What is the secret of success?
That’s a question many have asked and I think that question is best answered with a story, a story that involves the ancient Greek Philosopher Socrates.
The way the story goes is that a young man full of ambition like many young men are went up to Socrates and asked him to teach him the secret of Success.
Socrates told him: “OK, if you’re truly serious about learning the true secret of success, then meet me by the river the next morning”. The young man agreed.
The next morning the young man went to the river full of enthusiasm. Socrates asked the young man to walk towards the river with him and the young man happily obliged.
As they entered the river they kept on walking and the water was getting deeper and deeper, until the water eventually got up to their necks. Of course by this time the young man was confused about what was going on but before he had anytime to say anything, Socrates grabbed him and held him under water.
The young man was struggling to get out but Socrates happened to be very strong and only pulled the young man up when he started turning blue.
As soon as he got out from underneath the water, he gasped and took a deep breath.
Like anyone else would, the young man started to go off on Socrates, asking him what the hell he was thinking. Socrates simply replied “What did you want to do most when you were under water?”
The young man replied: “I wanted to breathe.”
Socrates then said: “And there you have to key to success. When you want to succeed as much as you want to breathe, then you will be successful.”
Moral of the story?
I’m sure you’ll agree that that’s a great story but you know what the truth is? The truth is that most of you reading this don’t want success enough. You don’t want it as much as you want to breath, instead you… kind of want it.
Do you just want to kind of breathe? Of course not! You have to breathe, you must breathe, if you didn’t breathe then you would die!
That’s how you need to treat success, you can’t just kind of want success, you have to really want it, want it not just as much as you want to breathe but even more then you want to breathe.
Achieving success has to be your number one focus, you have to put it before anything else. You have to even put it before sleep. That’s right: if you really want success, massive success then just forget sleep. You have to be able to survive on as little as three hours of sleep if you want to make it in life, if you really want to reach your goals.
You literally need to eat, breathe and sleep success. It has to be your everything because only when success is your everything are you going to achieve it.
Honestly, it doesn’t matter how you feel – you’ve just got to do what you’ve got to do. You’ve got to be an action taker, someone who executes no matter what. Remember that nobody ever got anywhere by only working when they felt like it, so work no matter how you feel.
As I said, when it comes to success it has to be your everything, it has to mean as much to you as breathing does. I know it may be tempting to forget work and go and party with your friends – but you can’t! Would you choose partying over breathing? Of course you wouldn’t! So, why would you choose it over success?
Now you might be thinking that success sounds hard and you know what? Success is damn hard, if success was easy everyone would do it. Achieving success will take everything you’ve got but trust me it will be worth it, every sweat, tear and sacrifice will be worth it once you’ve achieved your goal.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.