The achievement of success can be broken down into five essential components. In this article I will outline what those components are and how they fit together to make success a reality in your life. Purpose The thing that most distinguishes human being from the other animals is the ability to create an inspiring purpose of our own. A person without an inspiring purpose cannot hope to become all they could be. Success starts with an inspiring purpose. Happiness starts with an inspiring purpose. Self fulfillment starts with an inspiring purpose. If you don't yet have an inspiring purpose then dig deep inside yourself and ask this question: "if I knew I couldn't fail, what is it that I want more than anything else in the world?" From your purpose you develop a goal. A goal is simply a target that is big enough to inspire you to action by not so big as to overwhelm you. It is a stage toward fulfilling your purpose. Passion Every purpose and every goal needs fuel enough to drive you to achieving it.
That fuel is passion. Passion for your purpose is what gets you to leap out of bed in the morning with enthusiasm for the day ahead. Passion is what gives you the faith and strength to do the things you have to do in order to achieve your goal. Passion is what keeps you going when the going gets tough. If you are have trouble getting up of a morning, if you feel tired during the day for no real reason, if you are focusing on the difficulties or hardships of your journey then you need an injection of passion. When people lack passion it is usually a sign of fear of failure. Perhaps they had some large disappointment early in their life and have allowed that to destroy their ambition. If that is the case then it is up to you to have the courage to build passion again. All life contains the risk of failure but the only guaranteed failure comes from not trying at all. Spend some time each day to build passion and you will discover happiness.
 Plan Most failure can be tracked back to a lack of planning. Once you have a purpose and goal that you are passionate about then it is time to plan your strategies for bringing that goal into reality. Planning doesn't mean deciding on every step of the journey. That is impossible. A tennis player cannot plan every stroke they are going to play in a match because they don't know exactly the strokes their opponent will play. It's the same when you are planning to achieve your goals. Plan how you are going to start your journey. Research what resources you need. Create an overall framework for how you intend to go about achieving your goal but leave enough flexibility to allow you to respond to the various outcomes you encounter along the way. Practice A plan has no value until you put it into practice. Plans don't achieve goals; they give you a direction in which to apply massive action. It is the action that brings the goal into reality. We each have limited time and there is a lot of competition for how we use that time. You have the demands of daily living, the demands of your family and friends, the demands of your job or business and many other aspects of your life all vying for your time. With all that competition for your attention it can be difficult to remain focused enough on your goals for long enough to actually achieve them.
Those who do achieve their goals do so by taking some goal directed action each and every day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Goal directed action is the key. If you can't organize yourself to find some time every day for pursuing your goals then study time management. If your passion is great enough you will find a way to take goal directed action every day without exception. Persistence A worthwhile goal, by its nature, takes time to achieve. If you could achieve it in one day then it is not a goal it's just a task. A quality that all successful people have to have in abundance is persistence. You have to persist with your goal directed action for as long as it takes to succeed. You have to persist with your plans for as long as needed to determine if your plans are good plans. If your plans turn out to be lacking then you have to create new plans and persist with them. Confucius once said that if you fail to reach your goal don't change the goal, change the actions you are taking. In other words you need to persist with your efforts to achieve that goal until the goal is achieved. So in summary, purpose sets your goal, passion fuels your goal, planning gives you direction, action brings your goal into reality and persistence ensures that you take action for long enough that it will produce what you desire.