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Step 1
First of all, no one is going to give you permission to be successful--you have to decided what a successful life means to you and then make the decisions to pursue it. Waiting for a breakthrough without at least taking the steps to be prepared for opportunity is not going to help you. Focus on what you can control--your education, your attitude, your ambition level--as opposed to what you can't.
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Step 2
If you're a first-generation "successful" person in your family, get over any family guilt about it out of your system. You may have experienced what I have--you reach the dock and think if you just keep throwing enough ropes everyone else will quit floundering. Then you get upset as you watch people reject the ropes again and again but still complain about how you're on the dock and they're still floundering! You eventually have to make the choice of either moving to solid land or risk throwing yourself back into the water with the each new rope. Most likely there are other loving and encouraging people in your life that want you to come to the realization of what you've been doing.
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Step 3
Have you ever pushed yourself--really pushed yourself--just to see if whatever your talent is has the boundary that you think that it does? There's a difference to it when you do it for yourself than for the sake of other people. Don't lose sight of things if you enjoy how your expressing your talent makes you feel--it will motivate you to see how far you can go. Doesn't matter if it's an athletic ability or a mental one--find ways to challenge yourself even if you don't "have to" do it.
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Step 4
Find ways of helping other people with your gifts, even if nothing financial immediately materializes from it. I used to write for free--did it for almost a year before I ever found any financial opportunity whatsoever. It still helped me.
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Step 5
Don't hold back from pursuing success because of it somehow being "offensive." This is something you may have accidentally learned during childhood--in schools there is sometimes the social pressure to be good at certain things but not "too good." I've known people who were excellent at math but would occasionally get a problem wrong because of other student's complaints that they were "throwing out the curve" on tests when they got perfect scores. Don't worry about "throwing out the curve" when it comes to your life--just be yourself, and you'll be a lot happier knowing how far that takes you.
Comments
niknik2008 said
on 1/15/2009 Thanks for the Information!
insidestory said
on 1/12/2009 Thank you for the reminder. I am the first college graduate in my family and know the feelings connected to this. But, you are right, you have to stay focused and move forward.