Are You Ready for Success?
By Brian Tracy
Everyone wants to be successful. Everyone wants to have more, be more, do more, and enjoy more of what life has to offer. Human beings are teleological. That is, we are goal-seeking organisms. We are driven continually forward toward the accomplishment of the things that are important to us.
The entire human race is a huge mass of individuals striving toward the realization of their potentials in every area. Because of this, there is tremendous competition for the good things in life. Everybody wants them and no one is ever fully satisfied. The satisfaction of want or desire leads automatically to a want or desire for something else. And it never ends.
The Will to Win
What then is the difference between those who accomplish a lot and those who accomplish a little? It was the University of Alabama football coach, Bear Bryant, who said, “It is not the will to win but the will to prepare to win that counts.”
And therein lies the answer to the question. Everyone wants to be a winner. But very few people want to engage in the rigorous hard work, hour after hour, month after month, year after year, that is required to prepare themselves to win.
Mary Lou Retton, the gold medalist winner in the 1984 Los Angeles women's gymnastics, said that she gave up all the activities of a normal childhood, from the age of seven, in order to prepare to win in the Olympic Games. For nine solid years, she paid an incredible price in terms of practice, practice, practice, day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out.
She missed the opportunities for dating, parties, the Senior Prom and much of the social activities that young people engage in. But she knew from the beginning that winning the Olympics would only be possible if she was willing to pay the ultimate sacrifice in terms of hard, hard work, for months and years in advance.
Prepare, Prepare, Prepare
You want to win too. You want to be a big success in life. You want to go all the way to the top. You want to develop your potential to the maximum. You want to become everything you're capable of becoming. You want to earn all the money that is possible for you and enjoy the finest standard of living that you can achieve.
You want to earn the respect and esteem and appreciation of all those people around you whose opinions you care about. You want to be a winner in your own personal Olympic Games, and the way to do it has never changed.
Success requires that you prepare, prepare, prepare.
Earl Nightingale once said that if a person does not prepare for their success in advance, when their opportunity comes, it will only make them look foolish. You've probably heard it said repeatedly that, “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.”
It's only when you've paid the price to be ready for your success that you're in a position to take advantage of your opportunities when they arise. And the most remarkable thing is this: The very act of preparation attracts to you, like iron filings to a magnet, opportunities to use that preparation to advance in your life.
You'll seldom learn anything of value, or prepare yourself in any area, without very soon having a chance to use your new knowledge and your new skills to move ahead more rapidly.
How to Prepare
There are a series of things that you can do to prepare for success. Each of these activities requires self-discipline and a good deal of faith. They require self-discipline because the most normal and natural thing for people to do is to try to get by without preparation.
Instead of taking the time and making the effort to be ready for their chance when it comes, they instead fool around, listen to the radio, watch television, and then they try to "wing it" and fool others into thinking they are more prepared than they really are. And since we're all transparent, since everyone can see through everyone else, the unprepared person simply look incompetent and foolish.
Preparation also requires a lot of faith because you have no evidence in advance to demonstrate or prove to yourself that the preparation will pay off. You simply have to believe deep within yourself that everything you do of a constructive nature will come back to you in some way.
You have to know that no good effort is ever wasted. You have to be willing to "sow" for a long time before you reap, knowing that if you do so in quality and quantity, the reaping will come about, inevitably, with the force of a law of nature.
Let me leave you with this beautiful poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
“Those heights by great men
won and kept;
Were not achieved
by sudden flight;
But they, while their companions slept
were toiling upward
into the night.”
Your possibilities are endless, your potential is unlimited, your future opens up before you when you prepare yourself for the success that must inevitably be yours.
By Brian Tracy
Everyone wants to be successful. Everyone wants to have more, be more, do more, and enjoy more of what life has to offer. Human beings are teleological. That is, we are goal-seeking organisms. We are driven continually forward toward the accomplishment of the things that are important to us.
The entire human race is a huge mass of individuals striving toward the realization of their potentials in every area. Because of this, there is tremendous competition for the good things in life. Everybody wants them and no one is ever fully satisfied. The satisfaction of want or desire leads automatically to a want or desire for something else. And it never ends.
The Will to Win
What then is the difference between those who accomplish a lot and those who accomplish a little? It was the University of Alabama football coach, Bear Bryant, who said, “It is not the will to win but the will to prepare to win that counts.”
And therein lies the answer to the question. Everyone wants to be a winner. But very few people want to engage in the rigorous hard work, hour after hour, month after month, year after year, that is required to prepare themselves to win.
Mary Lou Retton, the gold medalist winner in the 1984 Los Angeles women's gymnastics, said that she gave up all the activities of a normal childhood, from the age of seven, in order to prepare to win in the Olympic Games. For nine solid years, she paid an incredible price in terms of practice, practice, practice, day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out.
She missed the opportunities for dating, parties, the Senior Prom and much of the social activities that young people engage in. But she knew from the beginning that winning the Olympics would only be possible if she was willing to pay the ultimate sacrifice in terms of hard, hard work, for months and years in advance.
Prepare, Prepare, Prepare
You want to win too. You want to be a big success in life. You want to go all the way to the top. You want to develop your potential to the maximum. You want to become everything you're capable of becoming. You want to earn all the money that is possible for you and enjoy the finest standard of living that you can achieve.
You want to earn the respect and esteem and appreciation of all those people around you whose opinions you care about. You want to be a winner in your own personal Olympic Games, and the way to do it has never changed.
Success requires that you prepare, prepare, prepare.
Earl Nightingale once said that if a person does not prepare for their success in advance, when their opportunity comes, it will only make them look foolish. You've probably heard it said repeatedly that, “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.”
It's only when you've paid the price to be ready for your success that you're in a position to take advantage of your opportunities when they arise. And the most remarkable thing is this: The very act of preparation attracts to you, like iron filings to a magnet, opportunities to use that preparation to advance in your life.
You'll seldom learn anything of value, or prepare yourself in any area, without very soon having a chance to use your new knowledge and your new skills to move ahead more rapidly.
How to Prepare
There are a series of things that you can do to prepare for success. Each of these activities requires self-discipline and a good deal of faith. They require self-discipline because the most normal and natural thing for people to do is to try to get by without preparation.
Instead of taking the time and making the effort to be ready for their chance when it comes, they instead fool around, listen to the radio, watch television, and then they try to "wing it" and fool others into thinking they are more prepared than they really are. And since we're all transparent, since everyone can see through everyone else, the unprepared person simply look incompetent and foolish.
Preparation also requires a lot of faith because you have no evidence in advance to demonstrate or prove to yourself that the preparation will pay off. You simply have to believe deep within yourself that everything you do of a constructive nature will come back to you in some way.
You have to know that no good effort is ever wasted. You have to be willing to "sow" for a long time before you reap, knowing that if you do so in quality and quantity, the reaping will come about, inevitably, with the force of a law of nature.
Let me leave you with this beautiful poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
“Those heights by great men
won and kept;
Were not achieved
by sudden flight;
But they, while their companions slept
were toiling upward
into the night.”
Your possibilities are endless, your potential is unlimited, your future opens up before you when you prepare yourself for the success that must inevitably be yours.
