When we think about success, we may think about it in a kind of a vague way. We often see success as a destination, a mission accomplished, but we don’t always think about the steps toward success that are necessary for achieving our goals.
To put this another way, think of a staircase – a staircase going up toward a golden door, the door of success. To get there, we need to take each step up in sequence. We don’t just float aimlessly toward our target; we navigate a series of individual steps. Nearly any kind of success is like this. Any kind of creation, task, or effort has steps. We just don’t always see them, because we don’t think deeply about how the process works.
We can really take a lot of this same approach to our struggles for personal success. In the GudeJob principles — gratitude, understanding, determination and determination, we often think of determination as a process that we call “Assess-N-Step.” It’s the idea that we’re breaking down our efforts into a series of specific chess moves, with each one being a critical step in a deliberate process toward realizing our objectives.

Identifying the Next Step Toward Success
No matter where you are in the process, you can use GudeJob principles to help you get to the next step:

• Gratitude – At some point, you may find yourself lingering on one step a little longer than you wanted or had anticipated. Put your frustrations aside, and focus on being grateful for a) getting this far and b) what you have learned along the way. Even the seemingly smallest of lessons can end up having a gigantic impact on helping to propel you toward your destination.
• Understanding – Here’s where you want to analyze your true intentions and motivations. Are you on the right path? Are you approaching your goals in the right way and with the right attitude? Are you focusing on the individual steps in your mission, or are you getting caught up in the big picture?
• Determination – Keep your chin up, even when the deck seems stacked against you. Determination is one of the most essential factors in achieving your goals. It’s what will drive you on those days when everything seems hopeless. Take a deep breath, remember that tomorrow is a new day, and say to yourself, “I want to do this, and I CAN do this.”
• Enthusiasm – Enthusiasm is the natural progression of following the other GudeJob principles. When you approach your ambitions with gratitude for the process and understand what it is you really want to achieve and how to do it, your determination to see it through will be magnified, which will in turn increase your enthusiasm for the project. Enjoying every step of your mission will not only increase your chances for success, but it will make the whole process even more worthwhile.

Creating the Next Step: Successfully Getting from Point A to Point B
In terms of creating steps toward success, making your ambitions concrete, and determining objectives, you want to have a detailed plan in place before you start. It’s so easy to get caught up with wanting to be at point B now that we often overlook those little details that will help us get there. For example, I once wanted to build my own bookshelf out of raw materials (Point A). After buying all the supplies for the project, I was anxious to get started right away so I could start using it (Point B). But I knew that I wanted decorative elements carved into the wood. I had to take a step back and reassess the steps in my process to make sure I was actually going to end up with not just a bookshelf, but the bookshelf I actually wanted. Instead of jumping in and moving from Point A to Point B, I had to make sure I covered Point A.1 first. Grateful that I had all the materials on hand, I understood that I needed to carve the wood before I assembled it, because I was determined to get the piece that I wanted, which increased my enthusiasm for the project exponentially.

Moving onto the Next Step in Your Destination
Here’s another challenge that often pops up when we’re moving from one step of a process to another: we simply lose momentum. As humans, we tend to have a limited attention span and drive to address any given thing we set out to do. Sometimes we talk about “burning out,” or we just procrastinate at a certain point in the process. To try to get over these kinds of obstacles, I can:

• Remind myself of why I started a project in the first place
• Think about how great the final results will be
• Make a timeline – keep a chronology for each step and stick to it

If we go back to my bookshelf, there were times that I could feel my momentum waning. During those times, I stopped what I was doing and took a few minutes to remind myself of the GudeJob principles I was using to achieve my goal. Instead of getting overwhelmed with the magnitude of my ambitions, I broke the project down to just the next step and let my gratitude, understanding, determination, and enthusiasm carry me through those rough patches. That’s one of the biggest ways to ensure success – be consistent and keep moving forward. Don’t let a bad mood or momentary lapse of momentum slow things down. Power through and make dreams a reality.
Any way we slice it, in the evolution of our personal life toward success, having a next step, and taking it, is important. With the right support tools in hand, we can confidently work forward to our destinations and get around any obstacles that are in the way.