Behind every successful person...

There is a common saying that says, “behind every successful man there is a successful woman,” I would like to venture that this does only provide a limited vision of reality.

First, it should be gender neutral

For every successful person, there are phenomenal supportive people willing to help. As more women have entered the workforce, it is fair to say, supportive husbands contribute too. Further, as same sex couples gain more acceptance, it is not necessarily someone from the opposite sex. But it does not give credit to everyone else in the support system… friends who cheer for you, family who encourage you on from early on are not recognized

For every successful person, there is a surprised person

We all have our potential kryptonite: As we go through life, we encounter multiple people who will make us doubt, put us down... either on purpose or unaware of what they are doing. It is important to keep grounded, avoid those people if you can and when you can’t be strong enough to persist

For every successful person, there is a mountain of failure

though on rare occasion, we do get lucky and success can come overnight... it is the exception rather than the norm. Whether it is athletes, musicians or experts in any field... they all start from the ground up and fail multiple times. As a matter of fact, we start in life not even knowing how to talk or walk... It is only after failing multiple times that we can do something correctly

For every successful person there is a vision

Persisting is one thing but you have to know what you want, if you don’t know where you’re going... how do you know you’ve reached your goal? If you exert yourself, trying a different activity every day, all you’ll end up is frustrated that you are not getting anywhere... and in the end, failure will not really help.

For every successful person, the path to success is non linear

Not only is the path non linear... sometimes it seems as our path is guided by a GPS with the setting "follow the most complicated path possible." That said, as the saying goes, “you may not change the direction of the wind but you can adjust the direction of your sails.” In other words, Multiple events will push us un multiple directions directions and it is very easy to get off course... sometimes stay off track many years without even realizing it. It is important to stay the course and do what it takes to get there by leveraging events that could throw us of course to get closer to our long term goals

Whatever happens, the most important is to know what you want, persist and leverage life's side trips the same way space probes use gravity assists to accelerate counter-intuitively first in the opposite direction, keeping the end trajectory in mind to get where they want faster