There is nobody who doesn't want to be successful in his/her career. Nothing is as strong as the desire for success to motivate people to make their every effort to do something. The definition of success can vary depending on personal values and way of thinking. However, whenever we are talking or discussing the issue of success, we get to hear several common things, a sort of cliches like "No pain, no gain," "The man who can succeed is born under a lucky star," "No short-cuts to success except diligently doing work." These comments which we have heard so many times, may have brainwashed us to believe they are true. Even though we don't have any experience and a sure-fire evidence on them, we can call myths. Like other myths, we tend to follow these myths unconditionally without checking them out and seeing if they are out of touch with reality, which may mislead us in the wrong direction, far from out real hope of success. Recently I read an article telling about this issue and would like to share it with you, HR personnel who, I think, are also craving success. You are often asked to think about the reasons why you haven't attained what you have wanted to achieve and their correlation to the communalized myths. Now I would like to offer my synthesis of the issue. Myth one: Work hard and You'll succeed. Everybody knows that success is difficult to achieve without hard work involved. Nobody can deny the fact that hard work is one of the important components of success, but not the only one. It is likely and widely accepted that we spend more time working and work longer than before to get out of problems when we are stuck in a fix, which leave us exhausted, but often we can't feel it effective or efficient if that is all we do, which happens often in everywhere we work at. The difference that most successful people have is their own way of working combined with hard work and smart work, which focuses largely on how to streamline unnecessary processes with a sight of big picture. Smart work usually takes us more time than hard work, but it will lesson our unproductive hard work practices, because it address the fundamental root causes of problems. Myth two: Success in School Guarantees Success in Work. Many people believe that those who have made good grade or graduated from privileged schools will succeed in their jobs, but reality often portrays a different story. Basic requirement to be successful at school is not the same as in a job. In school the result each student produces is based on individual activities, which affects mainly the individual value rather than that of the group. However, all kinds of work we have to do in a job are interdependent, with our interests overlapping and our results interconnecting, which affects all members including individuals who have attained a great level of success of work. Actually, we can see many successful people who didn't have a good academic background, but made remarkable achievements that some highly educated people couldn't even imagine. Myth three: Skill and Knowledge are the Keys to Success. Inamori Kazuo of Kyosera who is lauded as one of the top three CEOs in Japanese economic history has presented the formula for the best employee: capability x effort x attitude. Each component has its own range to be applied to this formula according to how important it is in evaluating the best employee. He puts the different ranges on each component. The range of capability is from 0 to 30, and effort is ranged from 0 to 100, wider than capability, and attitude has its range from -100 to 100, which has the widest range, meaning that attitude is the most important factor in appraising who the best employees are, not skill or knowledge. Many managers and supervisors don't seem to address the little nuances of employee performance, but it is often the little things, especially attitudes, that get in the way of a person's success. Myth four: Some People Are Luckier than Others and Therefore More Successful. We can see many people who have failed to do what they wanted to in life, try to escape from the unexpected results by blaming the causes of their failures to their unlucky condition. Of course, we can not help admitting the fact that luck can play a considerable role in bring someone success to some extent. However, what we might misunderstand in this context is the true source of luck. Some people appear to have lucky breaks naturally like a windfall, but if we take time to look at why these people seem lucky, we will see it isn't due to luck at all. Lucky people have made their every effort to create their own fortune, which doesn't come to them as they sit passively and wait; in other words, luck comes from our action, not from words. Ultimately, our success-or lack of it-is up to ourselves, not the luck of the draw. Myth five: Success Is Complicated and Difficult to Achieve. Success can not said to be simple, but also not complicated and difficult to achieve at the same time. Seeing the many success cases everyday of people who are similar to us in terms of intelligence level, academic background, possessions and etc. we can discover several factors that lead to their success. While others tried to strengthen their weak points and ascend to a station of equilibrium with the majority, these few successful souls were able to use the power of optimism, resolve that each person is different and there is no point to compare one to another, and constantly concentrating and developing what they excel at and making those their story, focal points. Of course, sometimes they hit a snag and sometimes got so stuck in a quagmire that they couldn't see any breakthrough, but they've got over the rough difficulties with their focus, desire and willpower. We can employ many things In the process of making a success in our lives, but if we've selected one or two differentiators, we had better deeply concentrate on it, because concentration requires our time and attention which may not be available for other unproductive things. The door to success is open wide to anyone, any time, but we can't see it easily because we are living blindfolded with these myths. We are surely recommended to identify which myths we have in our mind and get rid of them, which will be an important step in going forward. However, first and foremost, what we have to do if we want to succeed is to become more reliable to others as well as ourselves. In this context, reliability comes from strong commitment to 'Walk the Talk Attitude and Behavior'. We have to back up our talk with action. One of the unchanged maxim across all histories is that 'actions speak louder than words.' What you do and how you do it is a far more convincing representation of your values than what you say, which will lead you to success 100%.