Success…

How do you define “success”?  Is your success the result of your dedication and effort.  Do you make things happen?  Or does the phrase, “right place; right time” apply?  It’s OK.  Our favorite, Unknown Sage once said, 

People can be divided into three groups:

1. Those who make things happen,

2. Those who watch things happen, and

3. Those who wonder what's happening. 

I myself feel a bit clueless from time to time (and Lord knows my wife and family think of me as being permanently associated with Group 3, HaHa!).  I really do try to focus on the first group; making things happen; driving my own success.  I know it’s not easy.  

Like many of you, I’ve always worked for a living – I mean blue collar type of work – I mean taking the long way – I mean overcoming setbacks.  Regardless of the sales year I had, I tried to follow this African Proverb credited to none other than Mother Nature:

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.  It knows it   must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.     Every morning a lion wakes up.  It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve.  It doesn’t matter    whether you are a lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up,   you better start running. 

Now don’t get me wrong; I was very much a white collar, sales professional.  It’s just that meeting my goals usually took me longer than my friends and colleagues who are blessed with greater talent.  They figured out how to work smart, not just hard.  Me?  Well, maybe I dipped into that 3^rd group more frequently than I’d like to admit.  I know I tasted failure on many occasions: 

It seems to me that the largest impediment to a healthy attitude toward failure is our inability to distinguish between just plain being stupid and failing on the way to great success.

Unknown Sage 

I’ve always believed that thinking positively, optimistically, with great self-confidence was a “healthy attitude toward failure”.  That’s why one of my favorite hobbies is writing.  I like the way it helps me channel random input from various Thought Leaders coupled with a positive attitude that can lead to, “failing on the way to great success”. 

I know that success is defined various ways and is a very personal matter.  I remember working for Mike Martone, ADP National Accounts VP of Sales, “back in the day”.  The National Accounts Division was “killin' it”.  I too, was enjoying some of the best sales achievements of my entire career.  It would have been easy for me – and Mike – to be satisfied with our success.  That’s when he delivered his "I'll be satisfied when..." presentation at a company-wide sales meeting.  

Rather than dwelling on our success, he had a different message.  Mike brought a list of five or ten additional goals and he prefaced each with the repetitive line, “I’ll be satisfied when we…”.  Then he described his expectations emphasizing his definition of success was achieving those additional goals.  That’s when I started thinking of success as a journey; not a destination. 

Carmen Mariano seems to agree and offers us this view: 

Success never rests.  On your worst days, be good.  And on your best days, be great.  And on every other day, get better. 

So here’s to today – good, great, or better.  We best get up early; start running; make things happen; true? 

GAP 

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.