Fourteen Essential Requirements to Success

1.     Having a Specific Goal: Regardless of education, talent, intelligence, will-power, leadership skills and so on unless you set down on paper and get clear in your mind your specific goals in all likeliness you will not achieve. Case in point, a graduating class of Harvard business students were surveyed several years after graduation. Those 5% who had specific goals were making more money than the remaining 95% of the class. Another point of note is that business owners who put together a business plan (a very time consuming task) have a 50% greater chance of succeeding. Having a clear vision of what it is you desire is essential to success.

2.     Self-Confidence: Without a well-developed sense and understanding of self, there is little chance that you will be able to overcome the inevitable hard times and naysayers that will appear on the road to success. And self-confidence can only be developed if you know yourself, do what it is that you were put here to do, have a true desire to help others, and know that what you are doing is of great worth and merit to not only you but, maybe even more importantly, to others.

3.     Habit of Saving: Even before you have money, even if you are just getting your debt under control by eliminating credit cards and other payments, if you don't learn to manage money and have a clear understanding as to how to manage it, when you greatly increase your income the likelihood that you will lose it is tremendous. There is a story of a man who was making $800,000 a year but was always broke. After he discovered he was sabotaging himself because his mother told him while growing up "You're a pig if you have more than you need to live comfortably," he began to manage his money effectively. Learning that money is good that having a lot does not make you bad or evil that one must work to save and overcome the desire to spend to keep up with the latest fad or product is essential to ones financial health. And in these times of the dying pension and waning social security it is becoming more and more essential that individuals become personally responsible for their financial present and future.

4.     Initiative and Leadership: To achieve to obtain financial independence and grow beyond our limitations to open and discover the potential greatness in all of us, we must overcome the self and put ourselves in positions that will enhance and forge our leadership skills. Contrary to popular belief, leaders are not born they are developed. Some may come to leadership more naturally than others, but with focus and desire, leadership skills can be learned by anyone willing to put in the work. By looking to lead in small things and slowly progress in responsibility, learning line upon line, precept upon precept, you will not only be developing a skill but proving yourself and becoming the person you only dreamed you could be. By overcoming fears, by overcoming character weaknesses (fear, anger, shyness, laziness, pessimism, dishonesty, doubt, lack of knowledge, lack of perspective, etc.) by overcoming yourself you will grow to find not only greater achievement but greater joy in the control over and the joy in the life you will find.

5.       Imagination: Without imagination you are doomed to failure. Here we are not necessarily speaking of creating the next great story or musical score, even though that is included, but here the focus is away from the beaten path, away from the tried and true, away from the popular, the accepted, the known. And here one needs more work than imaginative gift. At a wealth seminar I attended, I was listening to a very successful businessman talk about his success. He was formerly a very successful real estate agent / investor, but found that his life was consumed with selling, selling, selling, and became disenchanted by the whole process. He discovered a business that gave him more time and much more money, a win / win situation. However, there were naysayers in attendance, those who could not accept his "original" way of living, a way of living that ran outside the norm. One woman spoke up and said, "That sounds great but it's not normal." The businessman responded, "What's normal is being in debt and consumed by working endless hours that never fully gets one out of that debt. If that's normal then I don't want it." Earl Nightingale once said, and I paraphrase, if you don't know what to do, just don't do what everyone else is doing. It's amazing how many in seeking from the ignorant perspective of safety-in-numbers, unimaginatively follow the herd off the cliff to their emotional, financial, and spiritual death.

6.     Enthusiasm: How does one achieve enthusiasm? Ignore what you see, what you're told, and even what you believe (for often our beliefs are second hand) is the right thing to do and dig deep to find what it is you need to do, were put here to do, must do. And on top of this, you must continue to overcome the self (all self-deflating and debilitating ideas and character flaws) to create a being who is solid in his or her ideas but not puffed up and so proud as to unrealistically see oneself as better than another, in any way, shape or form. Of course, easier said than done, but an ideal to aim for, for it is in working with others where we find our lives. Where do we not engage with others, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually? We do so in business, in the classroom, in public, in politics, in forums, in church, in the community large and small, especially in the family-the training ground for personal betterment.

7.     Self-Control: If you cannot master yourself, then you can master little if nothing.  One must learn restraint, patience, fairness, subjective objectivity (or being as object as a human can be), discipline in thought, word, action and deed. It is only he or she of the disciplined mind who can overcome great obstacles and achieve great success in all areas of life. For without patience how do you deal with failure or setbacks, the uninformed, learning, limitations (we are all equal in our infinite ignorance) . . . all things human? 

8.      Do More Than Required: If you are one of those students who only does what the teacher asks you, you've probably never learned one of the most important secrets to success. Granted, you may have had a bad teacher, one who asks you to do the unimportant or that lacking merit or something that you weren't  interested in, then in that case find that which interests and go deep, for it is only here that the truly successful succeed. A good example of one who went deep-and wide-is Leonardo da Vinci. Here is an individual who exceeded most, not necessarily because of exceptional intelligence or creativity, but because he enhanced every fiber of his creative-thinking being by working, going the extra mile, miles, and miles, and miles, even. He observed, focused, and concentrated on shape, shadow, and form for so long, doing it so well, that he became a master of perception, taking this perception beyond art to engineering and medicine. Those who see great things may be born with an unusual desire to excel and exceed others, but it is only in their desire to work that they are instructed by what they find, overcoming and exceeding the limitations most believe are holding them back. To succeed you must excel and exceed in overcoming limitations to the great joy of discovery and fulfillment waiting for to be found.

9.    Work Well With Others: You may get by for a while on your intelligence, great creative insight, leadership skills, but it is only a matter of time before you fall if you do not get along well with people. And even if you do succeed with a terrible disposition, what's the fun in that? The true joy comes in sharing all that you have with others in the myriad of ways possible. The majority of those who succeed in life are not necessarily the best and brightest but those who delight us with their pleasing personality. Why was Ronald Regan so successful? Bill Clinton? Gandhi? Mother Teresa? Martin Luther King? Donald Trump? (and not his "perceived" persona but his real persona). Without a pleasing personality, few last long doing anything. In description after description of those who succeed, exceed and excel are those with pleasing personalities.

10.Thorough and Accurate Thinking: How many know that several key organizations want you to have a job? That colleges and universities or "hourly / wage factories" feed this need? For if we were all investors and business owners (and if you don't think this is a possibility, see #5) taking advantage of the tax breaks (Bill Gates said the secret to his success was knowing the basic tax laws) credit card companies, lending institutions, large companies, and the government would lose a lot of money. Time and time and time again, people do not think accurately, first, because they aren't aware of having to do so, and secondly, they don't take the time and work needed. There is a lot to this "accurate thinking," but in being aware you begin on a road certainly less traveled but a road that provides much greater success and happiness in all avenues of life.

11.Concentration / Focus: Isaac Asimov and his wife wrote a ‘How-to-Write' book, and according them one of the secrets to being a successful writer was getting rid of all distractions: junk mail, newspapers, television, telephone, etc. and simply get to work. The Asimovs advised, "If it's a nice day, shut the blinds and get to work." If you find yourself getting distracted too often (we all certainly give into it on occasion) then you need to get rid of and limit those things in your life that interfere. It may be ruthlessly unsubscribing from emails, watching the television only on the weekends or limiting to an hour a day, just throwing away your junk mail, screening your calls and answering only emergencies or calling back calls of a lesser importance during scheduled "call times," limiting socializing, temporarily cutting back or eliminating workouts for a period of time, and so on. But if you are not dedicated to your achievement, your distractions will take hold informing you to that you are not serious and that you must give up your dreams or find that which you truly dream of.

12. You Can't Do It Alone: If you're an American, he / she of a great independent mind, then you may feel or believe that you should do it alone. You CANNOT be further from the truth. If you begin your endeavor believing this to be true, within days or weeks (if you're particularly stubborn) you will seek others for help. Those who are truly informed of this aspect of success constantly think of ways others can help so that the majority or all of their time is spent doing only and just what they love, for what is the purpose of seeking success if this is not one of your ultimate goals? Time and time and time again, successful people come to the realization that their time and faculties are limited, as well as their time on this earth, and seek to maximize their enjoyment: our reason for being, and here I certainly do not mean merely self-indulgence.  Look to the most successful and you will see a great and grand team that compensates for the lack of an individual to be all things and in all places at all times.

13. Profiting from Failure: Do you fail? Who doesn't? But is failure not an option for you? Then get to walking on water and ignore what I have to say. All fail. The greatest have failed. Many often and almost always. Consider the greatest successes in sports? Even one of the greatest golfers of all time, Tiger Woods, fails to win 70% of the time, as do the best hitters in baseball. How many win championships? The greatest of the losers fail time, and time, and time again. If you don't see failure as an option then merely close your eyes and go back to sleep. But for those who know failure as our best ally, listen closely. Those who learn from their failures not only do so to overcome the self, to learn patience, perseverance, to acquire strength and passion, but to learn of the other, to reach out to others in greater interest, compassion, and desire to aid in any way they can. Need I say more?

14.Tolerance: Here tolerance could be self-tolerance, being more accepting of one's foibles, which is certainly a key to success, but I'm talking more about looking out to not only others but situations that may occur that are "intolerable" or out of our control. Of course, to become successful or to be successful, one has to be tolerant in overcoming obstacles, but where does this source of strength come from. From inside, of course. And this is why we work on overcoming our limitations, our human weaknesses, which, contrary to popular belief, can be done. Personally, I grew up shy, extremely introverted, hopeless, depressed, suicidal, and angry, all that I have overcome to a great degree. If I didn't have the desire to overcome these shortcomings or the awareness that I should, I would be like the millions or majority who suffer from the "Oh, that's just how (name of person here) is." But our shortcomings do not define us, rather they are weaknesses that we must work to overcome. But why weaknesses? Without the good / bad, problem / solution friction, knowledge of the most essential kind would never be gained. And as we gain in this knowledge to understand that we are of great weaknesses, then we begin to appreciate and understand the weaknesses of all people, those who are not us. And in understanding tolerance we will enhance our character thus enhancing our ability to reach out to others in all we do.