First, we have to define success, and here is the best definition I’ve ever been able to find quoted by Earl Nightingale: “Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.” Success is the school teacher who is teaching because that’s what he or she wants to do.
Success is an entrepreneur who starts his own company because that was his dream and that’s what he wanted to do. A success is anyone who is realizing a worthy predetermined ideal because that’s what he or she decided to do … deliberately. But only 1 out of 20 does that! The rest are “failures.”
We learn to read by the time we’re seven. We learn to make a living by the time we’re 30. Often by that time we’re not only making a living, but we’re also supporting a family, and yet by the time we’re 65, we haven’t learned how to become financially independent.
Why do so many people work so hard and honestly without ever achieving anything in particular, and why others don’t seem to work hard, yet seem to get everything?. They seem to have the magic touch. Everything he touches turns to gold.
The difference is the “goals”.
Here, we have to define goals, a goal is an idea of the future or desired result that a person or a group of people envision, plan, and commit to achieving within a finite time by setting deadlines.
People with goals succeed because they know where they’re going. It’s that simple. Failures believe that their lives are shaped by circumstances … by things that happen to them … by exterior forces.
Think of a ship with the complete voyage mapped out and planned. The captain and crew know exactly where the ship is going and how long it will take and it has a definite goal. And 9,999 times out of 10,000, it will get there.
Now let’s take another ship and just like the first and only let’s not put a crew on it, or a captain at the helm. Let’s give it no aiming point, no goal, and no destination. We just start the engines and let them go.
I think you’ll agree that if it gets out of the harbor at all, it will either sink or wind up on some deserted beach and a derelict. It can’t go anyplace because it has no destination and no guidance. It’s the same with human beings!
“People with goals succeed because they know where they’re going”.
