Success requires clarity of focus.

You must know what you want and be able to take the steps to bring this about. Those who cannot make their goals clear, or who cannot move in a straight line towards them, have little or no chance of ever succeeding. Sometimes this means ignoring distractions and developing a single-mindedness of purpose. You must develop a dedication and commitment, which help you through the rough times, when it looks as though you might not be able to achieve your lifelong dreams. This requires a burning desire to succeed. This does not mean losing track of priorities. On the contrary, it really involves making the most of life. Live your life to the fullest every minute.

Having a goal, which defines success, does not mean you forget to stop and smell the roses. In fact, having a goal provides direction and can actually help you to savor the present moment. A clear-cut goal can help give perspective to your decisions and actions. It can help you separate the important from the unimportant. If you can say that success is for you, your life begins to take on more meaning. You can start to measure your personal growth toward that goal by a series of measuring points (smaller goals along the way), which determine the rate of your progress.

Success is like a ladder. Each victory is like moving up the rungs of that ladder. Each step makes possible the one above it. And the steps above help to motivate the steps on the lower rungs by encouraging you to move upwards toward the chosen end-point. At each step we gain insight and wisdom, if we remain aware and fully conscious of reality. This stays true as long we have the courage and persistence to move upwards. Should we demand proof in advance of our success, however, the picture suddenly changes. If we need some kind of evidence that we will succeed in climbing the complete ladder before we have set foot on the lowest rung, the adventure will never begin. Our fears will become a substitute for real experience, even though we may cover this up by saying: "Oh well, I could not have done that anyway".

Nature abhors a vacuum - and so does your mind. If you do not really know something. superstition or guesswork rushes in. When you do not have the courage to generate real experiences, you probably cover this up by saying: "I knew I could not do that," or "After all. I really am not that kind of person," as though these are explanations. Often, when you simply have not done something, you probably make a bolder claim and insist instead that you simply cannot do it which is quite another matter. When you do not act, you help to make your original claim true.

Some have called these "Negative Myth Structures," others use the term "Self-fulfilling Prophesies." The same basic mechanism is working regardless of its label.

No matter how small the evidence is if you are convinced that you are incapable of doing something, you probably fear even trying a "given" something. Moreover, you may insist that you never had a chance of accomplishing your goal. Your lack of trying may add fuel to your "fire" of an argument that the venture was doomed from the beginning. You may even congratulate yourself for not being so foolhardy as to try the impossible.

This is circular reasoning. Instead of realizing that you cannot claim knowledge until you have made a sincere try you probably skip all the crucial steps in between. You mistake an assumption for a conclusion. Because you assumed that you could not do something you failed to try. The failure reinforces the original claim, no matter how shaky the evidence for it may have been.

Of course, the self-fulfilling prophecy works both ways, which is a good thing. In fact, that is one of the main tools I use in motivational workshops and writings. If you believe you have a good chance of attaining your goal, you increase your chances of getting there. Notice I did not say you guarantee your success. Life is not quite that simple. Unfortunately the negative side of the coin is not only simple, it is also automatic. If you do not believe you have the chance in a contest, you never enter, so you never win. You can then use the fact of your not winning as evidence for your lack of good luck. If you never compete, you never lose. But you never win, either. Not competing really proves little, except your lack of nerve and determination. The logic of this is quite a trick!

If you believe you cannot do something and never act, the fact becomes reality. The belief reinforces itself because it is not just an ingredient; it is the total "dining" experience. If you do not believe your marriage can be saved, it eventually will collapse under its own weight. If you believe you cannot lose those extra pounds and develop healthier habits, you do not even try and your energy level continues to fall. Soon your worst fears, and those of your doctor, come true. This is not because they are already true, but because your own inaction helped create them.

Do you believe you can be a success? If you have had doubts about this, the doubts themselves can paralyze you so you would act in a manner that would bring you closer to your goal. The circularity of this is very seductive. But it is only destructive if your beliefs are negative. If they are positive, then they actually help you to achieve success.
Can you climb the ladder of success without courage? Of course not. Can you take each step without knowing for sure you can make it? Never completely. There are no positive guarantees; there are only negative ones. If you do not try, you will never make it.

Is each step a challenge? Yes.

Does the fact that you have made it this far prove you can complete the journey? No, but it does help build confidence and your momentum.

In every activity there is a chance for success and failure, even if you have attained a great height on this ladder of success. A tennis great can be overpowering one week and then the next lose in the first round to a "nobody." This applies to business and relationships as well.

The "Principle of Renewal." expressed by some existentialists, states that we renew what and who we are at every moment. We re-establish who and what we are in every decision. The sword cuts both ways, however. Today's hero can be tomorrow's coward, and vice versa. A political leader can move from the top of popularity polls to the very bottom because of a thoughtless act. The principle offers hope, but it also generates anxiety. What you have gained, you can lose. What you have accomplished can be forfeited, or taken away.

But is this not the very core of life? This is why risk and courage are key ingredients in the formula for success. High ideals are harder to realize than settling for second or third best. Compromise is always easier than holding out for one's principles. Falling down the mountain is easier than scaling its lofty cliffs. But none of this establishes the cynic's outlook. It does not justify the coward in his conviction that all striving is futile and doomed to naught.

These truths are called to your attention only to place things in proper perspective. I want you to accept the challenge of life, the challenge of being fully human - but not under false pretenses. Please understand that challenge is part of life, and the flip side of challenge is failure and defeat. There is much to win and lose.

You can win a new sense of self, a balanced awareness of your unique worth, and an enhanced appreciation for your own internal resources, creativity and energy. What you can lose is anxiety and doubt, the artificial phoniness that opposes you.

Where there is a positive, there is also the shadow of the negative. Your journey must be informed to make the correct decisions each step of the way.

The human spirit can be triumphant. It is capable effacing challenges and emerging victorious. Yet, this spirit has a darker side, a darker force that can pull down every accomplishment. Understand what you must do to distinguish between them and you will take yet another step along your journey to a successful life.

One of the challenges required by success is developing and maintaining the proper mental attitude. In this complex and often frustrating world, one of the few things we can control is our mental attitude. External events are often beyond our ability to direct, change, or predict. Our attitude and outlook is a different matter. We can control them. Some folks have withered lives suggesting that they have allowed externals to dictate their internal response. Once this happens, success is impossible to grasp and failure thrives.

What is a positive attitude? Is it one that ignores reality and pretends that all is well when it is not? Of course not. A positive attitude is simply a stance which we take toward the world and our place in it. A stance which allows as much positive experience to flow into our lives as possible. The key word is "openness." A positive person is not naive. He simply realizes the impact which belief and attitude have over supposedly unchangeable fact. Such people are open to alternative ways of interpreting events. They know that their way of looking at things does influence the world of others.

Everyone approaches the world in some manner. Some are fearful and the world becomes a terrifying place. This reinforces feelings of caution, doubt and avoidance. Some approach the world positively and things are radically different. Even obstacles are seen as welcome challenges. On every side they see new opportunities for a fresh experience. Rather than being guarded, sullen and suspicious, they become trusting, open and available. Success is far more likely with this person.

To those who cultivate this positive outlook, failure remains only an abstract possibility, not a common phantom, haunting their every thought and deed. Because of this, new chances of success surround them, even in the midst of the rubble of the dashed hopes of others. They do learn from their misjudgments and from the errors of those around them. There is a sense of balanced flow about them but unbending when necessary.

Positive does not mean stupid. I am not asking you to forget what you really know. Nor am I asking you to pretend you have faith where there is not any. But you are being asked to examine in new ways just what works for you and what does not. I am also asking you to do something about these discoveries. Put them into action and they will make a real difference in your life. Of course this takes courage. You must risk experiencing the unknown.

What does positive mean? First, it is a special kind of responsiveness, a mind-set which responds more to the uplifting, energizing and productive aspects of the world than to degrading, draining and destructive messages. It does not ignore the dark side of life; it simply de-emphasizes it. It draws out and cultivates the good, the true and the beautiful. It draws forth the best we have to offer, and, by example, encourages other people around us to do the same.

We must celebrate the good, the worthwhile and the important. We must reject the ugly, evil and degrading. This is not deliberate blindness, because there is ugliness in the world and is contained in the life of most people. We must refuse to let their view become ours. And that makes all the difference. By not allowing ourselves to be dragged down, we become models of courage, balanced optimism and determination. We stop being victimized by events and people around us and become leaders, shapers of our destiny.

The fearful and hesitant person usually feels weak, helpless, and unable to control the course of their life. Whatever they do, they do under a cloud of foreboding. They just know that something bad is going to happen. And they are seldom wrong. At least in their own somber experience, which seems to be just jammed to the brim with horror stories. They do not keep trying only to fail. They cut out the middleman by not even bothering to try. So their lives trundle along, joyless, grim and depressing. A positive outlook attracts the good to itself. It draws other positive people to itself. It makes them feel like sharing the best of what they have and are. The positive spirit is generous, open and spontaneous. Successful people tend to be open-handed with their time, their energy and usually their financial resources. Losers are the exact opposite. They have no time for anyone else: their lives just do not seem to add up. Nothing they do is satisfying. They have no joy.

A positive mental attitude is defined by plus qualities like faith, hope, courage, imitation, tolerance and generosity. It does not leave out common sense of course, but it knows that common sense does not have the final word in all matters. Sometimes the true visionary has to go beyond the obvious and the already tried. They have to create the genuinely unique, including those things that have no place in the present world but may be central to future generations.

This is why the positive attitude is open-minded in the very best sense. It has to be open so it will miss nothing of importance but will maintain its critical faculties so that charlatans and con men do not deceive it. A positive mental outlook anticipates a time when the lion can lie down with the lambs. (The lions can look out for themselves.)

For the positive-minded, the future is looked forward to. For the negative, it is dreaded and feared. As bad as things are now, negative people just know that things are bound to get worse! In their lives, you can bet they will be right! If you celebrate the good and the beautiful, the world has a way of laying such gifts at your door. When you dwell on the ugly and the terrifying, guess what's found on your doormat? Part of the reason for this, of course, is that our attitude shapes our future to a significant degree. The future is what we make of it. But only if we first believe we have the power. Then we have the courage and the discipline to act with this knowledge firmly in mind at all times.

A positive attitude can make us all but unstoppable. It can give us the kind of flexibility and resilience to change when change is appropriate, or to remain constant when it is better to stay where we are. It is not just one way of looking at things or one the same for all of us but you must fashion the outlook to fit your lifestyle and values. So it contains within itself a multitude of possibilities, one to fit each occasion, for the rest of our lives. A positive attitude must be open and allowed to change which encourages growth and experimentation. The future will be as open as we are to it, so we must allow for a flow.

Do not resent change, but with a glad heart and mind be eager for new discoveries and fresh adventures.
We become what we think. Our thoughts are parents to the deed. Thoughts coupled with emotion can become the spark plugs for any activity we choose. If our thoughts are gloomy and morose, our actions will be tightly contained and too obsessed with a concern for security. When they are uplifting, they lead us to the proper course of action. They inspire us to blaze new trails and reach new conclusions, even if we use the same tried old data. Our mind needs circulation as surely as our heart and blood system do. When it receives new input, it sparkles with energy and enthusiasm. When it is made to churn in the same stagnant pools, it grows sluggish and ineffective. It is unable to function well.

All life forms on this planet are engaged in a give-and-take with the larger world of Nature. Breathing requires inhaling. In order for our body to move, it has to push against something, be it gravity or friction. They resist the body's effort, but result in making it possible to move ahead again. To protest this state of affairs would be as futile as it is silly. There's nothing wrong with this marvelous arrangement. We cannot live and stop breathing and should not try. The natural way is the right way and that is just the point to be remembered, to have a positive attitude toward life. Engage in an appropriate give-and-take; use proper judgment that is open and trusting about our futures. We need to get back to this once more: To reverse the course of modern livening in such a way that we reclaim our birthright. My principles are based on this fundamental axiom.

Success requires a clarity of focus. You must know what you want and take the steps to achieve it.

Develop a dedication and commitment which help you through the rough times.

Success is like a ladder - each victory is like moving up the rungs of that ladder. We gain insight with each upward step.

If you fail to try to succeed, you will fail.

Compromise is always easier that holding out for one's principles.

A positive person is "open" to alternative ways of interpreting events.

Don't resent change; be eager for new discoveries. Reclaim your birthright for success.

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