Probably the most significant part of commercial management literature is devoted to success. Primarily this success is associated with financial well-being. To achieve financial well-being, the authors of commercial books will offer you various ideas: neuro-linguistic programming, affirmations, directing energy in the right direction, and so forth. I have read many books on this kind, and I am sure their sole purpose is to stimulate brain areas responsible for ensuring that you buy and use these products as soon as you fail. As most of the time, people feel miserable, the market potential is limitless. However, I am sure that success is not related to affirmations or neuro-linguistic programming.
Furthermore, I believe success is related to two critical things. First of all, no matter how paradoxical it may sound, it is a failure, and secondly, the stop of pursuing only material gain. This article is about my thoughts on success and what logistic companies owners can learn from that.
The anatomy of motivational speakers.
I am not a famous motivational speaker. The purpose of my article is not to motivate you. If you’re hoping to learn another easy technique to achieve success, you can skip this article, as the point of this article isn’t that. Instead, I want to share with my readers my thoughts and experiences on this topic.
Since I am not a motivational speaker and do not earn from individual people, I do not have any evidence-based statements that are very popular. However, I am talking about the stories that are found in every motivation book. For example, from the series, “peter started working with me, and after six months, his wealth has grown to x million; he has achieved this using a secret strategy that I have developed after reading thousands of books and learned from many failures in between.” I think you get it and read it many, many times?
Such words act like a drug because we all want success. An unuseful person is not necessarily a poor person; it can also be a wealthy but psychologically broken individual. Much of the modern psychological literature analyzes successful people and notices that successful people are terrified because they are afraid of losing everything and sometimes think they do not deserve what they have. Therefore, the market potential for success teachers is enormous, as many of us need either self-reconciliation or success. And most importantly, a quick and easy way to achieve this. Although, every successful person or psychologically strong person will tell you that there is neither a quick nor an even easier path to success and stability. It’s solely related to harsh self-improvement. But if you knew that, you wouldn’t buy these kinds of books, courses or pieces of training.
I don’t mean to say that those books are totally wrong; they can be needed at some point in your life. They can also help you get out of a particular psychological pit, but you will not become prosperous or psychologically stable by reading them. On the contrary, some of the self-help methods proposed by these authors may even lengthen the path to success.
How do you understand that you are where you need to be?
As strange as it may sound, a proper understanding of success and psychological peace has reached me during my biggest failures. That’s when I realized that success comes when you stop chasing money, you stop expecting it, when you stop thinking about what others think of you, and when you just discover a place where you can do meaningful work. However, it is my deep conviction that this understanding cannot come without failure. Moreover, failure is a critical element that is needed for us to discover ourselves. A Japanese proverb states that to find yourself, you must forget yourself. And the greater the failure and the stronger you experience it, the more likely you are to find your true Self, your real place in the world, and only then will you have the money, the peace, the certainty, and find the endurance and energy to achieve your goals.
Many motivational books say that desire is the first and crucial step to reaching success. They talk about the desire to make X amount of money, the desire to help people, the desire to be necessary. Unfortunately, no successful teacher hasn’t said anything new about this topic, as A. Maslow did in his hierarchy of needs: status and satisfaction are at the top of the men’s motivational pyramid. While it is true that desire is the most important thing for success, although wrong desires and often harmful desires are related to material things, they can knock you back.
To better understand what I am about, I will share my personal experiences. From an early age, I was very serious about being a successful person. But, of course, in the beginning, it was just words; unfortunately, I was lazier, so I greedily read every motivational book that stated that if you really desire something, you will get it. But, of course, then I ignored the part about hard work and self-knowledge. So, although I can’t say it went badly, I somehow slipped into one logistics business. Later, I found another warm place, developing my career in one large group of companies, everything went well, but at some point, I realized that I had bigger dreams. In other words, my rational mind said that so you have everything you need, but the subconscious, which captures the most essential, fundamental elements of our dreams, has begun to cry out for jokes. And from this moment, exciting things start happening, as all the material affirmations begin to harm us. The limitless subconscious mind Gives us a signal that we need to pivot to another direction. Still, the conscious mind, which is limited and where all affirmations of material goods often lie, begins to limit us. In my particular case, I climbed another career step up, seemed to have reached my mini-financial plan, and thought to myself, this is enough, but to my surprise, my subconscious began to cry out for jokes that I wasn’t ready for. That is, I began to make all possible mistakes, which pushed me to choose another direction. And to my surprise, this new direction has led me to realize that success comes when you stop chasing money and focus on higher goals.
Of course, the desire was the initial impulse, but I probably wouldn’t have understood what I wanted without that failure. And I’m sure it is those affirmations that the vast majority of motivational books instruct to do. I’m talking about you having to imagine how you’re driving your luxury car, etc. That essentially lengthen the path to realizing that a higher goal leads us towards financial success, not the other way around.
We often observe a similar situation with companies. First, they have some initial purpose; later, some companies evolve. Finally, some of them become successful, and others don’t. I’m sure that most companies do not reach heights because they stay in their comfort bubble and start avoiding risks.
Maybe we can apply our personal experience to grow our business as well? Maybe short-term gains and going the usual way isn’t a good way? Maybe success lies in our ability to change, accept progress, and take a fresh look at business success? Maybe you need to transform your mission for something more ambitious?
I chose the path of transformation. Currently, I am engaged in more significant activities. I am helping logistics companies implement the necessary changes and grow faster. When I talk about change, I mean progress in contributing to a sustainable planet and society—digitalization which optimizes business processes and reduces environmental pollution. I also want to contribute to the promotion of the logistics business, as logistics is not just about transporting goods from point A to point B. It is a much more exciting and more essential process. Look at the TOP companies globally (Amazon, Walmart). It isn’t easy to distinguish whether it is logistics or retail businesses. I believe that current technologies will further strengthen the importance of this sector. I also want to direct the logistics company owners in the right direction by helping them to take the neseccasry leap of feight. Companies must transform from a company providing reactive logistics services to a high value-added and environmentally friendly company that provides logistics services and actively contributes to global prosperity.
Thanks for your attention. I want to congratulate everyone working in the field of logistics, the importance of this sector is growing and will continue to grow in the future.
About the author:
Tomas Ananjevas is a supply chain professional with 15 years of experience purchasing and selling Logistic’s services and building a supply chain from scratch. He founded a consulting, training, and staffing company that works exclusively with the logistics industry. Tomas is currently helping logistics companies implement the necessary changes that ensure business growth and continuity. You can arrange a time to talk with tomas by clicking here.