successful method is to clarify and distill several universal principles, and support it with a literal ocean of contextual add-on content, if you will, where people are free to pick and choose as it pertains to their own appraisal of the value of something and how relevant it is to their situation.

They embrace the uniqueness of their situation. You can’t become successful by following the plans and path of someone else to a T. It’s just not a sustainable plan. That’s why so many people fail on their quest for success, because they’re following someone else’s specific chain of events and trying to force that person’s square peg of a life into their triangle hole of a life. You must have passion for what you’re doing, because that is what will drive you and keep you going. There will be many times that something will seem impossible and like it will never come. The people who follow someone else’s plan will think the plan is trash and give up. The people who follow their passion know that eventually, they will get there; they’re just in the process of figuring out their own journey, and devising their own plan, and when they get there it will be worth it.

Successful people recognize the importance of embracing their uniqueness, they know that it is the key to true sustainable success, they believe in the validity and purpose of their own unique visions, and seek out ways to achieve them, opportunities to seize, the knowledge they need, and people who support them and believe in their quest.

V – Logic

Success is a logical, linear progression, an unfolding of an infinite stream of cause and effect. Success is a unique and linear progression of cause and effect. Every situation and experience is at once met by your perspective, which is formed of your beliefs, and elicits from you possibilities for response, and a subsequent emotional reaction to those options which guides you toward a decision, which results in an action taken and an outcome received. 

If you complete the loop, and take feedback from the outcome and factor it into your future decisions, along with an awareness of how your beliefs and perspective influenced your reaction, and engage in the constant refinement and amendment of your perspective with new ideas that create new and better beliefs, you will progress and grow.

If you miss a step in this loop, or shortcircuit and consistently skip any of the steps toward the beginning or end, you become stagnant, treating situations with the same belief, the same logic, the same reactions, and receiving the same results. Occasionally we defy our emotional reactions when we know they aren’t objective, by making logical choices, but that requires analysis of a situation, and far too much energy and time to keep up with the pace of reality.

There are far too many autonomous / semi-autonomus decisions made each day for us to be able to grow and progress by making the same decisions, or logically overriding our emotional reactions to each one. You can’t expect different results by doing the same thing. This mindblowingly elementary realization is at the heart of all success.

The adage that failure isn’t failure unless you quit, and that your power is in your ability to learn from your mistakes are sickenlingly simplistic, and have become dangerously cliche to the point where people discount them, but are two of the greatest truths of our individual journeys toward success. If you can act, and reflect, and then act in a new and improved way, your potential for success is unlimited.

Success, therefore, is a matter of being aware of the decision-making mechanism, contemplating events, beliefs, reactions, and outcomes, and refining our beliefs. OR, Successful people are aware not just of the power of each and every decision, but also of their perspective and beliefs, and of the importance of seeing every success and failure as feedback, and an opportunity to further improve what they do.

VI – Balance

Success, according to this definition, is more than anything success in all things, and a balance of actions that results in success in all things. Give yourself play and rest after a successful day. Give yourself play and rest even after not so successful days. We are always desiring to be in the creative state, possibly the most powerful of all three, but we cannot always be. If you are not able to be, that is all the more reason to play and rest, to give yourself the nurturing needed to be able to reach that state again. Creativity is not a switch that can be turned on and off, it is a fountain that we must tend to, fill, and replenish mentally, physically, and emotionally each day. Some days are more productive than others. Accept it, enjoy life, rest, and move on. Creativity comes when you have made peace with where you are right now. It cannot come at night when you are fretting about the next day. It cannot come when you are bound by obligation to do things. It can only come when there is a void of obligation, and a peace about that. 

Successful people realize that the basis of success is in the balance of time, action, and focus.

VII – Determination / Motivation / Willpower

Success is an intensely logical pursuit of homeostasis, by intensely emotional and volatile beings, in an intensely biased and random world and reality. It’s simple decisions, made with clouded logic, in a world that attempts to sway and further cloud logic. It can be a definite challenge. If and when we lose sight of our motivation and struggle to be disciplined in our indifference to our reality, we lose focus and momentum.

As a result of this, success is an inner journey that is greatly helped by the right type of external motivation and support. Ideas from others, connections, talking things over, favors, help, etc. No one is entirely self-made. It’s a physical and mental and emotional journey. We need people to help us do things sometimes, we need people to help us think through things sometimes, and we need someone to encourage us and show us it is possible sometimes. 

Successful people realize that life and the pursuit of success can be a challenge, and that it’s one we fare better through the help and support of others.

VIII – Consistency 

Success is further ensured by consistency, made possible by a plan or a set of daily actions and practices committed to memory. Consistency is the discipline to adhere to principles even in the face of temptation to sway from them – working when the energy and inspiration isn’t there, ignoring an inspired thought when engaged in rest or play,

Successful people realize that the basis of success is in consistent, simple actions taken and processes followed, carried out on a daily basis.