The Secret to Success

The Secret to Success

Here is another post from Lou Tice at the Winners Circle. In this one he lets us into what he considers to be the secret of success; and it’s just a single word. Would you give the same single word as a secret to success? Would I? Read on to find out.

Today, I am going to give you the secret of success – in one word. Yep, only one word.

For nearly 40 years, I have been studying success. Some of the most successful people in the world have been my students, and I in return, have learned a great deal from them. I have also spent a lot of time in the company of some of the world’s most respected research psychologists, talking about what makes some people succeed and others collapse – the difference, in short, between the can’s and the can-nots, and the do’s and the do-nots.

So after all these years of studying and researching, I can tell you one thing with the utmost confidence – the secret of success is “attitude.” That’s it – attitude. And it isn’t really a secret.

People who succeed don’t have fewer problems than other people. They don’t start out with greater brainpower, or better parents, or more money, either. As a matter of fact, sometimes they start out working against incredible odds. But they have a way of looking at things, a way of seeing obstacles as possibilities, and a way of hanging in there and making the most of every opportunity, that almost guarantees success.

As celebrated climber Royal Robbins once told me, “When it’s been a long day of climbing, and I feel like I can’t go any farther, I concentrate on the next three feet. And then the next three feet; and then the next three feet. Pretty soon, I’m at the top.”

Successful people are flexible, optimistic and hard working. If you want to sum it up in a word, it is not difficult to do: success is, more than anything else and without a doubt, a question of attitude. What is your attitude?

Lou Tice
The Pacific Institute

I can see where Lou is coming from in this post. And if we measure ‘success’ as many people in the world would measure it — make a lot of money, climb to the top in business etc — then it would be hard to disagree with his findings: attitude does indeed sum it up.

What if we want to bring God into this, though? That may well change the measure of whether we’re successful or not. But does ‘attitude’ still sum things up? For me, in a way, I think it does. An ‘attitude’ of openness and willingness to do what God wants of me. An ‘attitude’ of love — love for and from God, and love for my fellow human beings — that develops a trust that I will be able to do what God asks of me, because he wouldn’t ask me to do what I was unable to. And an ‘attitude’ of work, working to further the kingdom of heaven in the here and now. ‘Flexible, optimistic, and hard-working’ — the same as before we add God into the equation.

Another great post from Lou Tice at the Winners Circle that has prompted me to think quite deeply about something. I’m not sure that I’ve been fantastically successful in communicating the fruits of that thought in this post, but hopefully you’ll, at least, begin to get the idea. It’s well worth subscribing to the daily emails from the Winners Circle, it doesn’t take long, and won’t cost you anything.