Don’t Let Your Past Success Make You Complacent

“…Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal…” Philippians 3:13-14 NIV

It wasn’t until a few years after completing my first degree that I understood that being one of the most brilliant students in class really doesn’t guarantee success in life. Life is made up of so many parts that it’s deception to believe that success in one area means success in every area.

As kids, we were taught to really study hard and get the best grades in school, which at the time was the kind of success needed, so I pursued that goal. But taking my skills to the marketplace to earn required a new type of intelligence.

This understanding helped me acquire new skills very fast. I started out as a freelance writer and in comparison with some of my peers, I became a highly paid writer and quickly leveraged the new skills I learned to transition into an agency model all within 4 years.

That transition brought with it a new type of intelligence that I needed to acquire. This is why complacency is a dangerous “epidemic” that affects people who stay too long basking in previous successes.

Achieving success in a project or endeavour is good and beats the feeling of failure every time. But it has its setbacks.

For a while, I rested on my success in being able to set up an agency model that in a short time, growth became stagnant. Each year would come and go leaving me at the same level. And then those who knew the dangers of complacency caught up and surpassed.

One key way to counter the possibility of complacency is to have a deep conviction for a vision bigger than yourself that you may not even be able to accomplish in your lifetime. For this kind of vision, no form of success will make you feel like you have arrived.

Yes, you’ll still need to be intentional, but you’ll also intentionally remind yourself that you must put in the work because the goal is still yet to be accomplished.

Where there is a will to press on toward that goal, there is a way. The way may be rough and very inconvenient, but your will is what you need to rise up every day and do what needs to be done, come success or failure.