Unexpected Achievement
Success April 21st, 2010Isn’t it true that results we achieve that come about by surprise bring a greater sense of satisfaction than results that take huge effort to achieve? It certainly is for me. In contrast, the results I get that take weeks or months of effort always seem to be more of a relief than an achievement should feel.
Building Up to Success
Often I feel that personal development can be one of those areas where you have a long time building up to success. Change takes effort and making changes often comes at a price of long term dedication to tirelessly keep working away to change habits and to bring about change. Not only a single change at a time, but in fact, many many changes combined can have the same effect of adding up to be a long term effort. For me there is certainly a combination at work with this type of experience as on one hand, my persistence to change I know will overcome whatever obstacles I face and on the other it can be disappointing when it takes as long as it does. This certainty in achievement is a great confidence to build up and helps you tackle all of those unknown situations and obstacles. Building that kind of confidence only occurs through repeated successes over time and having the ability to recognize achievement and be grateful for it. After all, if you don’t know what success looks like along the way, then you certainly can’t build those successes up into self confidence. Success and confidence can become a repeating cycle and what I’ve found is that it can actually become an insignificant event when achieving that success becomes expected simply due to your persistence. This kind of drawn out achievement being expected by a person eventually seems quite meaningless and in fact, it becomes the normal way of building up to success.
Achieving It!
So with all this building up to success there comes the point where you actually achieve what you were after. If it was a long drawn out process this point may feel more like a relief than anything. The work associated with this achievement could be gone now and that might be similar to having a chore or some other painful tasks gone forever. However, the achievements that seem to feel the best and give you the biggest ‘high’ are the ones that come suddenly or unexpectedly. There is no time passed to destroy your pleasure with an associated heavy workload and so the gratification that exists can be so much higher! I know that any achievements that come my way out of surprise are often an opportunity to discover something new about myself where I am shocked to learn of some new skill or impact I had to help me achieve it. It’s a joy to learn of these things and exciting to know that sometimes there is a great achievement just around the corner we don’t expect!
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April 22nd, 2010 at 12:48 AM
Interesting you mentioned about “surprise successes” because one of those moments happened to me last week.
We can both agree that the meaning of success is different for everyone as long as the intention of attaining a particular goal is there.
I feel great when I receive comments from friends and visitors about my site.
But the amazing thing was that a friend of a friend sent me a “greeting card” with a picture of one my video inside the card. In addition, he also included a $5 Starbucks card, all just because he enjoyed my site and wanted to buy me a coffee.
We ended up going for coffee and now we are good friends.
That was an amazing feeling to know that someone I did not know at first, put so much effort.
That was my “surprise success” story for you Mike
🙂
April 22nd, 2010 at 8:00 AM
Awesome example Vincent and I have had similar stories from my site as well where someone I have known of (but not really known) connects due to some article or content on my blog that I never would have even expected them to know about in the first place. I think these stories and unexpected achievements spark a great sense of immediate joy than the ones we work specifically to achieve.
April 22nd, 2010 at 8:09 PM
Most definitely Mike
I had a smile all day and had great joy knowing that my material is able to affect one person at a time, just like your site.
Reading and interacting with insightful blogs gives off reciprocal energy and gets us wanting to contribute more towards personal development and happiness.
Keep on rockin!
April 24th, 2010 at 8:25 PM
In High School, I took a few programing classes, I loved the challenge of it. You’d spend days working on a project, and building up to that finish, and once you finished that project you felt such a great mental high. It’s such a great feeling after you’ve spent days building up something and at the end of it all it feels so good when you climb the mountain.
April 25th, 2010 at 2:20 AM
I think this makes sense, definitely. If we don’t expect the success and experience no expectations everything is a great little surprise and a beautiful gift.
April 25th, 2010 at 3:28 AM
Sometimes, the unexpected successes are very sweet indeed. However, for me personally, nothing’s sweeter than the fruits of a long, drawn out course of efforts. But like you said, it is indeed something you come to expect, since you do it over such a long time, so that does temper the excitement factor a little bit. It’s the same as in sports, when you have an upset instead of the same dominant team winning yet again.
Till then,
Jean
April 25th, 2010 at 4:00 PM
@Vincent – I could not agree more and I share the same enthusiasm and joy in sharing, commenting and interacting through blogging. Thanks for highlighting this point!
@Komodo – I’m not sure if you consider this to be unexpected achievement or not but it sounds like over a few days you have achieved something you didn’t think you could at first, so that is unexpected to me. Great example of that with school achievements and new areas to learn!
@Richard – Yes it seems like a gift, I like that description, thanks for commenting!
@Jean – there is definitely a mixed baged of feelings with achievement and I like your exmaple with sports, an upset or unexpected win is more exciting and thrilling and not the same feeling as a dominate ‘certain’ win you cna expect yet still build up to.
April 26th, 2010 at 2:30 AM
True. In the long run, the pleasure of such unexpected success probably wears off and is on par with the satisfaction retained from any normal success but for the immediate period, the former is definitely much more gratifying.
Till then,
Jean
April 29th, 2010 at 8:41 AM
I like your thinking Mike. It’s true modern positive development followers feel they are owed a result in the same way when they invest in the stock market or property. ‘Hey, I’ve put x amount in, where’s my reward?’ It doesn’t work like that and success is a long journey not a short trip. Then, as you say, it can come a nice surprise or high. You do it because you want and that’s enough.
May 25th, 2010 at 3:52 AM
Attaining on goals are fantastic, but also usually a bitof an anti-climax to me. Quite often there is more a sense of relief than accomplishment! I suppose it all has to do with how rocky the road was on way to the goal. I’ve had some colorful journeys 😉
July 16th, 2011 at 9:27 AM
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