Success isn’t a monetary thing...

So there we were, in a club, with some amazing music playing in the background… For everyone out there, I have 3 friends who’ve basically stood by me through everything I’ve been through and they’re basically the people I’m mostly around. So back to my story, we were in the cluuuurb and I was sitting down talking to this girl, I’ll rate her at 8.5 for now because I didn’t have too much to drink but anyway, I looked around me, and when I looked, I spotted my mates, all 3 of them, being comfortable, each sitting with a hot girl, drink in hand and the girls they were with just having huge laughs. At this point I’m ignoring the girl I’m sitting with because why must hot girls always have your attention, you have to be able to own a situation as an alpha male, and in my mind she could wait a few more moments… Hot girls always expect attention because beta males just hand it to them but anyway I still got her number so hey, will probably text her after this post. 

I looked at us, the new us. I felt something change in the air and I immediately picked it up and told Vini too. Everything was the same but it felt different, different in a very good way. You know in the process of following your dreams as tough as is, you are built in a new way. Your outlook to everything changes and everything you go through is preparing you for what you asked the universe/God for. Something had changed in us and I could see it in the way we conducted ourselves. I looked at them in the face and I saw successful young people and this wasn’t a money thing. At that moment the word success revealed itself to me and it was such a powerful moment. I think if I wasn’t drinking the Ciroc in the club and I was in a cave I would’ve written a new chapter in the Bible or Quran or something, like why must religious writers always get their shit in a cave or the desert, but anyway let’s continue… 

Firstly I learnt one thing: SUCCESS IS NOT A MONETARY THING!!!

 

Ok fine, successful people have money I get it, but they aren’t successful because they have money, the money came as a result of the success they already had in them. Money was just a derivative.  

When I looked at my friends, and saw success, it wasn’t money I saw because Lord knows that the entrepreneur journey is a very broke one but we make things work (I suck at being modest I know). I looked at them and I saw a fire, an intention, a destination, an objective and what I saw was that this was producing an accidental form of success that even they couldn’t control. And so I’d like to define what the success I saw in them. 

 I think this is cool!

Success is a [decided intention]

This means that success is decision made by a person to have an intention to something and move it along to reality. No person can start a company or a dream without firstly deciding that it can be done before it’s embarked on. Nobody starts something they know will fail, this means that they start something with it first being successful in their minds. See the mind controls the outcome of any situation. My friends were not walking around with some half idea of who they were and what they wanted to get from the night. What determines a good night out is all about what you make of it. If you’re meeting people, guys or girls, dancing and whatever else goes in a night it’s is all in your hands. You decide the outcome using nothing but your intention. 

Success isn’t a journey

A lot of people like telling themselves that “success is a journey not a destination”. They don’t understand that all that this kind of thinking does is make them complacent to everything that’s going on in their lives. I’m not saying success is not a marathon because it is. But people live their lives thinking that where they are in life is ok and that there’s something waiting for them somewhere in life as long as they wait and pray for something even if it means that they must wait their whole lives for it. Success is not a journey; success is knowing what you want and attacking it with a ferociousness resembling a T-Rex that has been fasting for 40 days! Everything my friends and I want to do as a collective unit of friends is decided upon and put into action as soon as possible. You can’t want a wife or husband and sit at home all day everyday and think that they are just going to knock on your door one day because you’ve told yourself that “success is a journey.” I think success is a destination and then the decision and action to embark on the journey.

Success is infectious

Successful people are loved for the way they’re outlook on life is just so refreshing. Whenever I was around someone and heard their story of success it always energized me. When someone speaks from experience as opposed to knowledge you don’t hear it, you feel it. You just sense by a successful person’s aura that you’re in for a treat and that’s why society is attracted to successful people. If you know Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, you learn that self-actualization is on top of human desires. The problem with success is that it’s not taught in school and so can only be attained from people, which then thus makes it highly infectious.

Success is impregnating

Maya Angelou said: “Creativity doesn’t run out, the more you use the more you get.” In terms of success, if you wanted to launch a singing career and you eventually launch your first album, you quickly realize that you begin to get new ideas, new inspirations and new redefined versions of the success you once wanted. Success evolves with its owner and that evolution is more exponential than it is linear. You’ll see rich people get quicker to making $100 000 000 from $1 000 000 than getting to their first $1 000 000 from nothing. The more goals you set, the more goals you use.

Success is subjective [not] objective

The problem with society is that it creates these glamorous images and dream worlds using the media to make people want the same things, promising a certain feeling of happiness with them only for people to get there and realize that it was all a lie. You can make all the money you want to make, but money sadly doesn’t buy happiness. Success can never be defined by someone else for you. Only you have the stuff that you have and your stuff will only respond to the success that’s yours that came because it required you to activate all that stuff in you. Hope I made sense there. When I didn’t care to attend my own graduation, a lot people were telling me I’m crazy or that I’m ungrateful and therefore have to go. The truth is that I had already defined what my success was and so I didn’t attend it because it wasn’t for me. I wasn’t going to have that happy feeling because I already knew what my heart longed for. And that’s what I want to do with everything in my life even down to having a family one day; make it your own otherwise you’ll wonder why something you attain doesn’t feel as amazing as it should because guess what?? IT WASN’T YOURS TO BEGIN WITH!!!!!!! 

Success leaves clues

Success isn’t something that one should be oblivious to. Success leaves clues. If you want to see whether you’re successful, all you have to do is look back on your life and see the things that really stretched you that made you feel successful having achieved them. Your past and present is a wonderful inference for your future. The current will be the past you use in the future to look for clues regarding another future you wish to create. But if you look back at where you’ve achieved success, you’ll notice it required sacrifice, taking some sort of risk, determination and a harnessing of focus on something and that should signal to you that you already know what goes into attaining success in any place of your life.  

Success is inspirational

When I was starting out with my company and even now, whenever I feel down, frustrated or de-motivated, I watch “The social network” and after seeing how Facebook was created I get a sense of excitement for what I am doing or trying to do. The truth is that there’s nothing more powerful than seeing that something you previously thought was impossible is now possible. When I hear success stories, I get excited because it tells me that success is still in the world and it’s still attainable. Imagine the world without people having anything to look forward to in life. Success is what built the great empires of the past and all that’s now around us. It’s all in success creating more of itself. 

Success isn’t selfish

Have you ever noticed how some people accumulate knowledge and never share it?? Successful people look at the world and are shocked by how much potential people actually have and the opportunities that are always available. It’s a kind of shock that turns into excitement to simply share their knowledge. When I first started writing my first book, I was excited at the prospect of being an author but a few pages in I realized that our gifts don’t belong to us but to humanity and life. Your character is yours, but your gifts belong to humanity. If someone has been able to understand, harness and unleash success in their lives, the gifts that now become more focused and manifest themselves no longer belong to them. In my case I’ve been blessed with the mind that I have and I’ve realized that the gift doesn’t belong to me but to society. I don’t see the point of being selfish and my understanding of success forces me to share, otherwise I wouldn’t sit here for 6 hours writing a post. You can’t call yourself successful if you don’t put people on, and don’t share. I’m sorry but that’s just selfishness and lame.

Success has to be loyal

There’s a karmic law that goes a lil something like this: “You are free to pursue all the success you want in the world as long as you don’t stop or hinder the success of others in the process.” Basically, Don’t SCREW PEOPLE OVER! You cannot use someone as a stepping stone and then expect to remain successful. Success is a delicate balance of thoughts and energies and once you get that guilty feeling going on, it creates its own thoughts and energies that influence you and your life. I don’t think one can live life while constantly looking over their shoulder. If you’ve screwed someone over, apologize and pay them back what was due to them. If someone screws you over, don’t try fight back, that’s all negative energy, success doesn’t work on a one hit wonder system, if you could do it once, you can do it again. 

Success is predictable 

Unlike winning the lottery, which is a stroke of some serious luck, and because success is intentional, it doesn’t come as a surprise to the person who pursues it. It’s not enough to be on your way to success in anything that you do, one must also be able to feel/asses ones proximity to the goal. If you’ve been on a long flight anywhere you’ve never been you’ll know just how alert the body becomes as soon as you get close to your destination. Call it excitement or a whole new set of decisions but whatever it is, successful people will know how it feels when they get close to their goals so it comes as no surprise. I mean you’ve beeeeen waiting.

Success can’t be capped and there’s no “enough”. 

People will always talk shit about wanting just “enough” success, not knowing that that sort of thinking breeds nothing but a stern complacency. If you limit the amount of success you want, you limit and underestimate the amount of effort that must go into it. You either want to be successful or you’re happy with where you are, there is no middle ground. 

Success isn’t genetic nor is it a bloodline

If you read Malcolm Gladwell’s book called “outliers,” he sort of explains the factors that go into success based on historical evidence and some sociology. He mentions parents, mindset, and time in history, history of the people, culture and personal ambition as some of the factors. Nowhere does he mention genetics or some royal bloodline as most people would like to think. Just because your parents were successful doesn’t mean you will be, because you have to find your own subjective version of success to be happy.  

Success breeds more success in multiples

In science there’s a principle called “Resonance” which is the ability of a vibrating to make a non vibrating object vibrate. The same thought extrapolation applies to success. They often tell you to watch your friends because “Show me your friends, and I’ll show you your future.” The truth is that the people around you will either affect you positively or negatively. If being around unsuccessful people makes you unsuccessful, then being around successful people will make you successful because one can’t fully embrace one entity without mentally accepting its inverse. If you want to speed up your success, be around successful people and let their energy rub off you and you’ll instantly start tapping into the laws that govern success. Success works just the same way as how one seed can produce a whole crop. It’s all multiplicative.

Conclusion

I’ve mentioned a couple of points regarding success and they all were things I realized when I was looking at my friends doing what they were doing. Here’s a bunch of guys who share a story of trials, tribulations to triumph and success filled minds. If there’s one thing I saw with us is that we carry some sort of life with us that doesn’t run out. Bob Marley said that the success of a man is not determined by how much wealth he accumulates but in his ability to affect those around him positively. 

When I looked at them they taught me that success is not one thing and it’s also not monetary. Success is frame of mind; it’s an understanding of the game of life and deciding to do something and doing it. It’s the understanding to see the current situation you’re in and quickly figure out a way to win. It’s a power to make anything you touch turn into gold. If you want to be rich, you have to have be successful inside before in manifests physically. 

This means that success is a mindset, a thought process or a sort of mods-operandi. Anyone can be successful if they change their attitudes, stop making excuses & take control for every outcome in their lives (good and bad.) I think if someone can take the credit when they win they should similarly take the responsibility for when they lose. The single greatest lesson I’ve learnt is that once someone can get over the fear of being a beginner when deciding to try something, they can do so much and achieve phenomenal success in anything. Aristotle said that excellence is a habit. 

Success isn’t permanent and must therefore be kept. I get so sick of people who love talking about their former glories of days past as if that’s all it’ll ever be. You can’t cut your grass once and expect it to stay that way forever. You have to constantly cut it and the same works for success. It’s not enough to be successful in one area of life; one must strive to be successful in every area of life. Health, career, family, goals, ideals and mindset so never ever allow yourself to get complacent and comfortable. 

My friends have shown me that life is about making the best out of every situation and deciding the outcome before you even tackle it. They’ve reminded me that life is simple and it’s really about having fun. Happiness and money are only the signs that say that success is present in one’s life and I’ve seen that no matter how low things can get sometimes, we somehow remain happy and pull each other up when necessary and that is success. It’s not monetary it’s an everyday mentality to everything that says I WILL WIN!! 

I’m tired of people not being successful in their lives. I’m appalled by the negativity I sense all around me every day and I write this knowing that not everyone will agree with me but I really don’t care, I know that as I sit here typing this in the study in South Africa, this post will at least touch and change one person in the world somewhere and that’s good enough for me. Go and pursue your success and know that it’s not limited, genetic, money, unattainable or objective. The only way to be successful at anything is to make It your own and remember that it’s not the cards you were born with that matter, but the cards that fall out of your hand the day you breathe your last breath.  

G - Eazy - "Almost famous" 

Drake - "6 God" 

J Cole - "Song for the ville"