1 Why Success Matters Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love. --David McCullough Perhaps no other factor is as poignant and ubiquitous to the human experience as the drive to succeed. The impulse to be successful is an indelible, deeply etched primal instinct that profoundly influences each and every one of our thoughts and actions. Everyone defines success in his or her own personal way. Regardless of variations, each definition conveys that success happens the instant a beneficial outcome occurs. When a childhood gymnast performs their first cartwheel perfectly, an astronomer discovers a new comet, a musician has their first hit, or a librarian correctly places a book back on the bookshelf, they have all met the criteria for success and have become a success by doing so. ''Can I be successful?'' is a question everyone asks at some point. ''Yes, of course you can'' is the resounding answer.

Success, however, is not reserved just for high-powered Type A personalities or driven individuals. As mentioned in the introduction to this book, we''re all born winners. Our inheritance at birth endows us with the innate capacity and drive to succeed; it''s just that most of us never learned or have simply forgotten it, or we don''t trust our ability to achieve our goals. Yet success is an easily learned skill that anyone can master. Successful people aren''t embarrassed or guilty about their success; they recognize and embrace it as the most fundamental force driving their life experience. Becoming a consistent success is extremely straightforward in concept: It requires only the timely completion of specific tasks within a well- structured plan that achieves a predetermined outcome. One or two random successes don''t make someone a success. Success is a skill that, when practiced diligently, becomes second nature and consistently produces the desired outcomes, creating a productive, vital, and passionate life.

In broad brushstroke terms, success has a competitive side to it. Every moment of your life pits your desire, knowledge, and ingenuity against your potential, history, and destiny. If your talents, great ideas, and skills are consistent with your plans and actions, achieving your goals becomes commonplace. Conversely, scattered and ill-founded plans, coupled with insufficient skills or resources, predictably lead to sub-par goal achievement and a less fulfilled life. Success matters to everyone desiring a highly vital, exciting, and rewarding life. Have you ever known anybody whose life ambition was to be a loser or unsuccessful? Can you imagine someone saying to his wife ''Hey, honey, I''m going to go to bed early tonight so I''ll have plenty of energy to go out and fail tomorrow.'' This, of course, may seem like an absurd example, yet it reflects the subconscious ''failure mentality'' countless people reenact day after day in their lives. Many people, if not most, have more confidence in their capacity to fail than to succeed.

Success may be your most vital life resource because it can break the hidden chains that hold you back from becoming the best you can be. Success does this for you by building a strong mind and passionate spirit, creating meaningful relationships, achieving balance in life, securing a better future, manifesting dreams, defining who you are and what you stand for, and enabling you to build and capitalize on your talents. Success Builds a Winner''s Mentality To prosper and endure in today''s hyperkinetic, fast-paced, hectic world requires a special ''winner''s mentality'' that quickly and efficiently converts ideas into success. Each success you have further builds your winning mentality by improving your ability to focus, increasing your belief in the value of your aspirations, increasing your confidence in your decision making, expanding your cognitive capacity, increasing your life passion, and strengthening your purpose. Your successes will only occur as fast and accurately as you can create and execute successful plans in rapid-fire succession. Success demands and forces you to develop a focused mind and attention span that can continually assist you in determining and acquiring the skills and knowledge necessary to formulate and execute plans consistent with your ambitions. Your ability to focus and concentrate set the upper limit for how far you can develop your capacity for success because that determines what actions you can conceive and are capable of implementing. The legacy you leave will be the product of your thought-focused actions.

Proper focus will produce lofty thoughts, big results, and significant legacies. Scattered focus will not. Repeated success strengthens your ability to make prudent decisions related to achieving the objectives you set for yourself. You will be able to listen selectively to what others tell you, but you will not be persuaded inappropriately. A large reservoir of hidden talent and latent success probably lie buried beneath the layers of expectation and opinion that others have piled on you throughout your life. Others will continue to heap more and more onto that pile until such time as you formulate and pursue your own goals and respectfully inform them that their input is needed only when solicited. No one has the authority to hold you hostage with intrusive thoughts, suggestions, or expectations. Your life is yours to manage in the way you determine will express your greatest talents and build the legacy you desire.

Success teaches you to enact those actions that consistently produce your goals, not the goals of others. Each success you have opens your mind a little further to additional successes you''re capable of achieving. And the more you succeed, the more options you will envision and the more you will succeed. Every experience you have, and every fact you learn, reorganizes your knowledge base and prompts fresh and novel ideas related to achieving more success. Indecision kills opportunity faster than anything. Previous success demonstrates that achievement occurs only as fast and accurately as an opportunity is seized and acted upon. The old adage ''He who hesitates is lost'' is more poignant today than ever because of the increased number of people vying for the same opportunities. However, the word hesitation doesn''t exist in the vocabulary of the successful because their successes have given them the confidence to embrace and capitalize on opportunity at the instant it presents itself.

Success builds a better brain, a strong spirit, and a champion''s outlook by inspiring you to be in constant pursuit of your next success. Success is the ultimate ''feel good'' prescription because it keeps your mind and body running at peak levels powered by enthusiasm, ambition, motivation, and optimism. The best minds and souls on the planet belong to individuals who have experienced the elation of success, which inspired them to further strive for a lifetime of constructive and positive achievement. I''ve never met a person with great mental acuity and passion who isn''t actively in pursuit of a beneficial goal. Finding solutions to problems so you can achieve a beneficial goal is the exercise your brain needs to create optimal neural pathways to keep your goal setting and achieving at peak levels. Success improves the speed and accuracy of your decision making. The more success you have, the better your pattern recognition and intuitive skills become. These will increase the rate and authenticity of your successes and fortify your confidence in turning to these vital resources in your choice making.

These skills enable you to see problems before they occur because they enhance your capacity to see the impact each factor in your plan will have on every other factor. Few things are worse than seeing someone spend a significant amount of time and resources pursuing a goal, only to have it fall apart due to preventable circumstances that were evident, yet not identified, during the plan''s creation, inception, or execution. Trusting Yourself Goals achieved shift your mentality from hope to anticipated success. Matters once deemed impossible may now seem doable and within reach. Within weeks after Roger Bannister became the first to run the mile in under four minutes--a feat thought impossible--every top runner beat the four-minute mark. Prior to Bannister''s achievement, the thought of breaking the ''impossible'' four-minute barrier was unthinkable, not because it was but because the prevailing mental sentiment said it was, even though it wasn''t. When the facts say, and you believe, something is possible regardless of how impossible it seems or what others say, then with a high degree of certainty it is attainable. When you believe in yourself and appropriately match your skills with opportunity, what''s possible morphs from possibility to inevitability.

Seize it. No one ever has, nor will you ever, accomplish everything you set out to do. Your inability to reach every goal you pursue is actually healthy, however, because it teaches you to remain trustful in yourself and gracious in defeat, and thereby a more determined individual and a better example for others. When others see you bounce back from a goal not achieved, they realize that not achieving a goal is something everyone must and can confront and overcome. They then realize that defeat isn''t personal--it only illustrates that something failed to occur despite the best efforts put forth to make it happen. This is no big deal as it happens millions of times daily and illustrates that committed people are continually reaching for success. This realization inspi.