The Greatest Obstacle to Success

If you were to transport yourself back say, 5, 10 or more years, knowing what you know today about property values, could you say that there have been thousands, if not millions of opportunities to create financial security? And yet, 93% of Australians are retiring broke after working for 40 years?

Why? . . . What is the answer to this conundrum that raises the obvious question, "what is the greatest obstacle to your future success?"

Turns out it could be "you".
That is the place to start.

Why start with financial success and failure? - because many studies have confirmed a connection between financial success and happiness. Australian Unity with the Australian Centre on Quality of Life from Deakin University measures how satisfied Australians are with their lives. The two major conclusions of the Australian Wellbeing Index Survey were -
1. Those with the highest feelings of wellbeing enjoyed high household income and living with a partner,
2. Those with the poorest feelings of wellbeing had very low household income, no partner and unemployment.

So, the survey certainly established a strong connection between wellbeing, happiness, contentment and income and has reinforced that connection with each survey.

Since the dawn of time we have sought short-cuts to happiness. Early man got high on psychotropic drugs; alcohol has been around since the stoneage and designer drugs of today promise ecstasy in a pill. It seems we value happiness and contentment very highly. In the UK people were asked, by pollsters, what happiness meant for them. In lay terms, it emerged in six different forms -

1. relationships,
2. contentment,
3. security and money,
4. health,
5. transcendence, and
6. fulfillment.

The first one, relationships - sharing life with loved ones, such as partners, friends, family, children, grandchildren and even pets was not entirely unexpected because research has consistently found that supportive social connections are fundamental to feeling content.

According to the dictionary, contentment is accepting things as they are, having peace of mind. For most of us, contentment is, it seems, not fighting yourself. You are content when the different parts of you make friends with each other. Discontent, on the other hand, is the result of a discrepancy between what you want and what you get. However, nobody can have everything they want. A rich person may not have youth and a young person may not have money, and even a person who is both rich and young, may be not carefree. So, does this mean that we cannot be content? Fortunately not - the trick is that what really matters is what is going on the inside rather than the outside. In other words, what you want depends on you, rather than the situation. So, by changing your perspective you can affect your level of contentment as much, if not more, as you could by changing the situation.

It is all very well to discover what you want, but, even more important is the strategy you adopt in life to get there. This is all about strategy - when you find you are not attaining an important goal you go back and re-evaluate your tactics. A masterpiece on strategy in human affairs was written many years before the birth of Christ, and has become a "bible" in management studies around the world. "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu used metaphors of war when advising how to defeat our opponents. This was because getting what you want is indeed a battle - only the enemy is actually within and the war is with yourself. In beginning this battle you will have to confront frailty, weakness and failure, because this is where the battle between success and failure is fought.

So, while success may appear to be about uncompromising ambition, it is, in fact, about something different. It is about wider issues - success consistent with an acceptable quality of life.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Neil_Handley

About the writer -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Neil Handley graduated as a Bachelor of Economics and Accountant. After some 20 years as a stock broker Neil turned to property development. He then acquired a controlling interest in a property development company listed on the stock exchange and became CEO. He has been involved in developing residential subdivisions, industrial subdivisions,shopping centres, office buildings and medium density residential dwellings in Sydney's north shore, Northern Districts, Parramatta and Liverpool areas and on the Gold Coast, Queensland. One office building was sold to the AMP for $25ml. Neil's company advises on building wealth via property.
Go to http://www.specialstrategies.com .

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