Success Keys Library

WHAT ROLE DOES FAILURE PLAY IN SUCCESS? You will not succeed unless you are willing to fail. T oo many people believe the process of achieving success is supposed to be easy. The great American inventor Thomas Edison observed that attitude among people. And this is how he responded to it: Failure is really a matter of conceit. People don’t work hard because, in their conceit, they imagine they’ll succeed without ever making an effort. Most people believe that they’ll wake up some day and find themselves rich. Actually, they’ve got it half right, because eventually they do wake up. Each of us has to make a choice. Are we going to sleep life away, avoiding failure at all costs? Or are we going to wake up and realize this: Failure is simply a price we pay to achieve success. FAILURE IS NOT . . . If you can change your perspective on failure, it will help you to persevere—and ultimately achieve your desires. So how should you judge failure? By taking a look at seven things fai...

WHAT DIRECTION SHOULD I GO? You will never go farther than your dreams take you. I f you live in a town near the ocean, you may have seen advertisements for “cruises to nowhere.” Maybe you’ve even been on one. People get on board a cruise ship, and when they leave the pier, instead of setting out for a lush island or other exotic location, they go out to sea and travel in circles for a couple of days. Meanwhile they dine on sumptuous meals, lounge around the pool, enjoy the shows, and participate in onboard activities. It’s similar to checking into a fine hotel or resort. The problem for a lot of people is that their lives are too much like those cruises. They’re on a trip with no set destination, no charted course. They’re in a holding pattern, and they occupy their time pursuing pleasures or engaging in activities that don’t have any lasting benefit. Meanwhile, they travel in circles. In the end, they finish no better than they started. A cruise to nowhere may be a fun way t...

WHAT IS SUCCESS? You cannot achieve what you have not defined. T he problem for most people who want to be successful is not that they can’t achieve success. The main obstacle for them is that they misunderstand success. Maltbie D. Babcock said, “One of the most common mistakes and one of the costliest is thinking that success is due to some genius, some magic, something or other which we do not possess.” THE TRADITIONAL PICTURE OF SUCCESS What is success? What does it look like? Most people have a vague picture of what it means to be a successful person that looks something like this: The wealth of Bill Gates, the physique of Arnold Schwarzenegger (or Marilyn Monroe), the intelligence of Albert Einstein, the athletic ability of Michael Jordan, the business prowess of Donald Trump, the social grace and poise of Jackie Kennedy, the imagination of Walt Disney, and the heart of Mother Teresa. That sounds absurd, but it’s closer to the truth than we would like ...