Friday, November 3, 1995
The True Secret to Success
Are you ready to learn the true secret to success? Success in anything: business, health, relationships, education -- anything you desire. Success can be yours. You can be a winner today if you will simply take the time to learn and appreciate this one critical secret. It is a secret shared by all the successful people in the world.
The secret of success is. . . . .
There is no secret!
There is no secret to success. The way to success is there for all to see. It is not hidden in some obscure formula, something you can buy in a “special report” for only $49.95. Many people would like to think that such a thing exists, and many people spend lots of time and money trying to find a shortcut to success. The sad thing is, in the time they’ve spent looking for a shortcut, they could probably have already achieved success if they had just made the commitment at the outset to pay their dues.
So many people try so hard to make it big. But making it big is very, very difficult. It doesn’t happen very often. That’s why, when it happens, you hear about it. It’s big news. But you don’t hear about the millions of times people try to make it big and don’t.
What we should be spending our time and effort doing is making it little. It’s easy to do. Anyone can make a little improvement in what they are doing. And if you put your efforts into consistent, little improvements, soon they will add up and you will indeed have made it big. Try to make it big and you will spin your wheels; try to make little improvements and you will soon make it big.
Let’s say you make your goal to improve your performance by 1% each day. That’s easy, isn’t it. If you spent an hour and a half on the phone today, calling people about your opportunity, then spend an hour and 31 minutes tomorrow. If you sent out 250 mailings last week, send out 253 this week. If you made $100 today, aim for $101 tomorrow. That’s just one dollar more -- what could be so hard about that? Go yourself one better -- one percent better, that is. The secret is being dedicated and consistent about it. Soon, your efforts will compound as you begin improving on the improvements. If you try to earn 1% more each day, in just a little more than two months you will have doubled your income. And it just gets better and better as time goes on.
In six months, you will have increased your income 600%. In a year, if you were originally making $100 a day, you will be making more than $1.3 million a year simply by improving yourself by 1% per day. Let’s carry this to the extreme and say you were actually able to continue to improve your income, just 1% per day, for a second year. At the end of the second year your income would be more than $52 million a year!
Maybe that’s realistic, maybe it’s not. There are people who earn that kind of money. Did they just get lucky? I don’t think so. They got there by constant improvement, by refusing to accept things as they are, by dedicated and consistent effort.
But the point isn’t whether or not you can earn $52 million a year. (And by the way, if you truly believe you can, you can.) The point is this. If you commit to continuous growth and improvement, if you implement a long-term, focused strategy, you will succeed in doing whatever it is you set about to accomplish. So what if you don’t improve your 1% every single day. If you have that as your goal, then chances are that at the very least, you will not slide backward. At the very least, you will continue to stay even every day, to put forth the effort to reach your goals.
— Ralph Marston
Your many blessings Every Day
Copyright ©1995 Ralph S. Marston, Jr. All Rights Reserved. The Daily Motivator is provided for your personal, non-commercial use only. Other than personal sharing, please do not re-distribute without permission.