DREAMS, HAPPINESS and SUCCESS

Yesterday, as I walked around the train station enjoying the beauty of the natural environment that surrounded me. It suddenly resonated within my mind how nature brings a colourful beauty to ones heart, how it flies in our hearts like colourful butterflies and strengthens the heart with huge wings to fly.
The quietness and serenity of the natural environment equally enabled me to reflect on some key questions, I had been asking myself for a while. WHAT REPRESENTS REAL SUCCESS and HAPPINESS? What qualities do I need to reach my DREAMS? These questions and more fired me to reflect about the lives of some people that I admire and consider successful. Among them include Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela.
These two people all represented an idea and they all wanted the world to be better because they were here. They all held the view that HAPPINESS is something that exists in our lives, constantly waiting to be found and recognized. It is that one thing you are ready to sacrifice your ultimate for. I would advise you to please read the biography of Gandhi http://www.progress.org/gandhi/gandhi01.htm and buy the book “No easy walk to freedom” an autobiography of Mandela. It will enrich your life and make you understand the real meaning of success, happiness and the truth in the fact that, there is no obstacle too BIG to stop a TRUE DREAMER.
Some of the qualities I found common among these two persons and other successful people include;

Optimism
Optimism is power. This is a secret discovered by all who succeed
against great odds. Nelson Mandela, Ernest Shackleton, Eleanor
Roosevelt—all admitted that what got them through tough times was
an ability to focus on the positive. They understood what Claude
Bristol called “the magic of believing.” Yet great leaders also have an
unusual ability to face up to stark reality, so creating a single powerful
attribute: tough-minded optimism.
Optimistic people tend to succeed not simply because they believe
that everything will turn out right, but because the expectation of success
makes them work harder. If you expect little, you will not be motivated
even to try.

A definite aim, purpose, or vision
Success requires a concentration of effort. Most people disperse their
energies over too many things and so fail to be outstanding in anything.
In the words of Orison Swett Marden:
“The world does not demand that you be a lawyer, minister, doctor,
farmer, scientist, or merchant; it does not dictate what you shall do, but
it does require that you be a master in whatever you undertake.”
So to be successful, you must have higher aims and goals and doggedly
pursue their realization.

Willingness to work
Successful people are willing to engage in drudgery in the cause of something
marvelous. The greater part of genius is the years of effort invested
to solve a problem or find the perfect expression of an idea. With hard
work you acquire knowledge about yourself that idleness never reveals.
A law of success is that, once first achieved, it can create a momentum
that makes it easier to sustain. As the saying goes, “Nothing succeeds
like success.”

Discipline
Enduring success is built on discipline, an appreciation that you must
give yourself orders and obey them. Like compound interest, this subject
may be boring, but its results in the long term can be spectacular.
Great achievers know that while the universe is built by atoms, success
is built by minutes; they are masters when it comes to their use of time.

An integrated mind
Successful people have a good relationship with their unconscious or
subconscious mind. They trust their intuition, and because intuitions
are usually right, they seem to enjoy more luck than others. They have
discovered one of the great success secrets: When trusted to do so, the
non rational mind solves problems and creates solutions.

Prolific reading
Look into the habits of the successful and you will find that they are
usually great readers. Many of the leaders and authors covered here
attribute the turning point in their lives to picking up a certain book. If
you can read about the accomplishments of those you admire, you cannot
help but lift your own sights. Anthony Robbins remarked that
“success leaves clues,” and reading is one of the best means of absorbing
such clues.
Curiosity and the capacity to learn are vital for achievement, thus
the saying “leaders are readers.” The person who seeks growth, Dale
Carnegie said, “must soak and tan his mind constantly in the vats of
literature.”

Please share with me what means real happiness to you and how you define success in life.