Success: Why Do Only Some Achieve It?

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Success is not about wealth. It’s about realizing your dreams. Failures, give up early in the race and cry, “I never had a fair chance to start with. Some people have all the luck. It’s not what you know, but who you know.”

Yet, successful people and failures all started from scratch and have the same chance of winning the race. However, it has hardly begun when the best of the lot pull away and show their stuff to the world.

This isn’t chance! Neither luck nor does wealth favor the winners. Money, or the lack of it, is not the deciding factor. Consider the decline of the Eaton fortune. Was that due to chance or to poor management? Look at Oprah Winfrey. Sexually abused as a child, she was born a black female, in poor circumstances, in the racist South. Yet, she stayed her course. Now she is one of the most recognized and financially successful women in the world! Not how she began the race, but how she has run it, has made all the difference.

Consider Sean Stephenson. Doctors told his parents he would not survive. Sean was born with a rare bone disorder that stunted his growth. It caused his fragile bones to break over 200 times since birth and confined him to a wheelchair. Yet, Sean Stephenson is a psychotherapist, author, and world-class professional speaker, in the college and youth market across America.

Failures rub their eyes and wonder why they lost. We wonder, too! Unfortunately, their friends often sympathetically pat them on the back and wonder as well. Neither Oprah nor Sean ever made a claim of “bad luck.” The truth is, those life leaves behind are simply not up to the race.

“Nobody deserves success,” said Joseph Addison, “but we can try to deserve it.” The world is full of disappointed people who strove to win success. Some even worked hard and denied themselves. Their whole lives they buckled down and strove incessantly to win Fair Fortune. Still, Fortune eluded them.

“Why?” the failures demand to know. The answer is simple. Discernment! Grasping the meaning of the “relative importance” of things is the key to achievement in any field. You may have the finest engine with unlimited horsepower. It may be able to move mountains. However, if you misdirect its energy, you cannot realize its full potential. Precisely because it had a clear, direct purpose, The Little Engine That Could, did!

Success will come when you acquire the ability to gauge the relative importance of things. The sad lot of even the most well-intentioned entrepreneurs, though they spend years trying to succeed, is that they never get off the ground.

Instead, they will moan and groan over their failures. They will tell their tales of woe and try to win the sympathy of friends who will think them ill used, by life and circumstance.

Meanwhile, the successful people, who have clear vision and narrow focus, know how to discern what matters and what doesn't. With great confidence and unfaltering determination, they unleash their powers of focused concentration.

Like Alexander the Great, be prepared to burn your boats behind you. By forgetting the past, but retaining its lessons, you will achieve your goals.