Success

How would one defines success? Personally I think that it is how a person obtains his goal that he sets. What is my goal?

I always tell people that I want to be one of the financial leaders in the financial industry in the country that I am working in. What exactly are the steps needed to be done in order to achieve that? Or what exactly does financial leader do? Honestly, I have no much clue about it. All I know is that I need to land on my desired; that I am able to feel that I am gaining knowledge of the financial industry on a daily basis. And through obtaining this knowledge, therefore I could lead a group of people to provide excellent service to clients.

Till now I am still not able to obtain job satisfaction from my current job as a fund accountant. I am not able to understand or figure out why does the fund managers sell or purchase a particular security; all I do is to execute them and making sure the funds are error free. Although it could be quite challenging at times to ensure each fund is error free, I often ask myself, is that what I wanted to do in my life? Obviously no.

In order for me to relocate myself in-line with my goal, I guess I will need CFA to back me up. Sadly, I do not have such a talent in obtaining the first level in my first attempt; I need a several attempts. I am on my third now and I really hope I can get it passed with the result releasing end of next month. If I passed, my career life will be smoother; it is also able to boost my self-confidence. As a man, or even a person, having confidence is really important, at least in my opinion. I need to be confident so that I can be motivated to accept new challenges in my next job.

I had been having this mindset for a long time. A mindset that makes me thinks that I could be successful if I persist and don’t give up and I am determined that I am right. But whenever I feel down due to my confidence level being challenged by any issues, like having a smarter brother who is currently taking the level two in CFA now, it will lead me to think if I am too stubborn to stay in this field. Perhaps at such time I need someone who understands me really well to back me up; to tell me that I can do it. This particular person has yet to exist in my life; therefore, self-willpower is the only thing I have to counter with this emotional turmoil. Not even close friends can help me with it. The only fortunate thing is that this event only happens occasionally. Bottom line is I am still a human after all, not a machine that has a flat emotional cycle.

It seems that behind a successful man there is a woman. I do believe it to some extent. I would like to modify it to “behind a successful man there is a RIGHT woman”. This right woman could be different for every man. My kind of right woman is very limited in this world due to my hard to please character (I think). Well I actually found one but I don’t think she is interested in me at all. It is not easy for me to find a girl that I am really comfortable with; a girl whom I think will bring me to my fullest potential. But pursuing this girl has yet to be my primary goal simply because I can’t multitask well; I would rather focus on my career to prevent failing to get any of them. 

Note that despite I kept talking about my personal goal, I have never touched on the monetary compensation. Many people want to earn millions at a certain age. But that’s not me. I have a mindset that not to go after money. I chose to go after knowledge instead. When I looked further, at the age of retirement, I will not be proud of the amount of money I have obtained; I will only be proud of my accomplishments, and that will come with knowledge. At the same time, I also believe that money will come after me when I don’t chase it. Well, it is true that it is harder for Malaysians to think like that because the life of Chinese people here are just tough. Probably I will not think the same if my family is not financial stable.

I will touch on the hold back to my goal in the next topic.