Success is a Function of Correction

I just finished reading this book which I would highly recommend for all who are on their journey to achieving their goals and dreams. Far too often when we begin or take action to start something we quit at the first sign of defeat or rejection. My personal experience has been that you need to have a plan and what are the current resources that you have to start with. Some of us never start as we make the assumption that we need to have all the resources and conditions right before we start taking action. That's pure procrastination. Some of us will take action and quit as the going becomes tough. I have come to the conclusion why people quit its because they do not wish to put their thinking cap and ask questions as to why the process or action taken is not working.



"Thinking is the hardest work there is that's why so few people engage in it" quote Albert Einstein. In my training experience one of the common characteristics that I find is that most participants refuse to or are just lazy to think or do not have the necessary tools or skills to solve a challenge when they are faced with it and prefer to seek advice or opinion of others which is convenient and can be disasterous. We prefer instant or quick fixes, probably because we live in a society of instant coffee, instant cash, instant noodles and instant answers.

This book gives you an insight and tools to help you succeed. An excerpt from the book; the three most important steps, discovered and rediscovered by virtually every successful person, are these:

• Decide exactly what you want, write it down, and make a plan to achieve it. Decide upon your destination.
• Take action. Launch toward your goal. Step out in faith. Take the first step with no guarantee of success. Take off on your journey.
• Be prepared to make continual course corrections every hour and every day of your life as you fly toward your destination. Expect an inevitable, unavoidable, and unbroken series of problems, difficulties, reversals, setbacks and crises every day and week of your life. Since you cannot avoid them, your aim must be to respond to them effectively.

The Law of Seeds

This is a good way to think if you want to be happy. Take a look at an apple tree. There might be five hundred apples on the tree, each with ten seeds. That's a lot of seeds! We might ask. Why would you need so many seeds to grow just a few more trees? Nature has something to teach us here. It's telling us: Most seeds never grow. So if you really want to make something happen, you had better try more than once.

This might mean:

You'll attend twenty interviews to get one job.

You'll interview forty people to find one good employee.

You'll talk to fifty people to sell one house, car, ideas, etc

And you might meet a hundred acquaintances to find one special friend.

When we understand the Law of the Seed, we don't get so disappointed.

We stop feeling like victims. Laws of nature are not things to take personally.

We just need to understand them and work with them.

IN A NUTSHELL

Successful people fail more often. They plant more seeds. When Things Are Beyond Your Control, Here's a recipe for permanent misery...

a) Decide how you think the world SHOULD be.

b) Make rules for how everyone SHOULD behave.

Then, when the world doesn't obey your rules, get angry! That's what miserable people do! Let's say you expect that:

Friends SHOULD return favours.

People SHOULD appreciate you.

Planes SHOULD arrive on time.

Everyone SHOULD be honest.

Your husband SHOULD remember your birthday.

These expectations may sound reasonable. But often, these things won't happen! So you end up frustrated and disappointed.

There's a better strategy. Have less demands. Instead, have preferences! For things that are beyond your control, tell yourself: I WOULD PREFER A, BUT IF B HAPPENS, IT'S OK TOO!

This is really a game that you play in your head. It is a shift in attitude, and it gives you more peace of mind. You prefer that people are polite ... but when they are rude, it doesn't ruin your day. You prefer sunshine ... but rain is ok!

To become happier, we either need to

a) Change the world, or

b) Change our thinking.

It is easier to change our thinking!

IN A NUTSHELL

It's not what happens to you that determines your happiness. It's how you think about what happens to you!

+Source Unknown+

Success is a journey not a destination !

In 1962, four nervous young musicians played their first record audition for the executives of the Decca recording Company. The executives were not impressed. While turning down this group of musicians, one executive said,"We don't like their sound. Groups of guitars are on the way out." The group was called The Beatles.

In 1944, Emmeline Snively, director of the Blue Book Modeling Agency, told modeling hopeful Norma Jean Baker, "You'd better learn secretarial work or else get married." She went on and became Marilyn Monroe.

In 1954, Jimmy Denny, manager of the Grand Ole Opry, Fired a singer after one performance. He told him, "You ain't goin' nowhere....son. You ought to go back to drivin' a truck." He went on to become the most popular singer in America named Elvis Presley.

When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876, it did not ring off the hook with calls from potential backers. After making a demonstration call, President Rutherford Hayes said, "That's an amazing invention, but who would ever want to use one of them?"

When Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, he tried over 10'000 experiments

before he got it to work. A young reporter asked him how it felt to fail so many times. He said, "I never failed once. I invented the light bulb. It just happened to be a 10'000-step process."

In the 1940s, another young inventor named Chester Carlson took his idea to 20 corporations, including some of the biggest in the country. They all turned him down. In 1947 - after seven long years of rejections! He finally got a tiny company in Rochester, New York, the Haloid company, to purchase the rights to his invention an electrostatic paper-copying process. Haloid became Xerox Corporation we know today.

Wilma Rudolph was the 20th of 22 children. She was born prematurely and her survival was doubtful. When she was 4 years old, she contacted double pneumonia and scarlet fever, which left her with a paralysed left leg. At age 9, she removed the metal leg brace she had been dependent on and began to walk without it. By 13 she had developed rhythmic walk, which doctors said was a miracle. That same year she decided to become a runner. She entered a race and came in last. For the next few years every race she entered, she came in last. Everyone told her to quit, but she kept on running. One day she actually won a race. And then another. From then on she won every race she entered. Eventually this little girl, who was told she would never walk again, went on to win three Olympic gold medals.

The Moral of the above Stories:

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved. You gain strength, experience and confidence by every experience where you really stop to look fear in the face.... You must do the things you cannot do. And remember, the finest steel gets sent through the hottest furnace. A winner is not one who never fails, but one who NEVER QUITS! In LIFE, remember that you pass this way only once! let's live life to the fullest and give it our extreme best....have a blissful life... A miracle is not the suspension of natural law, but the operation of a higher law...