What does success mean for you? Is it giving or taking?

Questions like these are crucial to understanding your inner goals and motives. For example, if you want to go to a business course because you saw how rich the tutor is already, and you want the same high life, you are on a different way than if you want to start a business to help others and share what is specifically you and unique.

When you can come up with something that is either new or a new combination or usage of existing things or knowledge, the outcome would be innovative, helpful or entertaining. When the Costa brothers started delivering coffee beans by an English taxi, it was a unique combination of existing technologies and ideas – and it worked.

When you only follow and copy others to gain money, you are not necessarily creating something new. Your options will be limited. For example, I read the following comment on a webpage that sells courses that promise to make people wealthy: I enjoyed the course that gave me so much that now I have a successful YouTube podcast channel and a successful business. Checking it out, I found that this person is doing almost the same as the training site, only with a different design and words – and without that decade-plus experience that the original, already credible business have.

Today, you can build wealth easier than half a century ago. However, the biggest question is that how long will it last? What does success mean for you? Long-term partnerships? Maybe quick money? None of these is inherently wrong goals. However, you need a different approach to choosing one or the other.

Crowded with technology, there is a new phone launch from every phone maker every year – or half a year for some. There is a new version of the most popular laptops every year as well. The same is true for some businesses as well, especially for those that are selling digital goods. You can see ads, campaigns proudly announcing the new successful product launch this week or this month! There is an insane ever-increasing speed that demands so much from people. Learn entirely new technology, a domain within six to nine months – every year. These create false beliefs about success – and put much unnecessary stress on us.

If you are not productive or valuable in every minute of your days, you waste your time. Sounds familiar? You cannot underestimate hard work. If you want results, it requires a lot of effort from you. However, the ROI of your effort is not immediate. It builds up slowly and then rewards you when you build consistency and determination. How could you translate it to a world where everyone wants (and unfortunately promises falsely) instant joy, money and success? What amount of effort should you move for instant success?

If you push yourself constantly when you let your brain and body rest and deepen the new information or develop great ideas? It does not mean that you don’t need to sacrifice a lot when you start your own business or start a training or learning new skills. Hard work and purpose are both required. However, you can do it within a system that balances your energy level, recreation and work.

Try to do two-hundred push-ups when you decide to start exercising after a long hiatus. It is pointless, and you will quit sooner. You need to build it up, and you need to be consistent. By the time you reach two hundred, you will feel better, eat healthier, have a better outfit already, and you can keep it up with consistency. A little more every day is better than shock your body rarely.

Success, therefore, means that you acknowledge that it will be complicated first, and you need to put much effort into it to learn the basics before your patience turns into rewards. Do not wait for immediate success after finishing a course on the internet or buying a book. Instead, you need to go and try. Start experiments to get the experience, learn and improve. Then, fail to move forward and force yourself not to quit. It is hard, and if you want to start a new business, it has financial consequences that would be even scarier and demotivating.

Entrepreneurs have immense popularity today, and they can be role models for us. Learn about their history, and you will see that most of them started low, failed a lot before they found success. Also, they need to win many fights and overcome many failures day by day to move forward or grow their companies. None of them had a dream to be rich and live on the beach of the Bahamas, but they wanted to change something.