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By not defining success for themselves and by accepting someone else’s definition of success, the result is a lot of unhappy, unfulfilled people in the world. If you’re one of those, then now is the best time for you to take time to define what success, for you, really is.

Look at the people you admire in life and business. What is it about them that leads you to believe they are successful? Look closely at their relationships with other people, at the respect they have of their peers and colleagues, at their skills and talents that they’ve been putting to use in their work or business. 

You should soon see that what you admire is more than the material things that symbolize the success you believe they have. Now, look at how they got to the point of being successful. This is the path they took to their success and the path that required some planning. 

You will need to create a plan for your success and it begins with defining what success means to you. This is where you decide what success is and how you will know when you achieve it. You can begin with the money, if that’s what you believe will show you are successful.

Here are a few questions to consider:

• How much money must you have before you think you’re successful? 
• Is it cash in the bank or is it tied to investments? 
• How will you get that money? Will you use the skills and talents you have now or will you leverage relationships you have with others? 
• Is the money being replenished regularly or did you somehow get it in one lump sum?

As you can see, there’s more to having money as the symbol of success than just – having money. 

If you’ve decided that success means something deeper than just having money, you’ll need to look closely at the details involved. If your definition of success is to help people, consider these questions:

• How will you help others?
• Who will you be helping? 
• Why do they need or ask for your help? 
• What skill or talent will you use to help them? 
• How do you know you’ve succeeded when you’ve helped them?

Once again, you can see there’s more to helping people than just saying you want to.

Here is what you can do to create your plan:

Take time away from your daily busy work. Away from distractions. Take a few days for yourself in a quiet place. Some ideas that might work for you include:

• a weekend in a cabin in the woods or by a lake
• a room at a retreat center for 2 days
• a couple of days in a hotel in a city a few miles away
• a weekend in a rented RV

You’ll want to bring a pen and notebook with you. You will be doing a lot of thinking and writing notes about what it is you want in life or business. And, once you have that written down, you will begin to note the action steps necessary to get where you want to be, to become the person you want to be.

The plan isn’t intended to be a step by step detailed path to your success. It can’t be. Because it’s a long-term plan there will be many obstacles and speed bumps and people that will get in the way or require that you detour for a bit. The point is that you will have a final destination clearly defined and you will know how to recognize it when you arrive. 

When you know the final destination you will find that identifying milestones along the path to that destination isn’t difficult. Maybe you need to improve a skill you have by attending a course or school. List the people you need to have deeper relationships with that will support your efforts to achieve success. 

Determine what other resources you will need and where you can get them. If you don’t know where or how, don’t worry. When you know your destination, the needed resources will become available as you being working toward that destination.