Most people base their success on the salary they earn as well as what their job title is, always striving to increase their earnings and work their way up to the most senior position. Yet, as that age-old saying goes, money can’t buy happiness, and a high salary does not necessarily equal success.
As shown by our 2016 Asia Salary Snapshot, people are becoming more and more concerned with other factors aside from salary, such as work-life balance and opportunities for mobility within Asia. We created Links Career Tree in response to these concerns, allowing candidates to plot their career and see where each path will lead them in terms of salary, annual leave and mobility in Asia. (For more information about Links Career Tree, click here.)
There are other, less tangible factors that also contribute to success:
Being challenged.
If you’re content with just plodding along and getting by, then true success is probably not on your agenda. If you’re bored at work and count down the seconds until the end of the day, every day, chances are you aren’t being challenged enough and therefore will lose motivation and ultimately not enjoy your job, making it very hard to be successful.
Being listened to.
When your team or your boss listens to your opinions and values them as a contribution to a project, you have every right to give yourself a pat on the back and feel good about yourself. If what you say goes unnoticed or even ignored, it’s inevitable that you will feel lousy about your role and therefore struggle to be successful.
Being praised.
In life in general, when someone pays you a compliment, you feel pretty good about yourself. When someone says something positive about the way you work, a project you carried out, or a great idea you had, naturally this contributes to making you feel valued and thus successful. When this praise comes from outside of your organisation, whether from a company you have partnered with or just someone who has noticed your contribution, the sense of achievement is even higher.
Being asked for advice.
If someone is seeking advice from you about something that they themselves aren’t sure of, it means that they see you as an example and value your opinion. You can’t help but feel that if your advice will contribute to someone else’s success, then you must be successful yourself – provided your advice is good, of course!
Being happy.
This is one of the most important contributing factors to success. If you leave your job miserable every day, you’re not happy there and it’s difficult to be motivated when you’re unhappy. Lack of motivation leads to lack of inspiration, meaning you won’t be doing a good job and, therefore, how can you be successful? Given that you spend most of your day at work, you should want to be there; you should leave every day with a smile on your face and look forward to going back the next day with that smile still there. Only then can you be successful.
If reading this post has made you realise that your current situation is unlikely to lead you to be successful, despite your comfortable pay cheque, maybe it’s time to make some changes. Contact one of our recruiters now and let us help take your career to the next level.