What is Strategic Success?
If you have been following blogs and social media posts by ELA Education Services, LLC, you will often hear the term, Strategic Success. So, you are probably asking, what does that mean? In this blog, I discuss the vision behind strategic success to help you
conceptualize how ELA Education Services uses the term Strategic Success. Overall, strategic success is a mindset where individuals begin to look at where they are now and use current resources to strategically move forward with future aspirations. Here at ELA Education Services, LLC, we firmly believe that success takes planning. Thus, we use the term Strategic Success to mean, an intentional plan for future success. Strategic success encompasses the following:
1. Mindset. "Get ya mind right," as some of my students say. Once you decide that, no matter the obstacles, you will succeed at your goals, mindset will be important. Mindset might be THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT aspect of success. Everything will not always go as planned and mindset can be the difference between you moving forward or stopping at an obstacle. This is easier said than done though. So, how do you maintain a positive mindset? This will vary from person to person, but some things that have worked well for me are surrounding myself with positive people, prayer for God's purpose in my life, reading positive or motivational quotes/books, putting things into perspective (i.e. remembering that the most successful people did not reach their success overnight), and defining success for myself. My success might not look like someone else's because I was placed on this earth with a unique purpose. So, it is important for me to determine success for myself with attention to my strengths and talents. With the right mindset, you'll have the determination and attitude to move forward past all obstacles.
2. Self-Reflection. Success calls for us to constantly evaluate ourselves and to reflect on our situations, good and bad. Self-reflection helps you in not-so-ideal (i.e. bad) situations because you can take a look at what you do not like or things that are not going well and take initiative to change or enhance those things. Mistakes or set backs are not the end of the world. They are just delays that you can use to learn or enhance skills. Self-Reflection also allows us to highlight the great aspects in our lives. Using self-reflection, it is good to congratulate yourself for accomplishments or for being disciplined in reaching your goals. For example, if you had a goal to eat healthier, and you stuck with that goal for 2 weeks, celebrate yourself and reflect on the factors that helped you to stay on track with that goal. Whether good or bad situations, there is something to be learned about ourselves from reflection, and these learning moments can help us spiral into success.
3. Ongoing Action Plan. Having a plan is the strategic part to success. You can have all your ducks in a row, know what you want out of life, and surround yourself with positive people; however, if you have no plan, you are setting yourself up for a fall. without a plan, how will you get to what you want out of life? and how will your support system know how to support you? Goals are great, but they are nothing without an action plan to implement them. If you have plans to be a teacher one day, it is not going to happen just because you wrote it down on a piece of paper. Be prepared to take your goals one step further and start think about what it takes to be a teacher, how long will it take to become a teacher? Once you are a teacher, what does that mean? Asking such critical questions helps you to establish a plan so that you move from just having a goal to having a goal with a plan.
If you need assistance setting goals and a plan to achieve those goals, sign-up for a FREE session here: http://www.elaeducationservices.com/freesessions
