The Success Equation, Principle and Symbols

After learning this equation you do not need to learn any other definition or equation of success.

Success is basically= Principle +Symbol

When you are growing up you might believe that for you to be successful you need to be independent. However that independence must be represented by something.

So independence maybe represented by the following

• At the age of five it means having access to the playground at anytime
• At 17 years of age it meant having your first car
• At 25 years it meant having a job
• At 35 years it meant having a house
• At 45 years it meant not working for anyone
• At 60 years it meant having enough wealth to retire

What changes as the time moves is not the principle but it is the symbol that changes.

So a company can have a vision of enabling communication in the world. They could start by putting up base stations, evolve into emails and enable Whatsapp type of business. The symbol may change but the vision stays the same.

Companies that fail are those whose symbols stay the same yet the market symbolic needs change. In a world where people don’t want to eat in a restaurant and they want fast food one cannot just be offering food that takes 30 minutes to prepare. People are busy and they need their food immediately. Your principle in this case would be customer satisfaction but the symbol evolves from food ordered over 30 minutes to food ordered over 2 minutes. The same applies to personal success objectives that one must be careful not to continue pursuing the same old symbols that one always dreamt of yet the world is in constant change. The symbol of success today is not the same symbol of success tomorrow.

Everyone has different reasons why they buy what they buy, to satisfy a specific principle or need. So the need might be speed but the symbol is Ferrari, which will define the different levels of success that people have. Other symbols for success could be a house, a job, a partner, or anything which a person believes embodies what they need.

This article has been developed from our success product “Your Success 101”