Chapter 1: Personal Success

“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people, and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a health child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. That is to have succeeded.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Success itself has as many definitions as there are people on this planet. Here are a few:

• Webster’s dictionary defines ‘success’ as “the achievement of something desired, planned, or attempted or the gaining of fame or prosperity.”

• People who have achieved high levels of success may define it as “making measurable progress toward a worthy goal.”

• The NFL football coach, Vince Lombardi, says, “The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.”

All of these definitions have a common foundation to them, and that is that you need to know what it is that you want. To know what you want is to have defined success for yourself.

Define success with good questions

What I find to be the biggest problem for people is simply defining success for themselves. To define success, defining our values and goals is ninety-percent of the process. Only you know your heart’s desires, your true wants, needs, and what satisfies your soul. Nobody else can answer those questions for you.

In fact, don’t even seek answers but rather the clarity of your questions and the processes of searching. In the hugely successful fictional book, The Celestine Prophecy, a wise priest says to the young man: “The problem in life isn’t finding the right answer but identifying our current questions.”

This is the essence of personal development: The process of looking; the process of seeking; the process of finding. It is in the scriptures that promise:

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.”

Believing in yourself

Part of this journey is ‘knowing thy self’: Development of the person as a unique individual with unique gifts and skills. It is sad that so many people have low levels of personal awareness, continuously struggling with the same problems year after year without making much progress in life. Here is why:

• They are held back by false beliefs and insecurities developed in their younger years and worse insecurities carried on generation after generation.

• People just aren’t encouraged. It has been said that the average child in North America has heard the word ‘no’ eight times more than the word ‘yes’ entering grade school. Dennis Waitley, who is a leading producer of personal development and motivational books and tapes, and serves as the Director of the National Counsel of Self Esteem and who is deeply involved with the National Counsel of Youth Leadership, found that 80% of children entering kindergarten feel good about themselves, but by the time they reach 5^th grade the numbers drop to 20%, and by the time they reach high school they drop to 5%.⁷

It is no wonder that in adult life we tend to go with the flow, being lead more by what we can’t do than what we can do. Are you ready to believe in yourself?

People who believed in themselves

Henry Ford

It’s impossible! At least that’s what the engineers thought when Henry Ford decided to produce the V-8 engine. Ford decided he wanted all 8 cylinders cast in one block. He instructed his engineers to make a design for this idea: The idea was placed on paper, but all the engineers agreed that it was simply impossible to cast an 8-cylinder engine in one piece. Henry Ford said: “Produce it anyway!” So back to the drawing board they went and, sure enough, they found the secret to the V-8 engine and, once again, the ‘what’ that was once thought impossible was now achieved.

Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin spoke and wrote 5 languages yet only had 2 years of formal schooling. Franklin stands alone as the only person to have signed all four of the documents which helped to create the United States. He was a conversationalist, philosopher, diplomat, economist, writer, publisher, and inventor who knew no limitations.

The Wright Brothers

“Not within a thousand years would man ever fly,” said Wilbur Wright in 1901. That thought, expressed after an especially frustrating series of flight experiments, was shared by many people of the era. Many thought that man would never fly. Ever. It only took two more years of dedicated work for the Wright Brothers to prove that statement wrong. The fact that two brothers in the middle of America, who didn’t even graduate from high school, could achieve what others had failed to do was beyond the comprehension of many.⁸

Roger Bannister

In 1954, a young medical student did what the experts said was impossible: He ran the mile in less than 4 minutes. Doctors said that it was physically impossible for the human body to operate at that kind of running speed. Roger Bannister had a dream, a belief, and did not accept those limitations. Nobody in the history of mankind had done it before, but since Roger Bannister removed this mental barrier, now every world-class runner runs the mile in less than 4 minutes.

Start by mining your own talents

Developing our potential and capabilities is the place to start and key to our personal success and happiness. We need to look inside more deeply instead of outside of ourselves if we want to make a difference: Looking for that right job, business, or person that will do it for us. We need to begin right where we are with what we have and let that lead us where it does. It is the moral of the Russell H. Conwell story, Acres of Diamonds:

The gist of the story is of a man who owned a farm in some ancient lands. A priest had visited him and told him of the beauty and wealth of diamonds. This intrigued the man and prompted him to sell his farm and set out in search of diamonds. He travelled far and wide until he was utterly broke and depressed, finally cast himself hopelessly into the ocean and drowned. Later the priest came to visit the farm and found another tenant. The priest noticed a sparkle on a lump of coal sitting on the mantle and asked the tenant where he got that diamond. The tenant said, “That’s not a diamond, but a rock I found on this here property.” The priest said, “That’s not a rock, but a diamond in the rough,” and asked the tenant if he would take him to where he found this rock. Digging around, the priest found rock after rock after rock to realize they were sitting on acres of diamonds.

Few things in life can be as rewarding and satisfying as nurturing your own potential. As Thomas Wolfe once said:

“If a man has a talent and learns how to use the whole of it, he has gloriously succeeded and won a satisfaction and a triumph few men have ever known.”

Getting in tune with our natural abilities is crucial, but not always that easy to do. There is also a lot of evidence surfacing that we have different intelligence systems that we could get in tune with, nurture, develop, and grow into something special.

Multiple intelligences

“A person may have the greatest potential to be a chess player but if he grew up in a culture that didn’t have chess, the potential would never be found, let alone actualized.”

– Howard Gardner

Howard Gardner presents evidence that human beings possess a range of capacities and potentials, coining the term Multiple Intelligences. Gardner says:

“Individuals can not only come to understand their intelligences, but also deploy them in maximally-flexible and productive ways within the human roles that various societies have created.”⁹

In Gardner’s book, Multiple Intelligences, he lists seven intelligences that he has identified and 3 new candidates of intelligences – the Naturalist, the Spiritual, and the Existential – in his book Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligence’s in the 21st Century. The seven he identifies in Multiple Intelligences are:

1. Linguistic intelligence is the kind of ability exhibited in its fullest form perhaps by poets.

2. Logical or Mathematical intelligence is as the name implies. Logical, mathematical, and scientific intelligence.

3. Visual-Spatial intelligence is the ability to form a mental model of the spatial world. Sailors, engineers, surgeons, sculptors, and painters are some examples.

4. Musical intelligence is as the name implies. Mozart had lots of it.

5. Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence is the ability to solve problems or fashion problems using parts or the whole body. Dancers, athlete’s, and craftsmen all exhibit bodily intelligence.

6. Interpersonal intelligence is the ability to understand other people, what motivates them, and how to work with them. Successful sales people, politicians, teachers, and even religious leaders exhibit this form of intelligence.

7. Intrapersonal intelligence is the capacity to form an accurate model of oneself and use that model to operate effectively in life.

Gardner also says:

“In my view, the purpose of school should be to develop intelligences and to help people reach vocational and avocational goals that are appropriate to their particular spectrum of intelligences. People who are helped to do so, I believe, feel more engaged and competent, and therefore more inclined to serve society in a constructive way.”¹⁰

I totally agree, and not only do we begin to serve society in a more constructive way and fulfill more of our human potential, this kind of development will make us more confident as a person: It restores lost self-esteem which enables us to become better people.

Although this is a step in the right direction for our educational systems, we need to take more personal responsibility and engage in the kind of personal development that leads one to identifying and nurturing these talents.

The fuel of life

“We are gifted human beings with this wonderful human intelligence. On top of that, all human beings have the capacity to be very determined and to direct that strong sense of determination in whatever direction they would like to use it.”

– The 14^th Dalai Lama

It has been said that God’s gift to you is your gifts and skills and your gift to God is what you do with them.

Human beings are truly goal-oriented creatures and everything we do is for some purpose, whether we are conscious of it or not: In every way, we are always moving toward some goal. The better we can understand goals, how to set and achieve them, the more effective we will be in becoming the most we can be. Based on timeless principles, some of 20^th century’s classic books on success revealed the power of desire and our human gift to harness that and achieve our goals.

In 1948, Claude Bristol wrote The Magic of Believing saying:

“Plant the right kind of seed – thought of a pure strain – and habitually feed it with strong affirmative thought always directed toward the same end, and it will grow into a mighty force, finding ways and means of overcoming all obstacles. It will reach forth with its roots to find more food on which to grow and expand its foliage to gather more sunshine. It was desire that brought progress to the world. Without it, we all would still be living in a primitive age. Everything we have is a result of desire. Indeed, desire is the motivating force behind life, itself.”

A decade or so later, inspired by the great steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie, Napoleon Hill wrote the all-time classic success book, Think and Grow Rich. Napoleon had studied 500 of the richest men of America to better understand the road to success, through which he concluded there is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.

Around the same time Maxwell Maltz, a world-renowned plastic surgeon, wrote another American success classic that demonstrated the value and power of goals in our life. He helped us to understand that plastic surgery will not change you, but that you had you change the way you think or little would change, and that your goals were the fuel to that change.

The secret of the ages

Our goals, in fact, help bring out all these characteristics of success, but we must first identify what it is that we want. Once we have that direction or goal, we then can be very determined. We do have a strong sense of determination and that can be further strengthened by our desire, and vice versa. Robert Collier relates to this point so well that I include it on its own:

“When you consider the question, “Exactly what do I want?” you will first regard it as one quite easy to answer. But after you begin to consider the question in detail and in real earnest, you will discover two very troublesome obstacles in your way on the road to the correct answer. The two obstacles are as follows: 1) The difficulty in ascertaining a clear and full idea of your desires, aspirations, ambitions, and hopes. 2) The difficulty in ascertaining which ones of a number of conflicting desires, aspirations, ambitions, and hopes you want more than you do those opposing them. You will find yourself with the ‘divine discontent’ of a general dissatisfaction with your present condition, circumstances, possessions, and limitations. You will feel perhaps strongly, the ‘raw desire’ of the elemental Desire Power within you, but you will not have clearly outlined in your mind the particular directions in which you wish that elemental force to proceed into manifestation and expression.

“You will often feel that you wish that you were somewhere other than where you are now, that you were doing something different from that you are now doing, that you possess things other and better than you now possess, or that your present limitations were removed, thus giving you a wider and fuller expression and manifestation of the power which you feel to be within you. All these general feelings will be experienced by you, but you will not be able to picture clearly to yourself just what ‘other things’ you really want to take place of those which are now your own. Then, when you attempt to form a clear picture and a definite idea of what you want, you will find you want many things. Some of them opposing each other, each offering attractive features, each bidding actively for your favor and acceptance, thus rendering a choice and definite decision very difficult. You find yourself suffering from an embarrassment of riches. Or like the psychological donkey who was placed at an equidistant point between two equally tempting haystacks, and who died of hunger because he couldn’t make up his mind which one he wanted most, you may remain inactive because of strong conflicting desire motives.

“It is because of one or both of the above mentioned conditions that the great masses of people do not avail themselves of the great elemental urge of Desire Power. So they remain, like vegetables or the lower animals, content to allow nature to work alongside the instinctive lines of self-protection and propagation, without employing initiative or self-direction. Few people who break these barriers, and who strike out for themselves, are found to have known very clearly ‘just what they wanted’, and to have ‘wanted it hard’, and to have been willing to pay the price for attainment. In order to set to work the forces of Desire Power in a special direction, individuals must make clear an ideal path over which they must travel, as well as to arouse the forces so as to cause them to travel over that path.”¹¹

It never fails to amaze me how disconnected people can be from their goals and major definite purpose. If you don’t have your goals clearly defined, then you have been suffering from an enormous disadvantage in being able to get what you want and enjoy the journey of life with some sort of balance. Not only will you fail to get what you truly want or make the kind of difference you truly want to make, but life will seem to take everything you have in the process. And that’s why creating a plan, a strategy that is consistent with your values and major goals, is so critical to your success.

The need for clarity has never been greater

The shear vast amount of choices can cause us to stagnate. The flood of information is overwhelming, and everybody is trying to get you to believe this or that, there is a battle for your mind and you had better be clear on what you want because you don’t want to lose that battle. Of the hundreds and thousands of messages that bombard us daily and which your mind cannot possibly process, you unconsciously sort and keep information you think you need and discard the information you feel you don’t need. The only way this can be done effectively is by the clarity of your goals – being clear as to what you want. More than ever before in the history of mankind, is it crucial that you are clear on your goals, your values, and the direction you want to travel. If you are clear, then all of these choices and this information will serve you rather than distract you. You will begin to thrive on change and the incredible opportunities that you have to make a difference in the world.

With clear goals, desire, and determination we can begin the process that leads us to becoming the most that we can be and to fulfilling our human potential. I am sure you would agree that if one were to strive toward becoming the most they could be, if they aligned themselves, nurtured, and developed their natural gifts and skills, that they would be a personal success regardless of how we define it or how long it takes. Success is growing to new levels of awareness and fulfilling your potential. One of my personal favorite definitions of success is the Serenity Prayer:

“Oh God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time.” – Reinhold Niebuhr

As I continue to personally grow, changing myself and not others, I develop more courage and wisdom that helps me fulfill my potential. Life has incredible things to offer with unlimited experiences that can make our world so very special, and it only requires that you grow. Not only will you find purpose, meaning, and fulfillment, but you will find tremendous opportunity to contribute to the world in a positive way. James Rohn, who has some highly recommendable books and tapes on personal development, has said that “the best contribution we can make to our families and our country is to become better than we are.”¹²

And this is the contribution I would like to make to your heart, your mind, and your family: To encourage you to apply the applications at the end of each chapter of this book. Especially this key, crucial, and foundational step of clarifying, prioritizing, and choosing your major life’s goals and values.

Your Primary Aim

One thing about goals is that very few people really know how to actually write a set of goals that can help them to be more focused, more efficient, and more effective with anything they desire. The claims are that only 3-5% of people actually write goals and make plans, and everybody seems to work for them! Another is that there are two kinds of goals: There are general goals and motivational or inspirational goals.

General goals are what everybody has. These are the kind of goals people make at New Year’s: Their wish lists, like to lose a few pounds or buy some new furniture, or buy a new car or travel to a new country for a holiday. These are great and we all have them because we are goal-oriented creatures, but please don’t mistake having these goals in your mind or even written down on paper is what it means to have “set your goals”. This is one of the biggest mistakes that people make. They have a couple of lists or a few vague ideas in their head and they think they have “set their goals”. These are just the natural actions or developments of our unlimited minds. And please don’t stop dreaming either: Dream big dreams and keep on dreaming, just don’t mistake them for ‘set goals’. If there are no major obstacles between you and your goals, then they are only activities and will not give you the motivation or life experience I am talking about.

What I really want to talk about are motivational or inspirational goals. These are the kind of goals that cause men and women to risk their lives, the kind of goals that stretch you beyond your present abilities – the kind that change you from the inside out. They are the kind of goals that keep you up at night, dreaming about them, reaching them, living them, and owning them.

More often than not, it is one goal, your primary goal: Your major definite purpose, it is the one you can write a personal mission statement around. It is the one that taps into your Desire Power, and the one that you develop your strongest passion for and use your best talents and skills to achieve. It is here that you will find the meaning and purpose of your life.

People of all kinds are seeking and searching for goals that create purpose, meaning, and direction. It is for this need that I created The Life Goals Planner, a tool that helps you identify all you goals, organize them, and then walks you through a unique process to prioritize your goals, leaving you with a clear look at what is most important to you. It helps you identify your primary aim, your A1 goal and form that into a passionate mission for your life.

I love Michael Gerber’s business books, The E-Myth and The E-Myth Manager, which are some of the best business advice and consulting programs. At the beginning of his books and consulting programs, he drills the entrepreneur and draws out what he calls your Primary Aim: The main reason for your life. He said it is absolutely critical that you identify it because it is what everything else is built around. In fact, he says, he can’t even help you if you don’t know it.

How else could you be possibly be satisfied without having determined what you want and set out to get it? The answer is that you can’t, not without first identifying your goals and clarifying your life’s purpose. Who cares if you spend most of your time on a bunch of things that don’t matter much to you? I tell you, you will be wasting a tremendous amount of time and resources and still not hitting your Primary Aim. A few years down the road, you will be wondering why you’re not that fulfilled or successful.

Chapter 1 Applications

Identify, develop and apply your natural talents to your goals

If you don’t already know – which most seem not to – figure out what it is that you love to do. More often than not your greatest passions are you natural gifts. It gets a little trickier the older you get, for one usually has developed many skills but fewer interests. There are many ways to approach this application. If you are not 100% certain, then it will be a process of answering questions and searching your heart and mind until you can say, “That’s it!” The Life Goals Planner was designed to help a person identify their Primary Aim, their major definite purpose, which I feel is the place to start.

To be a truly effective human being, you must clarify what your goals and values are. How else could you possibly be effective if you didn’t have a clear idea of what it is you wanted? How else could you manage your time or activities wisely if you didn’t know what is most important? How could you possibly make wise decisions without clear direction as to why you might choose this or that? The answer is that you simply couldn’t, at least not effectively enough to fulfill your life’s purpose. Of course, it doesn’t matter that much if you don’t really care who you become or where you end up, as the Cheshire cat said to Alice in Alice in Wonderland:

“One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. ‘Which road do I take?’ she asked. ‘Where do you want to go?’ was his response. ‘I don’t know,’ Alice answered. ‘Then,’ said the cat, ‘it doesn’t matter.’”

Benefits of goal-setting

It all starts with your values and your life’s goals. Goals literally enable us to focus all of our power toward a desired result. When goals are properly understood and applied, the benefits are absolutely incredible. Let’s look at what properly set goals can do for you.

1. Clearly identify your targets.

2. They prioritize your values and the important things in your life.

3. They are the most effective time management tool known to man.

4. Goals give purpose, meaning, and direction.

5. They get you focused and encourage discipline.

6. They promote, motivation, excitement, perseverance, and determination.

7. They help build character, accountability, confidence, and self-esteem.

8. They develop passion and burning desire.

9. They help promote good decision-making.

Why doesn’t everyone engage in goal-setting?

Goals are almost without question one of the greatest factors for personal and professional success. We all know how important goals are: Our parents tell us, our teachers tell us, and our preachers tell us, but nobody tells us how to go about them to get the full effect. It is a wonder that something so important, such a critical life skill, is not treated with more diligence and professionalism. Brian Tracy, one of the more influential trainers on personal effectiveness, lists seven reasons why people don’t apply this skill to its fullest:¹³

1. They are simply not serious about being successful.

2. They have not yet accepted full responsibility for their life.

3. Guilt: They have no confidence in themselves to reach goals so they don’t set them to avoid the guilt and the shame.

4. They don’t realize the importance of goal-setting.

5. They don’t know how.

6. Fear of rejection or criticism.

7. Fear of failure, which is considered one of the greatest obstacles to success.

The steps to setting goals

There are generally six steps to setting goals.

1. Clearly identify your goals. Create lists and prioritize them.

2. Write them down with a clear definition.

3. Identify the obstacles between you and your goal.

4. Identify the people, information, and skills you will need to achieve your goal.

5. Set a deadline for achieving the goal.

6. Create an organized plan of action for achieving the goal.

The life-goals planner

If you have not identified, prioritized, and set your goals, then you will be thoroughly amazed at the results you can achieve from simply answering the questions and going through the processes of the Life Goals Planner. It is simply incredible the power of clarity you will gain. In the book, I have simplified the whole process of goal-setting into two crucial steps: 1) Identifying and prioritizing; then, 2) goal-setting. Visit <www.lifegoalsplanner.com> for more details on this specific book.

“He who has a ‘why’ to live can bear almost any ‘how’.”

– Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche