Success is good life
Among the many personal meanings of success, there is that universal one: a better life. A better life is made of better treatment. Anything that brings you closer to that, from wins to peopling, contributes to this ultimate success. Winning a championship or any other forms of success all bring value by raising the quality of daily life via respect, better social position, money to follow passions, and networks to build something together. They are tools that move you one step closer to a better life.
Success goals consequently have a crucial role in building a good life. Directing your efforts toward a specific goal means you channel and optimize your resources, both internal and external, some you didn’t even know you had. You improve multiple areas directly and indirectly and build transferable skills that serve you for years, sometimes for life. That’s why tournament aspirations are so valuable: they pull you upward. Ultimately, all aspirations serve the same end goal: making life better.
Paving the path to success
Success is built up from a series of well-defined steps, including milestones and the steps between milestones. For some, milestones form naturally because their definition of success is tied to a clear role or title, as is common among Olympic athletes. In their case, the official carrier ladder serves as a roadmap. The danger of this title-driven approach is that it doesn’t have a plan for “what’s after that”. Depression after completion follows for many when the goal that once brought meaning to their lives gone.
As mentioned, these wins are only tools for better life and need to be treated as such—it needs a plan for how it will actually improve life quality. There’s no point in becoming a world champion if you still can’t go on a vacation, don’t invest in proper healthcare, or have the freedom to choose and keep good people around.
For those whose definition of success is not tied to winning a specific title or role, the steps must be defined intentionally. This means sitting down and actually devising a plan. Probably many of them, many times, because a good plan evolves as opportunities come along. On the upside, they tend not to lose sight of the end game: a better life. Note, not all of the steps set out in the plan will be or need to be achieved along the way. Sometimes working toward the goal already delivers what was needed; in other cases, winning fails to deliver what was expected.
While the details of a path to success are personal to everybody, they are made up of universal stages that inherently follow each other.
Stage #1 – Your personal definition of success with numbers
Foggy ideas don’t point toward actionable steps. “I want to live comfortable” does not tell you what to do next to get there. A really clear definition of success is a must here. Success needs to be described with exact details, numbers, places, and treatment. Otherwise, the image will be too foggy and your drive will be too low to kickstart the journey.
Let’s start with a foggy image: say success for you is making a comfortable living from your business with about four hours of work per day, spending the cold months in a holiday house, eating out regularly, and having a solid friend group around you, who like you and make you feel part of something. As specific as this might sound, it is still too foggy. Without numbers, places, and treatment, it’s just a dream. A dream starts to become a walkable path only when you put a price tag on it. So how much money and personal effort does it require to get there?
1. Financial components
Turning that foggy image into something tangible: take your current spending plus the things you currently can’t afford, combined with the cost of the home you want to live in. All of this needs to be looked up based on your target location, and added together to get a realistic monthly financial need. Let’s say it might be around 20K in Western countries. In addition to that, you might need 250K to buy a hacienda at the Riviera (or another purchase format, e.g., leased, or through shared ownership). All these numbers need to come from doing your search: locations, size, and lifestyle choices that actually resonates with you. Let’s say the final numbers land at 20K per month net (roughly 300K per year) plus 250K in savings for property. That’s no longer a foggy dream, that’s a defined goal.
2. Human components
Money buys comfort, food, and time, but treatment, which defines most of our lived experience, is delivered by people.
This includes the communities you want to belong to, your social standing, and the trust and intimacy you have in your close relationships. These goals must be just as specific as financial ones, though they’re harder to define. Wanting to be “loved” or “trusted” is too vague, it doesn’t guide behavior or partner selection criteria.
A concrete goal looks like this: when you go home, you want to see a smiling face greeting you regardless of how late you arrived, because your partner knows you were doing your best to be there because you care. Or you want a business partnership where your partners have a 24-hour response time with considerate feedback on all your questions, invoicing and paying as per contract without any reminder. These are clear people goals that tell you what to look for, and what to let go.
Stage #2 – Creating the action plan
Once your goal is pinned down with numbers, places, and treatment (all might change along the way), you can start brainstorm how to realize those numbers. For example, if you want a $20K monthly income, you need to strategize earning channels, as salaried roles reach that level only in stronger industries and/or specific roles, for example, niche experts or mid-level managers and above in certain sectors. If those don’t interest you, you might consider move towards contractor frameworks, shifting your target audience and offers several times to optimize your rates. From there, you might start building out the basics of your own business that will be able to deliver the income you want. Property goals usually require separate income streams, such as investments, passive income, or parallel ventures.
Mapping these paths isn’t a one-afternoon exercise. It requires insider stories, peer discussions, observing competitors, understanding logistics, and separating real success from social media illusion. AI tools and forums like Reddit can help, but own judgment is still necessary.
At this stage, people skills become critical. Every step happens with, through, and because of people. They have their own agendas and ways of doing things, so staying intact during the many interactions is essential. This is where your definition of ideal partners, business behavior, and personal treatment becomes invaluable. If human dynamics fall apart, the journey becomes full of unnecessary fights and burnout is likely. The two core peopling areas:
1. The channels chosen to make connections
Random networking wastes energy and fill your book with low quality connections. The idea that “they might know someone” usually fails, because people only put forward those they trust. And trust is built through genuine exchange. Insincere approach is recognised quickly, keeping doors closed. It’s better to target like-minded communities where you would naturally belong. This is especially important in niche fields like fight sports or leadership, which rely on tight, trusted circles.
2. The way of approaching people
There are lighter and heavier layers here. The lighter layer is communication style, often copied from our environment and relatively easy to adjust. Cultural context matters greatly. What works in one setting can offend in another. Broad cultural cues help (industry background, religion, geographic origin, social class etc.), but what a person associate themselves with matter more, openness and flexibility is key.
The heavier layer involves invisible dynamics that largely remain unrecognized for most involved in the interaction: power imbalances, fear responses, and preconceptions. They are harder to manage because pointing them out is an insult, ignoring them keeps the business at a surface level, and reacting instinctively can damage the relationship. Composure and smart peopling are needed to win trust and open doors.
Stage #3 – Gathering resources for execution
When the path is clear, the last step is gathering resources to execute. Life is busy, most of your resources, including time, passion, mental space, etc. are shared between daily survival and long-term building. To move forward, life often needs restructuring.
This includes letting go of unnecessary responsibilities, stepping out from unhealthy relationships, and refusing free favours. These changes almost always require careful planning because people don’t like to be cut off, but nonetheless necessary measures to retain enough resources and proceed with your future plans.
Carving out the space for your on growth is an art in itself. Activities and relationships must be reprioritized in favor of the future without abandoning the present. You still have belonging, nutritional, and resting needs. Working like a dog while neglecting other life areas leads to burn out. Burnout can delay progress for years, decades, or destroy it entirely. Some reach the top only to collapse there because they confused success with material achievement alone and every other meaningful aspect of life deteriorated along the way. Fix is possible for them as well, but listening to internal signals beforehand is the most sensible way to reach what the goal was in the first place: a better life.
Summary
No path to success is easy, but paving it brick by brick makes even wild-sounding dreams achievable. In short, it comes down to specifying what success means to you, calculating its cost, and allocating resources deliberately. You’ll win and lose battles, and goals may change multiple time, but the underlying aim stays the same: reaching a point where life genuinely feels like you’ve made it.
