Tag Archives: success
Coasting Won’t Get Us There
Behind every person who makes a success of something, you’ll find a long, rugged trail of effort and persistence. Somehow the world knows. It can tell who’s paid their dues and who’s just coasted along, putting in the time but not the blood, sweat and grit.
Of course, we sometimes see an exception, a person who rides in on a connection, a coat-tail or a coincidence. But if they didn’t really earn it, their flash across the sky is brief and soon forgotten. Call them what you wish, one-hit-wonders, one-movie duds, or one-sale-burnouts, they don’t know what they did, so it’s a non-repeatable thing.
Putting in Stars
Dreaming of Success
Maybe you want more… Tony did. Little Tony was born “in the wrong neighborhood” to relatively poor, working class parents who couldn’t afford to send him to college.
But even as a child, little Tony ached and yearned to amount to something, to be really big in the world. His grades weren’t all that special, but he had one burning desire. He wanted to be a big success.
Grampa’s Business Rules
The Rules for Success Are Not New
You know, business doesn’t have to be a complex, Harvard-B-school kind of thing, all complicated and hard for ordinary mortals to understand. Much of it CAN be boiled down to some pretty simple stuff.
My paternal grandfather didn’t have a degree in business. In fact, he never got past the third or fourth grade, but that didn’t stop him from running several successful businesses and owning a significant part of the small north-Georgia town where he lived.
But I Don’t Want to Wait THAT Long
Impatience
Years ago, I worked in a camera shop with a man named Sam who was constantly bemoaning his bad luck. He often talked about Mr. Dawson, a man in our town. He was in his seventies, and he was really lucky. Dawson was “lucky” according to Sam because he owned buildings all over the western suburbs of Chicago.
One day when he mentioned Dawson, I commented, “Hey, Sam, you’re only thirty-five now. Why don’t you start buying buildings this year? By the time you’re seventy-five you’ll have become as rich as Dawson.”
Everything ALWAYS Works Right
Failing Takes a Lot of Effort
“Son,” my Dad would say, “You could screw up a one-man funeral.” I don’t know how many thousands of times my father told me that while I was growing up, but it soaked in pretty deeply.
By the time I reached adulthood, I was convinced; nothing would ever work right for me; if there was a way to mess things up, I’d always find it. That was just a fact of my existence: I was a screwup.
Do Others Want to Help You Succeed?
Getting Ahead Takes a Team
Success in this world requires group effort. We all need mentors and people who will help us on the journey. But what will it take to attract the right people into our lives?
You’ve no doubt heard the old proverb about finding a love partner: to attract a wonderful person, you must become a wonderful person to whom that wonderful person would be attracted.
Everything successful between people is based upon giving.
