How to Conceive, Believe and Achieve Success

Success means more than money, prestige, even celebrity. Former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson provides one of the most recent, even glaring examples of this truth. Describing Tyson's plummet from the top to the bottom of the fight game, USA Today columnist, DeWayne Wickham wrote this following Tyson's knockout defeat by a little known British fighter: "When Danny Williams knocked out Tyson in the fourth round of their bout in Louisville, more than Tyson's meaty bottom crashed to the floor. His life also took a big tumble. Tyson, who has earned more than $300 million during his 19-year boxing career, is now a bankrupt, broken fighter whose attempted comeback was dashed by a flurry of punches from Williams."

In a later article by Michael Wilson of the Washington Post, Tyson, defeated again, this time by journeyman boxer Kevin McBride and still millions of dollars in debt to the IRS alone, Tyson summed up his life with these words: "Smart too late and old too soon. This is just my ending."

Clearly, then, money, prestige, even celebrity does not define success.

Education, economic clout, even intense public scrutiny neither defines success, or prevents failure. Consider the story of Kenneth Lee "Ken" Lay, a prominent businessman . . . " . . .best known for his role in the widely reported corruption scandal that led to the downfall of Enron Corporation. Lay and Enron became synonymous with corporate abuse and accounting fraud when the scandal broke in 2001. Lay was the CEO and chairman of Enron from 1986 until his resignation on Jan. 23, 2002, except for a few months in 2001 when he was chairman and Jeffrey Skilling was CEO. On July 7, 2004, Lay was indicted by a grand jury on 11 counts of securities fraud and related charges. On January 31, 2006, following four and a half years of preparation by government prosecutors, Lay's and Skillings' trial began in Houston. Lay was found guilt on May 25, 2006 of 10 counts against him; the judge dismissed the 11^th. Because each count carried a maximum 5-to-10 year sentence, legal experts said Lay could have faced 20 to 30 years in prison. However, he died while vacationing in Snowmass, Colorado on July 5, 2006, about three and a half months before his scheduled Oct. 23 sentencing. Preliminary autopsy reports state that he died of a heart attack caused by coronary disease. As a result of his death, on Oct. 17, 2006, the federal district court judge who presided over the case vacated Lay's conviction." (from Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia.) In plain English, what does all that mean?

One writer summed it up this way: "When Lay and his partners in crime had stole enough to know that Enron would fail, Lay sold 1.8 million shares for $101 million.

Okay, these might appear to be extreme cases, the exceptions that define the rule. So what about ordinary people? How many consider themselves successful? Let's consider just two areas of life-work and marriage-as examples of how successful people are.

We can almost sum up how most people feel about work with a quote from Thomas Edison, who said: "Opportunity is missed by most people because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work." Almost all studies reveal that most people do not like their work, and do not consider themselves successful, Far too many people admit to living from paycheck to paycheck and often complain about their consistent inabilities to "make ends meet."

A report on marriage and divorce by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the following: Overall 27% of all Americans have been divorced; forty-three percent of first marriages end in separation or divorce within 15 years;one in three first marriages now end within 10 years and one in five ends within five years; Second marriages are even less likely to survive than a first marriage. The probability of separation or divorce for a second marriage after 10 years is 30% tosay.

Here is one fact that for the most part seems to doom most marriages that end in separation or divorce. "The study also showed that the duration of marriage is linked to a woman's age at first marriage; the older a woman is at first marriage, the longer that marriage is likely to last. According to the report, 59% of marriages to brides under 18 currently end in separation or divorce within 15 years, compared to 36% of those married at 20 or older."

So if neither money, marriage, prominence nor prestige define or guarantee success, must we content ourselves to overall failure, marked by periods of reasonably good living? In other words, is success possible?

In her book Megatraits: 12 Traits of Successful People, author Doris Lee McCoy identifies traits common to people who " . . . have reached a certain plateau of physical, emotional, and spiritual/psychological comfort." Those 12 "megatraits," as McCoy describes them are:

Successful people enjoy their work. Successful people have high self-esteem and a positive attitude. Successful people use negative experiences to discover their strengths. Successful people have integrity and help others to succeed. Successful people are persistent. Successful people take risks. Successful people have developed good communication skills. Successful people have developed good problem-solving skills. Successful people surround themselves with competent and responsible people. Successful people surround themselves with supportive people. Successful people are healthy, have high energy, and schedule time to renew. Successful people believe in God, a Higher Power. Successful people have a sense of purpose and a desire to contribute to society. Successful people challenge traditional concepts. Successful people schedule time for their education

I agree with McCoy's list of what she calls "megatraits" of successful people, but the question remains: how does a person who is not yet successful conceive, believe and achieve success? In other words, what must I do to become what McCoy discovered successful people to be?

During the past nearly 40 years, I have learned, both from research and investigation as well as by experience, that 40 fundamental principles govern the steps a person must take to become successful. I've organized these principles into seven categories, and organized them further into three basis paradigms. The paradigms are: conceiving success; believing success; achieving success

The categories are as follows: the thinking and perspective principles; the effectiveness principles; the planning principles; the continual action principles; the daily application principles; Tthe C.A.R.E. principles; the T.E.A.M principles.

How to conceive success

To conceive success, you must first change your thinking, because when you change your thinking, you can change your beliefs. When you change your beliefs, your can change your expectations, because when you do, you can change your attitude. When you change, thinking, beliefs, expectations and attitude, you can change your behavior. Changed behavior leads to change performance. All this together leads to system life changes that form the foundation for success. Those are the thinking and perspective principles that empowers you to conceive success.

So far, you're halfway there. Here are the other seven principles that empower you to conceive success. You must become proactive, rather than reactive. You must learn to begin with the end in mind, and consistently do first things first. Learn to think win/win and also learn to seek to understand before trying to become understood. Learn to practice synergy-that is working effectively with others-and also learn to sharpen your saw, which means to always seek and achieve self-improvement. Stephen R. Covey discussed these principles in his runaway best seller The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
Now we come to the seven planning principles and the seven continual action principles that explain how you can achieve success.

How to believe success

Belief launches planning, and effective planning begins with a vision. Therefore, the initial seven steps-the planning principles-to believe success are as follows: adopt a vision; craft a mission statement; develop a personal philosophy; determine your objectives; design your strategies; learn to effectively communicate your plan to others; work with a consistent timeline

An unwritten plan cannot be followed; therefore, write your plan. At the same time, a written plan without a stir to action factor gathers dust on its way to oblivion.

Here are the seven continual action principles that spark your journey to success: getting started; becoming and continuing to be teachable; becoming and continuing to be coach-able; learning to master systems and process thinking; learning to work S.M.A.R.T; learning and insisting upon working hard; never quitting!

How achieve success

People often say what you can conceive and believe you can also achieve. They are right! Many people fail, though, because they try to achieve before building a foundation of concepts and beliefs. At the same time, even after conceiving and believing, you must still live a principle-centered life to achieve success. Here are the 12 principles that govern success achievement. I categorize the first seven laws as the daily application principles because they describe action you must take daily to stay on course for success: setting goals; preparing for your goals; achieving and maintaining wellness; developing drive; developing resourcefulness; developing perseverance; building on a solid spiritual foundation.

I characterize the next four success laws as the C.A.R.E. principles. You must learn to live Courageously, in Action, with Resolution and Endurance. Finally, we come to the 40^th law of how to conceive, believe and achieve success-the principle of T.E.A.M. This acronym stands for: Together Everyone Achieves More.

I have learned a lot of valuable lessons during the past four decades as I struggled to re-invent myself from a predatory criminal to a successful contributor. These three have been the most valuable: we live in a world governed by law and order; anyone who lives in alignment with natural law benefits bountifully; no one breaks natural law; rather we break ourselves against these laws when we "walk" in mis-alignment with them. Consider this closing example. Neither gravity nor inertia have anything against me personally if I jump off a 10-story building without some device to slow the speed of my descent. Gravity and inertia simply do what they do, and because I am in mis-alignment, I suffer the tragic consequences.

So anyone who desires to be successful must align his or her life with the natural laws that govern success. I've learned about 40 of them. I have proved to my satisfaction that they work. I was unable to grasp the power of these laws intellectually. I had to live them to see them work. That's the biggest challenge in moving from failure to success! Like many say, when we continue doing wha we've been doing, we continue receiving what we've been getting.

See you at success!