6 Reasons Why We Want to Achieve Success

Note: This is a guest post by Kacper Wrzesniewski.

Each day we are dreaming about our goals. Each day we are moving forward, step closer to the success. Sometimes we are so focused on our objectives that we don’t have time to think why we desire success.

What is the reason? Do we really need it? Is it coming from the conscious or unconscious part of our mind?

I have a simple exercise for you, my friend. Don’t worry; it doesn’t require you to move away from screen and it will take no more than few minutes.

Just relax and focus thoughts on your latest success you have achieved. It doesn’t have to be something really big and outstanding. A small success that you have recently experienced is absolutely enough.

Ok, got it?

Imagine that achieving success is like a journey; sometimes it can be quite easy, sometimes really tough, can be also short or very long. Let’s figure out why you took this journey and what helped you to accomplish it.

Jump in your memories to the point where your journey began. Recall feelings and emotions connected to this moment. What was the reason you decided to set yourself this goal?

How did you take your first step?

While moving your thoughts on the path toward your goal, try to identify factors that motivated you and increased your energy to go forward. Look also for those who obstructed your journey.

How did you cope with them?

Finally, arrive to your destination point.

What did you feel when you succeed? Were you truly happy or maybe disappointed as the goal didn’t bring you satisfaction and fulfillment?

Don’t worry if above questions was difficult for you. To help you answering them, I share with you the six main reasons, which I identify why we want to achieve success.

1. We want to achieve success because it is a part of our life plans.

Success is strongly related with our life plans. We can distinguish certain milestones in our plans, like graduating, getting a desired job, starting our own business or new relationship.

Achieving these milestones are successes for us. Each of these goals brings us positive feelings and emotions because we know that our life plans are fulfilling and that we are making visible progress.

2. We want the output related with certain success.

In many cases we want to experience benefits related with the achievement of a certain goal. In our minds, we have a strong association between these benefits and a state when we are successful.

This association causes our success to be desirable and enjoyable.

3. We love the taste of winning.

Achieving success is a very positive experience also because it adds value to us and pumps our egos. Achieving success is like personal victory.

People love winning. It is very natural. When two children play a game, each of them want to win. It is not important if there is any material prize.

They don’t need any additional purpose.

It is deep in our nature that we love the taste of winning.

4. We need stimulation.

Knowing that there is a purpose, a goal we want to achieve, it stimulates us to act. The more challenging goal, the stronger success feeling is related to it.

This way, we can get a better motivation to achieve bigger goals and we get additional stimulus to self-improve, grow personally and learn to handle challenging goal.

5. We want to compensate lacks and failures from the past.

We all make mistakes.

Failures are definitely not nice, but they are unavoidable in our lives and they should always provide valuable feedback.

They also raise a strong force that will push us toward further goals.

We lost, but in the end we want to win. This victory, preceded by many failures, can compensate all previous unpleasant experiences. This pattern is very often responsible for a reason why we want to achieve success.

6. We find success as a solution for our problems.

Enjoying success is a very positive experience.

It can weaken influence of other, bad experiences in our life. We often find it easier to act in one direction, when we expect success, while we avoid handling different, unpleasant problems in our life.

What is important is that we are often unaware of this mechanism as it mostly works on unconscious level.

Now, one more time ask yourself questions from the first part of this article. Is it easier now to answer them and identify your reasons?

I’m sure you have just achieved higher level of consciousness, as far as achieving success is concerned.

Kacper Wrzesniewski writes on KacperWrzesniewski.com

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Henrik Edberg is the creator of the Positivity Blog and has written weekly articles here since 2006. He has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Gothenburg and has been featured on Lifehacker, HuffPost and Paulo Coelho’s blog. Click here to learn more…

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • Success is hardwork!

  • For me, I want success because I love the feeling of winning.

    Cheers
    Vincent
    Personal Development Blogger

  • Hey

    Very interesting and thought-provoking topic. Thank you.

    I think it’s also important to enjoy the road to success.

    Juliet

  • Success to each individual is very different. One person may find success with raising a loving family, whereas the other may define success with having lots of money in their bank account. Either way, each person achieved their success for different reasons.

    With our personal experience of raising a loving family, we find this success to be the best achievement ever. Why we wanted to achieve this success? Because of our children. They are fortunate enough to have both their parents in their lives, nearly every moment of the day. We know by being involved in their early and future development, we’re making a difference in our children’s lives and the lives they touch.

    This was a thought-provoking post. A very good one indeed. Thank you for sharing it with us.

    Many Blessings….Roxanne and Hugo – Believe Achieve

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  • This post really caught my attention. I think a main reason for wanting success is that we want feel like what we are doing has value to not just us but to others.

  • To some, the word success is almost synonymous to winning. It’s a concept that even little kids get a very good grasp of. But as people grow older, the meaning of the word grows deeper. Now, it just not about winning in a game of tag or getting the bigger slice of cake in children parties; it’s about achieving things and fulfilling goals. But then, accomplishing success is easier said than done. You need a strong sense of purpose or motivation to fuel your drive towards success.