Pushing To Business Success

What makes a person successful?

What makes them motivated, prosperous, a great leader?

These questions fired the writing of each book covered in this selection, and it is possible to draw out some common threads as answers. The following is only a brief and partial list, but it may whet your appetite to discover for yourself some of the principles of success:

1. Optimism
2. A definite aim, purpose, or vision
3. Discipline
4. An integrated mind
5. Prolific reading
6. Risk taking
7. Mastery
8. Well-roundedness

Success requires a concentration of effort. Most people disperse their energies over too many things and so fail to be outstanding in anything. In the words of Orison Swett Marden: "The world does not demand that you be a lawyer, minister, doctor, farmer, scientist, or merchant; it does not dictate what you shall do, but it does require that you be a master in whatever you undertake."

So to be successful, you must have higher aims and goals and doggedly pursue their realization. To work Successful people are willing to engage in drudgery in the cause of something marvelous. The greater part of genius is the years of effort invested to solve a problem or find the perfect expression of an idea. With hard-work you acquire knowledge about yourself that idleness never reveals. A law of success is that, once first achieved, it can create a momentum that makes it easier to sustain. As the saying goes, "Nothing succeeds like success."

Optimism is power. This is a secret discovered by all who succeed against great odds. Nelson Mandela, Ernest Shackleton, Eleanor Roosevelt—all admitted that what got them through tough times was an ability to focus on the positive.



They understood what Claude Bristol called "the magic of believing." Yet great leaders also have an unusual ability to face up to stark reality, so creating a single powerful attribute: tough-minded optimism. Optimistic people tend to succeed not simply because they believe that everything will turn out right, but because the expectation of success makes them work harder. If you expect little, you will not be motivated even to try.