Success is a Journey, not a Destination

People often look around their world and see what they believe to be overnight successes. They look at super achievers and think that they achieved their success due to a lucky break or that they made it to the pinnacle of their career without much effort at all. Usually exactly the opposite is true. It is seldom the case that people who have achieved greatness in any field, got there without a whole lot of sweat and tears. Almost every super achiever, I have ever come across, invested many hours into growing their knowledge and/or skill base before they achieved any level of lasting success.

I read a number of biographies and have never come across a single super achiever in any of them, who did not have to overcome difficult obstacles and numerous challenges, before they achieved greatness. Achieving any level of success requires persistence, clarity of vision and total commitment toward achieving your goals. If you are looking for an easy road to bring success into your life and you are not prepared to invest time and energy into growing and becoming the type of person you need to be, to attract the level of success you desire. It is very unlikely that you will reach the level of success you want.

You may not know the story of persistence and perseverance, behind the success of two authors, who spent a few years going from publisher to publisher, with a dream to publish a book of inspiring short stories. As short stories had never sold very well in the past, no publisher was willing to take the risk of publishing the book. They were rejected by 142 publishers, but they refused to give up on their dream. The 143 publisher finally agreed to publish the book and the first in the series titled “Chicken Soup for the Soul” was published in 1993. To date over 112 million copies of the “Chicken Soup” series of books have been sold. It is an extraordinary story of persistence and perseverance and never say die attitude, which turned into one of the greatest success stories in publishing history. You too can achieve greatness, if you are willing to create a crystal clear vision of what you want and then with dogged determination, persist until you succeed.

There was a laundry worker, who earned only sixty dollars a week, working at the local laundry. He had a vision, a fire burning in his belly to become an author. He worked all day and his wife worked nights, while he sat in front of his typewriter every night and weekend, typing manuscripts, which he could send to publishers and agents. One manuscript after the next was rejected by every publisher or agent he approached, via a standard rejection letter. I have received a few of those standard rejection letters myself and can assure you that it is not one of the best ways to build self-esteem.

In amongst all the impersonal rejection letters, one stood out from the rest, as it stated that although the laundry worker’s writing was not good enough for publication at that time, he had some promise as a writer and should not give up. After sending two more manuscripts to the friendly publisher, which was also rejected, the laundry worker finally decided to throw in the towel and give up on his dream to be an author. He threw the final two manuscripts into the dustbin, vowing to never write again.

Fortunately, his wife believed in him and his dream and she pulled the manuscripts out of the rubbish bin. She resent the manuscripts back to Doubleday, the publisher, who had sent the friendly rejection letters. One of those two manuscripts was finally published; it was titled “Carrie” and went on to sell over five million copies. The laundry worker, if you have not managed to guess by now was Stephen King.

Action Idea:

•Create a crystal clear vision for what you want in the future
•Build a blue print or a set of crystal clear goals to support your vision
•Believe in yourself and your ability
•Take action every day toward achieving your goals
•See obstacles as part of the journey and find ways to turn them into opportunities.

As you take action every day on your journey toward achieving your vision, you WILL encounter obstacles and challenges. Do not see them as things in your way or things that need to be overcome. They are just part of the success journey, often an important part, as they highlight possibility, which may have gone unnoticed had you not encountered the challenges or obstacles in the first place.

Explore each obstacle you encounter and look for ways to learn as much as you can from each and find ways to turn them into opportunities as soon as possible. You truly have unlimited potential and incredible opportunity available to you, just believe in yourself, take action daily and you can achieve almost anything that you set your mind to achieve.

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