Table of Contents
A. Fifteen Key Factors to Success
The 14-key factors of success are:
- Satisfaction.
- Goals
- Achievement
- Competition
- Fear
- Habit
- Learning
- Failure
- Happiness
- Plan
- Timing
- Process
- Purpose
- journey
- Social success
Success is when you set a goal that is currently out of your reach and over a period of time achieve the goal.
Milestone
A milestone is a quantifiable number like earning $100,000 in a year, buying your home, summiting mount everest, getting the next job, getting a promotion, getting a patent, inventing a machine to solve the problem that you are working on, or taking a started business to profitability and so on.
Milestone is simply a physical point that you want to reach in life.
Goal
Often people misunderstand milestone with goal. A goal is well-defined-milestone that has a) purpose b) rules c) plan d) process e) Timeline.
One of the best analogies of the goal is “the goal in a soccer match.” You have a goalpost which is the milestone. You have a set of rules as how one can and can not achieve the milestone. You have a purpose for achieveing the milestone, and in the soccer match that purpose is to win the match. The soccer match has a 90 minutes timeline, and some additional times if one team doesn’t become victorious in key matches. The players use plan of forward, back, midfiled coordinated attack and defense.
Purpose
If you simply pick a milestone and decide that you are going to go out and try to achieve the milestone, then your brain wouldn’t allocate resources automatically for the purpose. This is because we have limited resources. Brain would always want to know why do you want to achieve a milestone? What benefit will this be serving?
There are three fundamental purposes that are priorities for any living cells, including humans. They are Survive, thrive, and reproduce.
So, when a guy likes a girl, and sets a milestone that I am going to go and get this girl, have a relationship with her, marry her, and have babies with her, the brain gets super excited. The brain is interested in the milestone because it serves a purpose.
Even though the guy hasn’t set a timeline, from the age of the girl, the brain can estimate a probable duration that it has to achieve the milestone.
On the other hand if you are walking past a parking lot, and see a red-ferrari and tell yourself, “one day I will drive this Ferrari,” brain will have no interest in helping you to get a Ferrari in the future because it serves no purpose.
However, when you say “I am so poor, struggling daily for my food, being used by people, and it is difficult for me to survive, no one respects me. In 10 years I am going to go out and achieve that Ferrari because on the process, I will become wealthy, have stable finance, and reach a situation in life.” Then brain would be interested.
On the other hand if you tell yourself, “I am going to steal the Ferrari, sell it, and have a financially safe life, the brain wouldn’t be too interested in the pursuit, as it wants to earn but not scavange. However, for some, the brain is a scavenger brain, which would be more interested in the shortcuts and not earnings as the brain knows its limitations.
Correlation of Milestone, Goal and Purpose
A milestone without a goal is merely a wish, A goal without a purpose is greed(not knowing why you want something that you want), a goal without the purpose of serving basic biological need of survive, thrive, and reproduce is a desire, a purpose without a goal is an vision, a milestone with a purpose but no goal is a imagination.
Vision and imaginations are part of our fantasy world. Living in the harsh reality all the time for the brain is harsh. Taking a time our in the fantasy world helps the brain to organize itself.
However, when one stays far too long in the fantasy and not in the reality, it makes it difficult for the brain to come back into the reality. This is the key to mental health problem.
As only a purposeful goal that has a rule, process, timeline, and plan is the entity that brain can pursue, from henceforth, we will talk about the goal and not the milestone.
What is the difference between a strong purpose and a higher purpose?
We already know that goal is the entire blueprint of achieving a milestone alongside the reason to pursue the milestone, and we already also know that the more the purpose is around any of the three key biological needs is a strong purpose.
However, when you want to achieve a goal to serve the key biological needs of many individuals(or living beings), then that is called a higher prupose.
If you want to construct a house for your family some day, that is a strong purpose(because it ensures safety, security, and survival of the family), but if you want to build a low cost housing complex so that hundreds of people can achieve their goal of a hourse, then that is called a higher purpose.
When you want to buy a house so that you can sell it in the future when the price apreciates, inorder to become richer, that is a weak purpose as the brain doesn’t understand how you becoming richer exactly benefits you to solve the three key biological needs.
The reason brain gives a priority to pursue higher prupose is because we are a social animal. If we can solve the problems of many beings, then many of our problems may also be solved by others.
When one sets a goal of becoming a clinicians to save many lives, then that is a higher prupose. When one wants to become a clinician because this is a safer profession, and no clinician would ever die without work, then that is a strong purpose. However if one wants to become a clinician to earn more money, then that is a weak prupose.
