 
BOSS in You

(Bringing Out Something Special in You)

by

Sunday Eyitayo Michael

Copyright 2017 Sunday Eyitayo Michael

Smashwords Edition
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To God almighty, the most loving parents, the most supportive siblings and everyone who believes in genuine success
PREFACE

In a world where people have given up on their ability to make impact, reach great peaks and attain genuine success but have instead settled for mediocre lives or opted for cheap routes like fraud, lotteries, robbery, theft, and even black magic as their only hope for success, places they will never find fulfillment. Instead of searching deep within themselves and from there, draw out something the world needs, something that would leave their mark on earth and give them genuine success, there they will find fulfillment. There is always that something in each and every one of us. The super successful of the old, the likes of Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, Benjamin Franklin, Leonardo da Vinci, and even the most successful of our generation, the likes of Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Christiano Ronaldo, Beyonce Knowles, Floyd Mayweather, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and a lot more of people who have achieved these great heights, have just as much super powers as we all do. They chose to use theirs while we chose to let ours get corroded. But it's never too late, at least Harland Sanders did it at 65, neither is it too early, Zuriel Oduwole is already making impact.

The commandments in 'BOSS in You' will show you keys these super successful used to unlock their vast success.

A lot of efforts was put into it to make sure it's precise, easy to read and understandable even with minimum level of literacy. Do yourself a huge favor and study till the end because it will surely expand your mind and forever change your life.

Chapter One

FIRST COMMANDMENT:

'Thou Shall Always Water Thy Attitudes'

'Man does not simply 'find' success or 'come to' failure, he carries their seeds around in his personality and character'  
-Maxwell Maltz

Attitude is a major key to open doors to successes you should enter; no wonder the title of Keith Harrell's super informative bestseller 'Attitude is Everything'. Attitude is indeed everything, and to excel, you have to water the right attitudes in your life always. What you say is just 5% of what people actually listen to, they listen more to your attitude than the words. Ralph Emerson said 'what you do thunders so loudly in my ears, I can't hear what you say'. Haven't you noticed that when someone appears neat, calm, bold, focused, we tend to listen to them more than the ones that distract us with all their aggressiveness?

Thomas J Stanley PhD and William D Danko PhD, after about twenty years of studying millionaires across a wide spectrum of industries concluded that 'the character of the business owner is more important in predicting his level of wealth than the classification of the business'. The most successful of people has the best-watered attitudes, and it's their attitudes that pushes them to the fore-front of success. Life, as Charles Swindoll will put it, is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to them. Why do so many people face the same predicaments and few come out better from it and a whole lot more come out worse? Attitude.

At all given times, you should choose your attitude, do not let circumstances change them because it's in those moments of circumstances those watered attitudes are revealed. Viktor Frankl wrote in his bestselling book Man Searching for Meaning, that the last of human freedom is to choose ones attitude in any given circumstance. Or like Martin Luther King Jr. would say that the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in the moments of challenges but where he stands in the moment of challenges and controversies.

Attitudes We Must Water to Succeed

Our Attitude is First Revealed in Our Appearance

The first thing people notice about us before they even care about what we have to offer is our appearance. Leil Lowndes (bestselling author of How to Talk to Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere) once asked Robert Grossman, a caricature artist who draws regularly for Forbes, News week, sports illustrated, Rolling stone and other popular publications, that 'if you wanted to portray somebody really cool. You know intelligent, strong, charismatic, principled, fascinating, caring, interested in other people...' 'Easy' he interrupted, 'just give them a great posture, a heads up look, a confident smile and a direct gaze'. This is to say that the way you appear already says a lot about you before you open your mouth to speak.

Research has shown that we automatically assign to good-looking individuals such favorable traits as talents, kindness, honesty and intelligence. A study of the 1974 Canadian federal election found that attractive candidates received more than two and half as many votes as unattractive candidates (Efran and Petterson, 1976). Follow up research demonstrated that voters did not realize their bias, so groom yourself and people would not even know why they favor you. To look attractive, you don't need much, just a god posture, a neat outfit, well trimmed hair, nice shoes (which studies have shown is the first thing people will notice in your appearance, surprisingly), work on how you walk. But in all you appearance, be sure to be original, do not try to fake or imitate, its more disgusting than a poor appearance. But often times when in Rome, behave like a roman, do not in such situations where you would be immediately kicked out for being different, be different, be like them at first then over time show your differences when you have gotten them to trust your intentions. Humans most often are like the mother turkey, they react aggressively to differences. Turkey mothers are good mothers- loving, watchful and protective. They spend much of their time tending, warming, cleaning and budding their young beneath them but all their mothering is triggered by the 'cheep-cheep' sound of the young turkeys. If the chick makes the noise, its mother will care for it, if not the mother will ignore or even kill it. for a mother turkey, a pole cat is a natural enemy whose approach is greeted with squawking, pecking and clawing rage. M.W Fox experimented using stuffed models of polecats. When drawn by a string to a mother turkey received a furious attack. When however, the same stuffed replica carried inside it a recorder that played the 'cheep-cheep' sound of the baby turkey, the mother will not only accept the incoming pole cat but will gather it under her (Illustrated by animal behaviorist, M.W Fox, 1974)

The True you is shown in The Way You Communicate

After getting the attention of people with your appearance, they will be interested in what you have to say and now carefully listen to you have to say and either convince them or push them away with how you speak.

In 1825, a new Czar, Nicholas I, ascended the throne of Russia; a rebellion broke out, led by the liberals demanding that the country modernize, that its industries and civic structures catch up with the rest of Europe. Nicholas I sentenced one of its leaders, Kondraty Ryleyev to death. On the day of execution, the rope broke as soon as the trap door was opened. Normally, this was considered a sign from the gods to pardon but as soon as Ryleyev stood up, seeing that the rope broke and he was still alive, he said, 'you see, in Russia, they don't know how to do anything properly, not even how to make a rope'. Nicholas I was about to sign the pardon when he heard what Ryleyev had said and he tore the pardon and said 'in that case, lets prove the contrary' the next day Ryleyev was hanged again and this time the rope did not break.

Words from your mouth are very good determinant factor to justify or disqualify your attitude so effectively work on how you communicate.

USE THE RIGHT WORDS

When you have nothing to say, it is much better to be quiet, presumed a fool than open your mouth, and clear all doubts but when you have what to say, say using the right words. Mark Twain said, 'a powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of the intensely right word, the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt'. Words are powerful, very powerful, so when we speak, we should carefully select our words. Confucius was right when he said 'without knowing the force of words, it's impossible to know men', because it's in our words that our true self are revealed.

'They say the pen is mightier than the sword, it is, but the tongue is even mightier than the pen'  
-Leil Lowndes

HOW TO COMMUNICATE EFFECTIVELY

TALK LESS AND LISTEN MORE

When people notice you care about what they say, they listen more to what you have to say. If Ryleyev have been patient enough to listen before he spoke, he would probably have heard through whispers that what happened meant 'pardon'. Besides, those who talk more does little else.

THINK OF EVERY CONVERSATION AS AN OPPURTUNITY

Every conversation is actually an opportunity to show who you really are, to communicate ideas and to learn something you never knew before, so make the most of it.

MAKE PEOPLE FEEL GOOD ABOUT THEMSELVES

Flatter, if you have to but not too much, as Henry Mackay, bestselling author of Swim with the Sharks without Being Eaten Alive, said that successful companies just like successful people, usually do not count modesty among their greatest virtue, nor are they immune to skillful flattery. But be careful when you flatter, people notice when you exaggerate too much in your flattery and get offended, foiling your initial aim. If you know, you can't flatter modesty, DO NOT FLATTER.

CONSTANTLY IMPROVE YOUR COMMUNICATION SKILLS

Larry King said 'regardless of your ability as a talker, remember this, if you feel you are not good at it, you can be, if you feel you are not good at it, you can be better'. You have to consistently improve your communication skills because 85% of one's success in life is directly due to communication skills.

Weed Pride, Water Humility

Another key attitude to be watered is humility. Humility is a very essential is very essential in your ladder up to success. Gnaeus Marcius was a great military hero of the ancient Rome. In the first half of the fifty-century B.C, he won many important battles, saving the city from calamity time and time again and became something of a legendary figure among his people. In 454 B.C, he decided to exploit his reputation and entered politics. He came for the position of the high rank of consul. And when he came to give his public address, he began by displaying the dozens of scars he had accumulated over seventeen years of fighting for Rome. The people were moved to tears and his victory seemed certain. On the polling day, he entered, escorted by the entire senate and the city's patrician, the aristocracy; he addressed only the wealthy citizens who accompanied him. His words were arrogant. He boasted of his battlefield exploits, the people got disgusted and quietly words spread throughout Rome of his attitude and the people after hearing this came out in great number to make sure he wasn't elected. He ended up defeated.

Nobody likes the proud, boastful or arrogant people. People are even more drawn to people who have achieved much but still display humility. At times, when we attain victory, we feel a sense of pride and it's in that moment that danger knocks and tactfully steals our victory that's why Napoleon Bonaparte said 'the greatest danger occurs at the moment of victory'.

The really successful people care less about things that show pride, it's only those at the bottom who try to feel successful that stress themselves over such. No wonder Maxwell Maltz advised that trying to be a success in terms of acquiring prestige symbols and wearing certain badges leads to neurotism, frustration, and unhappiness. But striving to be successful brings not only material success, but satisfaction fulfillment and happiness. People who try to be a success are those who thrive just to impress to feed their ego and like Keith Harrell said, you can't express when you try to impress. In The Millionaire Next Door, the authors discovered what they called the common denominator of success among those who successfully built wealth. One of those was that they allocate more time, energy and money efficiently in a way conducive to building wealth; they believe that financial independence is more important than displaying high social status; it's the others that think and act otherwise.

'Pride that dines in vanity sups on contempt... and after all, of what use is pride of appearance for which much is suffered'  
-Benjamin Franklin

Pride kills our peace, Francesco Petrach said that the five enemies of peace inhabit us-avarice, ambition, envy, anger and pride; if they were banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.

Have the Concern of Others at Heart

'People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care'  
-Zig Ziglar

The more people see that you have their interest at heart; the more they are drawn to you, and the greater success you acquire. But when people discover that you are only concerned about yourself, your interest, your personal gain- they tend to move away. In short, the fewer times you use the pronoun, I, the more sane you seem to your listeners. Therapist calculates inmates of mental institution say 'I' and 'me' twelve times more often than residents of the outside world do. Joe Gerald, the world's greatest car salesman according to Guinness world record says that the secret to his success was getting people to like him. And how do you think people will get to like you? When they feel they have a connection with you out of the concern you show towards them. They tend to become more receptive to you and they tag it names like 'instant rapport' or 'chemistry'. It's all drawn out of the concern you show towards them. Lastly, follow the words of Daniel Herzner when he said 'love people and use money, not the other way round'.

An Optimistic Attitude is Invaluable

'I am optimistic. It does not seem much use being anything else'  
-Winston Churchill

In World War II, General Eisenhower was asked what would have been the effect upon the allied cause if the invasion troops had been thrown back into the sea from the beaches of Italy. 'It would be really bad' he said, 'but I never allow my mind to think in that way'. That's been optimistic, looking at things from the positive angle always, gives you the winning edge. Martin Selligman did a research and discovered that optimistic people are more successful than similarly talented people with pessimistic attitude. He got to this conclusion after doing some research at a major life insurance company and found that salespeople who expected to succeed sold 37 percent more insurance than the salespeople who didn't. Isn't that amazing? That you get extra ordinary results for just expecting the result to be extra ordinary. Little wonder why Brian Tracy said, 'whatever you expect with confidence becomes your own self fulfilling prophecy'. Pessimism on the other hand gives the same result as optimism, because you get just what you expect.

'Blessed is the man who expects nothing for he shall never be disappointed' Benjamin Franklin said. Most often, when a pessimist even gets what he deserves, he considers it luck.

Life's battle don't always go  
to the stronger or faster man  
but soon or late, the one who wins  
is the one who thinks he can.

A Happy Attitude Gives a Happy Life

'Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful'  
-Albert Schweitzer

When we laugh, it produces endorphins like effect, relieving pain in our body. As humans, sometimes we can feel frustrated, it's human but instead of getting sad, smile, it goes a long way. As you smile, you gradually discover that you begin to feel joy. Smile harder and the joy multiplies because the happy man succeeds where the sad fails.

A Courageous Attitude is the Sword of Winners

'The greatest mistake man can make is to be afraid of making one'  
-Elbert Hubbard

An enormous bronze equestrian statue was to be built in memory of Francesco Sforza. It would be a scale no one has seen since the days of ancient Rome and to be cast so large in bronze, required great engineering feat. This baffled all the artist of that time but Leonardo da Vinci found this challenge irresistible and took up courage to build it. He built a clay replica of the statue. It was gigantic, the size of a large building. The crowd that gathered to look at it was awe struck. Though the bronze statue never came to be because war broke out and all bronze available were used to make weapons. But with that act of courage, Leonardo gradually began to make a name for himself. Winners share this quality with Leonardo; they are courageous. They don't allow fear of failure to keep them from doing what they ought to and that's why win.

Maxwell Maltz said 'nothing in this world is ever absolutely guaranteed or certain. Often, the difference between a successful man and a failure is not one's better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, to take a calculated risk and to act.' Lack of courage is never an attractive quality, no one likes a scared, careful person, so it does not bring success that's why Henry Ward Beecher said he doesn't like cold, precise, perfect people who in order not to speak wrong, never speak at all, and in order not to do wrong, never do anything. Theses set of people are the ones that are controlled by fear, and afraid to fail. Winners understand that failure is a necessary evil, a compulsory step towards success. Art Berg would say 'fail faster to succeed more', which is true. People hardly almost never succeed on first trial. The more you fail, the more you learn, the better you become, the more you move towards success.

Employers now seek among other qualities, courage in potential employees. Henry J Kaiser said 'when a job is to be done, I look for a person who possesses an enthusiasm and optimism for life, who makes a zestful confident attack on his daily problems. One who shows courage and imagination, who pins down his buoyant spirit with careful planning and hard work but says 'this must be hard but it can be licked' most employers are like Beecher, because they expect better result from their employees and they can only get that when the employee is courageous. Little wonder why you haven't been given the job, because on your attitude list, courage is not among the top.

A psychologist said that the word FEAR really stands for False Evidences Appearing Real. However, it's human to fear but when you, as Katherine Peterson put it, let fear grab you by the tail and swing you around is a bad attitude towards success.

KILL FEAR BY DOING WHAT YOU FEAR

When you realize you fear a particular thing, you banish the fear by doing that thing and doing it over and over again. Ralph Waldo Emerson advised that we should do the things we fear and the death of the fear is certain or as Glenn Ford put it 'if we do not do the things we fear, then the fear controls our life'.

DESIRE ENDLESSLY AND FEAR VANISHES

Fear is an emotion, so is desire, when a man desires a woman, he goes the extra mile, fears nothing and does anything possible to get her. We should take advantage of attitude in our everyday life and desire strongly things we ought to have and we would do things we have to do to get it, and we gradually discover the fear of this failure will disappear. Thomas Fuller said 'if your desires be endless, your cares and fears will be so too'.

CHASE YOUR GOALS AGGRESSIVELY

'Aggressiveness and emotional steams are very necessary in reaching a goal, we must go after what we want in an aggressive rather than defensive and tentative ways' Maxwell Maltz said in Psycho Cybernetics. People that go after their goals in such way are considered courageous but the tentative ones are considered cowards and almost never get anything done.

COURAGE KEYS

'Courage is rightly considered the foremost of all virtue, for upon it, all others depend' –Winston Churchill

'Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm'\- Winston Churchill

'When you have a can do attitude, you are giving yourself power and energy to accomplish anything-Daniel Herzner

Winners are Action-oriented

'Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought'  
-Henry Bergson

Study after study has shown that the prominent character among people that are promoted faster and get paid more is that they are 'action-oriented'. During the McCarthy era, government spies infiltrated underground political rallies to determine who was dangerous to national security, in other words people who had the potential to lead and carry people with their actions. The agents were trained applause watchers. They photographed and investigated men who clapped first, shouted 'bravo' loudest, and smiled longest at the end of the political inflammatory speeches. The spies dubbed these the dangerous ones. The infiltrators felt first responders were confident cats that had the power to persuade people and the charisma to lead crowds because they are action oriented. Canon Ferar carefully explained how men who act, think in his poem;

I am only one  
but I am one  
I cannot do everything  
but I can do something  
what I can do  
I ought to do  
and what I ought to do  
by God's grace, I will do

Dreaming is a Winner's Attitude

'We are what we are because we first imagined it'  
-Donald Curtis

One night in 1987, Jim Carey was a 25 years old struggling comic when he drove his old Toyota up to Mulholland Drive in the Hollywood hills. Sitting there and visioning his future, he wrote himself a cheque of $10 million, dated it thanksgiving 1995, and added the notation 'for acting services rendered'. By 1995, his roles in 'Ace Ventura', 'Pet Detective', 'The Mask', and 'Dumb and Dumber' had yielded worldwide grosses of $550 million and his asking price was up to $20 million per picture. This is one of the greatest attitude a winner should carry about; mapping out for your future, dreaming big dreams and working towards making them come true, but before you can even begin to work, you have to map it out in dreams. A reporter went up to Lillian Disney and said to her that it was a shame that Walt wasn't there to see how everything had turned out. She turned to the reporter without any hesitation and replied 'Oh, he saw it, and long before we ever did' that's the power of dreams.

Another great example of how the attitude of dreaming can make you a winner is O.J Simpson. He was a young boy born into poverty in rundown section of San Francisco and was fan of football legend Jim Brown, then the running back for the Cleveland Browns. O.J was crippled by ricket he had endured as a result of malnutrition and at the age of six became permanently bowed. He dreamt of becoming a star running back like his hero. He had no money to attend football games, so whenever the Browns played the 49ers, he would wait outside the stadium until the maintenance crew opened the gates on the fourth quarter. He would then hobble into the stadium. At thirteen, finally he met Jim Brown and with excitement told him 'Mr. Brown, I know every record you have ever set, every touchdown you have ever scored, one day, I'm going to break every one of your records'. O.J Simpson did indeed break every record Jim Brown set. No wonder Marcus Aurelius, who rose to become the emperor of the Roman Empire, advised that we should dream big dreams, because only big dreams have the power to move men's soul.

'Nothing happens unless we first dream'  
-Carl Sandburg

Learned Helplessness

This is of all, the worst attitude so far, and it's of all the most common in the world that's why it's carefully addressed here. We act like this often without notice. Psychologist Martin Selligman, who was deeply interested in the study of depression, studied it. He conducted some controversial experiments involving two groups of dogs.

GROUP 1

Were placed in an enclosure and were exposed to random electric shocks, which could only end after a level was pressed. In time, the dogs learned to press the lever in order to shocks. The same dogs were moved to a different enclosure, this time; there was no lever to stop the shocks. The escape procedure was different, this time they had to jump out through a partition in the new environment, the dogs first looked for the lever that was in the old environment, when they didn't find it, they go creative in time and found the partition and went out.

GROUP 2

A different set of dogs were taken and placed in the first enclosure with the lever but in this case, the lever did not stop the shocks no matter how many times they pressed the lever. In time, they learned that the shocks could not be stopped and so they just laid there and whimpered making no attempts to stop the shocks. Later on they moved them into a second enclosure (the one with the escape partition) this time the partition was truly a means of escape but unlike group one dogs, these dogs didn't bother exploring the possibilities, they just laid there and whimpered when the shocks came. This phenomenon became known in psychology as 'learned helplessness' which is an attitude most of us carry about. Because we have tried in the past and failed, we choose not to try again at all, we don't try to explore other possibilities of success and just sit back and suffer when we could probably win if we but try no matter our past failures.

Ponder on These

'In communication, ineffective talks are usually the ones that are written and memorized and sweated over and made artificial', communicate from your heart'-Dale Carnegie

'Champions aren't made in the gym. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them- a desire, dream, and vision. They have to have last minute stamina. They have to be a little faster, they have to have skill, and will. But the will must be stronger than the skill'-Mohammed Ali

'If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he is not fit to live-Martin Luther King Jr.

'To the dull mind, all nature is laden, to the illumined mind, the whole world burns and sparkles with light'-Ralph Waldo Emerson

'You are a living magnet; you invariably attract into your life the people, situation and circumstances that are in harmony with your dominant thoughts'-Brian Tracy

'Faith is taking the first step when you don't see the whole stair case'-Martin Luther King Jr.

'Virtue attained is knowledge gained'
Chapter Two

SECOND COMMANDMENT:

'Thou Shall Chase After Thy Passion'

'Don't ask what the world needs, ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive'  
-Howard Thurman

Mark Twain tells a story of a man who died and met with saint peter at the Pearly gate. Immediately realizing that saint peter was wise and knowledgeable, the man inquired 'saint peter, I have been interested in military history for years. Tell me who the greatest general of all time was'. Saint peter quickly responded 'oh, that's a simple question. It's that man right over there', 'you must be mistaken' responded the man, now very confused, 'I know that man on earth and he was a laborer'. 'that's right, my friend' assured saint peter, 'but he would have been the greatest general of all time if he became a general'. When we chase our passion, we become the best we can be but when instead we follow the path of others, we would along the line get frustrated because we would never find true joy and almost always never go far. Albert Einstein once said 'when a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute but let him sit on a hot stone for a minute, it would seem longer than an hour'. That's how passion works, you can spend endless hours on something you are passionate about and feel like you have just spent few minutes but when you are not passionate you easily get tired and quit along the line. That is why Martin Luther King Jr. said that if a man is called to sweep the streets, he should sweep it even as Michelangelo painted, as Shakespeare wrote poetry, as Beethoven composed music. He should sweep so well that all the host of heaven and earth will pause and say, 'here lived a great sweeper who did his job well'.

Enthusiasm is derived from the word enthousiasmos meaning inspiration. When we are enthusiastic, we gain inspiration and we can be enthusiastic about things we are passionate about. We would give our very best for the things we love like Harland Sanders said that no hours nor amount of labor, nor amount of money would deter me from giving the best that was in me/

'Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is a product of enthusiasm'  
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

This is the reason we have thousands of footballers, software developers, musicians, hundreds of thousands of writers, millions of teachers, etc and yet only a few in these field actually really make impact. It is this few that actually decided to chase their passion and not because someone else is doing it. They checked deep inside their hearts and drew out that thing they were deeply passionate about, others followed.

Chase your Passion First

A multi millionaire once said 'there are people working today at jobs they don't like. I'll tell you honestly that the successful man is a guy who works at a job, who likes his work, who can't wait to get down to his office, and that's my criteria and I've always been that way, I can't wait to get up and get down to my job under way'.

YOUR PASSION IS FIRST REVEALED IN CHILDHOOD

As a child, Masaru was highly inquisitive, fond of experimenting with different types of radio, after graduating at Tokyo's Waseda University in 1933, he worked at various sound companies over the next twelve years, specializing in sound and telecommunication. Years later, he cofounded Sony.

At five years, Ingvar bought matches in bulk and sold them on his bicycle at a profit. Later, he expanded into ballpoint and fountain pen, Christmas cards, fish, garden seeds and lingoberries. When he was seventeen, as a reward for his success at school, his father gave him some money and Ingvar founded IKEA in 1943, aiming to sell goods by mail orders and now has a furnishing empire with 253 stores in 24 countries.

As a child, Charles Darwin's overriding passion was collecting biological specimens.

When Marie Curie, the discoverer of Radium was just four years old, she wandered into her father's study and stood transfixed before a glass that contained all kinds of laboratory instruments for chemistry and physics experiments. She would return again and again to the room just to stare at the instruments and imagine all sorts of experiments she could conduct with the tubes and measuring devices. Years later, she entered a real laboratory and unleashed her passion.

Wilbur Wright and Orville Wright, when they were young, dissembled toys their father bought for them and reassembled them, always with modifications. Once their father needed to quickly print pamphlets for his work and they gathered together scarps, hinge from a folding buggy top, rusty springs and used it to create a press that spits out 1000 pages per hour, which was double the usual rate. Then bicycle came into vogue and they would open their bicycle and made adjustments and modifications to improve it. Soon people began to bring their bicycle for adjustments and they gradually made profits since theirs was superior. So it was no surprise that as soon as a challenge was brought up in the aviation industry, they tried it out and after several trials and errors and intense study on birds, kites etc. On December 17, 1903, Wilbur piloted their flying machine and flew it for an impressive fifty-nine seconds-the first manned, controlled and powered flight in history.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was surrounded by music as a child and soon fell in love with it. When he was three, he would hum along to the music his sister played and would sometimes sit at the family harpsichord and try to imitate his sister. Seeing his love and zeal, his father Leopold, who was a violinist and composer as well as a music instructor began to teach him. Wolfgang listened more deeply than other students did and at night, his parents would have to stop him from practicing and send him to sleep.

Countless others discovered their real passion at an early age, used it to provide solutions and became widely known for it. Aristotle said that when your talent and the need of the world cross, therein lies your calling. Chase your passion and you will soon discover where it is in your passion that the world needs. Adolf Dassler was passionate about making shoes and found Adidas, Gordon Merchant loves surfing and found Billabong, David Hohnen was passionate about creating beautiful wines and formed Cloudy Bay, Harland Sanders enjoyed cooking the food his mother taught him to make including pan fried chicken and formed KFC.

Things tend to seem more difficult than they are when they are not our passion but when we are passionate enough; we overcome the difficulties. That's why Johann Wolfgang Goethe said that everything on this earth has its difficult sides, only some inner drive-pleasure, love- can help us overcome obstacles, prepare a path and lift us to a narrow circle in which others tread out their anguished, miserable existence.

Chase Passion over Money

Robert J Kriegel and Louis Patler did a case study of 1500 people over twenty years. At the outset of the study, the group was divided into Group A, 83 percent of the sample, who was embarking on a career chosen for the prospect of making money now in order to do what they wanted later. Group B, the other 17 percent of the sample who had chosen their career path for the reverse reason, they were going to pursue their passion now and worry about money later. At the end of twenty years, 101 out of the 1500 were millionaires, of the millionaires, 100 were from group B.

Albert Einstein had the chance to work in a well paid position in an insurance company but ignored that and went to Swiss patent office in Bern, where the pay was meager and the hours of work was longer but it excited him because his task would be to analyze the validity of patent application, many of which involved science.

Also, in 1718, Josiah Franklin decided to bring his twelve years old son Benjamin Franklin into his lucrative, family run candle making business in Boston. His idea was that after seven years of apprenticeship and a little experience, Benjamin would take over the business. But Benjamin had other plans, he wanted to be a writer so he went to an older brother's printing press, even though such business meant harder work, longer years of apprenticeship (nine years).and no business under him when he is done. At the press, every now and then, he would proofread the works and copy-edit a pamphlet or text. What excited him was the fact that there was always new books around. Passion should always be your driving force not money, in 1970, when Richard Branson and his friends created Virgin; they weren't planning to do anything other than have a good time while doing something they loved.

Ponder on These

'There are many things that will catch my eyes, but there are only a few things that catch my heart, it is these I consider'-Tim Redmond

'Every great and commanding movement in the annals of this world is the triumph of some enthusiasm'-Ralph Waldo Emerson

'There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotions'-Carl Jung

'If you could only love enough, you could be the most powerful person'-Emmet Fox

'I think one reason I've had certain amount of success in broadcasting is that the audience can see that I love what I am doing. You can't fake that. If you try, you will fail'-Larry King

'Scientific research on the background of high achieving men disclosed that most achieved outstanding recognition in literature, art, industry, architecture were motivated by the influence of a woman (emotions)'

'Facts speaks, emotions shouts'-Leil Lowndes
Chapter Three

THIRD COMMANDMENT:

'Thou Shall Belief in Thyself'

"Deep within every man dwells those sundering powers; powers that would astonish him, that he never dreamed of possessing, force that would revolutionize his life if aroused and put into action."  
-Orison Swett Marden

There is not a single man who have caused great impact, reached the peak of life or have achieved success, without first believing in himself, this is the number one driving force a man would take towards success. Self-belief pushes you to the forefront and forces you to look deep within and draw out what is within you. Scared and doubtful people always miss out every other thing because they fail to belief in self.

How to Belief in Self

A large percentage of people who fail, lack belief in themselves, most either thinks its hereditary and others feel they are predisposed to live a scared life but it is neither hereditary nor a predisposed trait, its learnable and can be taught. People who currently do weren't born that way, they learnt it one way or the other, knowingly or unknowingly.

Know Thyself

Japanese are aware of three powers

The power of the sword; which symbolize weapons. Several countries in the world have spent millions of dollars, some billions of dollars, just for supremacy in military force.

The power of the jewel; which symbolizes money, he who has the gold, makes the rule.

The power of the mirror; which symbolizes the power of self-knowledge, this self-knowledge according to the Japanese legend was the most treasured of the three.

You can't belief in something you have no knowledge of. Knowledge gives an infinite level of power. Ignorance is all the greatest weakness of a man. To belief in yourself, you have to know yourself. Search within you. Everyman has weakness and everyman has strength, that special thing planted within them. To rate yourself by your weakness is folly as you would always be down casted. A fish would not judge itself by its inability to walk on land like the chicken, or fly like the pigeon, instead it would judge itself by its ability to swim and focus on improving that. Know your weakness, acknowledge them but never dwell on them. Your strength is more important. When you arm yourself, with knowledge of yourself you are steps away from fully believing yourself and bringing out that special thing planted in you.

A good example of someone armed with self-knowledge was Aurore Dupin Dudevant, who when she first showed her writing to an editor, he told her, 'you should make babies, Madame, not literature'. Aurore knew well what dwelled within her because of adequate self-knowledge and went ahead to write Indiana which sold massively and she even made a living from it.

When you know yourself, you will not accept the opinions of people of who you are not. After all, it's just their opinion, no matter the amount of certainty they use in their words.

SELF KNOWLEDGE IS A PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

Every human has that special trait within him that is uncommon to every other man on earth, so if you leave the responsibility of knowing yourself to others you won't fully understand who you are and will just end up frustrated because you can never find complete joy in acting on another man's stage. Abraham Lincoln once said, 'God must have loved the common people for he made so many of them', which everyone would almost agree was a great quote. But Maxwell Maltz correction of that quote is better of, he said 'God must have loved the uncommon people for he made so many of them' indicating carefully how uncommon and how special each man is.

'The will to do springs from a knowledge that we can do'  
-James Allen

Killers of Self-Belief

Self-belief is a very fragile part of man's psychology and is the first target of success 'predators'. Belief in self should always be guarded against;

People

'Most times people tell us what we can't do because they don't see themselves doing it'  
-Keith Harrell

Most often, we listen more to people than ourselves and this gradually hypnotizes us that we follow blindly their words. If a good hypnotic subject is told he is at the north pole, he will not only shiver and appear to cold, his body will react as if he were cold and goose pimples will develop. That's what most of us have become, the words of people have totally hypnotized us that we see ourselves exactly how we are told we are and react as such.

Bill Lear created the first car radio, he excitedly showed his invention to people, and they immediately killed the initial belief he had in himself and his idea. They told him it would never work because it would be too distracting to drivers, discouraged he sold the idea to Galvin Manufacturing Company, later renamed Motorola. Seeing how successful the idea became, he learnt his lesson and chose to belief in himself first and not push it to 'predators' instead. He came up with another plan for a company that built personal and corporate aircraft. He ignored all naysayers this time and ended up becoming an industry leader.

Playwright Neil Simon, winner of 17 Tony awards, five drama desk award and two Pulitzer prizes said something golden, 'don't listen to people who say 'its not done that way' maybe its not, but you will do it anyway'

Note: they might have good intentions towards you, they might even love you and not want you to go through unnecessary stress, but you know yourself better and would rather stake chances on the choices of yourself.

Eleanor Roosevelt would say 'no one can make you feel inferior without your consent', ponder on this. An example of someone who didn't allow the predators of self belief bite was W. Mitchell, after an airplane accident, was paralyzed from his waist down, with his entire face burnt off. While in the hospital, he met an incredibly attractive nurse called Annie, he asked his friends how he would get a date with her and they laughed at him and told him how insane he was to think such an attractive woman would want to date a man in his condition. He didn't listen to them and after a year and half, he and Annie got into a relationship and eventually got married. Listening to people too much will kill your self-belief and keep you away from what you would have gotten if only you tried.

Comparison

'This feeling of inferiority comes about for just one reason, we judge ourselves and measure ourselves not by our own norm and par but against some other individual's norm. When we do this, we always without exception, come out second best. We feel miserable and second-rate, and conclude that there is something wrong with us'  
-Maxwell Maltz

We are all special in a way and different in so many ways. The moment we begin to compare our lives with others, it destroys our self-belief and leaves us dejected because when we compare ourselves with others we automatically become second best or even at worst last, when we are even so bad at imitation.

When we compare ourselves with ourselves, we feel better, because automatically we are the best and this enhances our overall performance. Comparison forces us to conform, drifting us from our true self. However, naturally, humans would want to conform to what seem as the norm; but the people who tend to soar intentionally try not to conform. Kenneth Craig and his associates conducted a program to investigate conformism (most often we don't even realize we are conformist). In one study, subjects who received a series of electric shocks felt less pain (as indicated by self reports, psychological measures of sensory sensitivity and such psychological responses as heart rate, and skin conductivity) when they were in the presence of another subject who was tolerating the shocks as if they were not painful. But when they were in the presence of another who acted as though he felt more pain, they felt more pain.

Advertisers and marketers knows fully well that a large percentage of us are conformist and uses this advantage to sell products to us, that's why they love to inform us that a product is the 'fastest growing' or 'best-selling' because the conformist within us will push us to follow the crowd. The truly successful follow a different path, they don't wait to see others following a path before they do because of how much they belief in themselves.

Robert Kiyosaki said 'all too often, instead of trusting their inner wisdom, that genius inside of them, most people go along with the crowd. They do things because everyone else does it. They conform rather than question. The fear of being different prevents people from seeking new ways to solve problems.' People rarely realize that the most similar thing about us are our differences, the few who realizes this are the ones that stay ahead.

'Conforming to social norms, you will listen more to others than your own voice'  
-Robert Green

Self-Doubt

'There is but one cause of human failure and that's lack of faith in his true self'  
-William James

When you begin to doubt yourself, you kill your self-belief. Doubt breeds fear and most often when we fear a thing, we would most likely never do them. Daniel W Josselyn in Why be tired? After making extensive experiments to discover, the common cause of that conscious effort which freezes a man's thinking mind. He concluded that practically always it seems to be due to the tendency to exaggerate the difficulty and importance of your mental labors to take them too serious and FEAR THEY WILL FIND YOU INCAPABLE. Self-doubt freezes your thinking mind and when your acts are not based on thoughts, you will definitely fail.

Why doubt yourself? Because you don't know have the slightest idea what you are capable of. To evacuate doubt, you need to get intensive and extensive (specialized and generalized) knowledge of yourself. There is no weak human, we just have weakness but our strengths are what makes us us, so we should belief in them. No wonder Thomas Edison said 'if we did all the things we were capable of doing, we would literarily astonish ourselves'. When we remove all forms of doubt and do what we ought to with boldness, the results will surprise us.

TO KILL SELF DOUBT, BE BOLD

'I have been teaching professionally since 1984. It has been a great experience and rewarding, it is also a disturbing profession, for I have taught thousands of individuals and I see one thing common in all of us, myself included. We all have tremendous potentials, and we all are blessed with blessed with gifts, yet one thing that holds all of us back is some degree of self doubt. It is not so much the lack of technical information that holds us back but more the lack of self-confidence. Some are more affected than others. Often in the real world, its not the smart that get ahead but the bold'  
-Robert Kiyosaki

Why do we need Self-belief?

Self-belief is the first and most important attribute of those at the top great achievers in both history and this generation. It is an irreplaceable ingredient to rising to the top.

WHEN WE BELIEF IN OURSELVES;

We Automatically Turn from Failure to Potential Success

'The development of an adequate, realistic self-image will seem to imbue the individual with new capabilities, new talents and literarily turn failure into success.'  
-Maxwell Maltz

Failure is a product of self-doubt, the moment you begin to doubt your abilities, your mind will attract circumstances to support your belief and eventually, you will fail. There is no much use doubting yourself when you can just belief in yourself and attain heights you desire.

Nothing is Certain; We Make Them Certain through our Belief

'Every man is an impossibility until he's born'  
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

The only certain is the uncertainty of things. Everything changes, laws are corrected everyday, theories are modified every time. But we can't live our lives in fear of this uncertainty, instead we take our powers from there. The most successful people understand this and take personal responsibility for their lives.

You are Your Sculptor, Build a Beautiful Life

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said 'Everyone holds his fortune in his own hands like a sculptor, the raw material he will fashion.' Our life is our responsibility, it lies in our hands and when we hold it with trembling fingers, it falls and shatters.

Act with Boldness and not out of too Much Caution

Dr E Collin Cherry stated his belief that stuttering was caused by excessive monitoring. To test his theory, he equipped 25 severe stutterers with earphones through which a loud tone drowned out the sound of their own voices. When asked to read aloud prepared text under these conditions, which eliminated self-criticism, the improvement was remarkable. When we understand, like Oliver Holmes said that what lies behind us and what lies before us are a tiny matter compared to what lies within us, we would evacuate all forms of self doubt.

You Don't Have to be Good Enough to be Bold Enough

When Daniel Everett published his first book, Don't Sleep, There are Snakes, some linguist wrote letters to critics who were going to review it, trying to dissuade them from discussing his material, claiming it was far below academic standard, Everett cared less what they said and kept pushing at his dream. They went ahead to put pressure on the National public radio which was about to do a large segment on Everett and the show was cancelled. This didn't discourage him, he was bold and strengthened his arguments. He would listen to criticism and addressed them one by one, which eventually made him a better writer and thinker. The controversies, which surrounded him even, helped to boost his sales.

When we let doubts reign supreme in our thoughts, we become scared. Buddha couldn't have been wrong when he said 'we are what we think, all that we are arises with our thoughts, with our thoughts, we make our world'. The bible in a simpler way said 'as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he'. The way you see yourself on the inside largely determines your performance on the outside.

Ponder on These

You have brains in your head  
you have feet in your shoes  
you can steer yourself  
any direction you choose  
-Dru Seuss

'I know no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.'-Henry David Thoreau

'Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve' –Napoleon Hill

'We lift ourselves by our thoughts; we climb upon vision of ourselves'-Orison Swett Marsden

'Everything in the universe is resolved in your inward experience, it matters little what is without, for it is all a reflection of your own state of consciousness'-James Allen

'It's hard to fight an enemy who has an outpost in your head'-Sally Kempton

'If you do not see yourself as a winner, you cannot perform as a winner' –Zig Ziglar

'Success typically does not begin with a crowd of supporters' –Jason Jackson

'The fact that something has never been done before doesn't necessarily mean it can't be done. Often it simply means that no one has been crazy enough to try it'-Richard Branson
Chapter Four

FOURTH COMMANDMENT:

'Thou Shall at all Times Know Thy Direction'

'Before you begin scrambling up the ladder of success, make sure its leaning against the right building'  
-Stephen Covey

If one foresees from afar away the design to be undertaken, one can act with speed when moment comes to execute them, Cardinal Richelieu said. You have to know where you are going before you start going, the Bible clearly says, 'when there is no vision, the people perish' why? Because they will continue to move around confused.

Directionless People go Nowhere

Directionless people are like donkeys, dragging a cart, with its owner dragging a carrot just in front of the donkey's nose. When you are directionless, people will use you to get to where they want to go but you will only be chasing illusions. The donkey owner may be going where he wants to go, but the donkey will keep helping him get there without a direction of its own, tomorrow there will be just another carrot for the donkey. Yogi Berra said, if you don't know where you are going, you might end up some place else. Many people don't know where they are going that's why they go nowhere. And to be at the top, you have to at all times picture where you are going. Don Marquis, author of Archy and Mehitabel said that ours is a world where people don't know what they want and are willing to go through hell to get it.

A World Full of Opportunities is a World Filled with Distraction

The world is filled with several opportunities and this might confuse us in our walk in life as we might be chasing a particular goal and be distracted from it by a juicier goal. And be distracted from that one by another even juicier one and will eventually end up attaining none because the way the world is fast moving, better opportunities keep coming daily. Like Stephen Bayne said when he felt a sense a directionless-ness in a world full of opportunities, 'I am rather like a mosquito in a nudist camp, I know what to do, but I don't know where to begin.

'I always wanted to be somebody; I should have been more specific'

Decision is a Pillar in Direction Taking

'The greatest power that a person posses is the power to chose'  
-J Martin Kohe

Accurate analysis of over 25,000 men and women by Napoleon Hill, who had experienced failure, disclosed the fact that lack of decision was near the head of the list of major causes of failure. A bitter, cruel, alcoholic, drug addict was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of a liquor store cashier who 'got in his way'. He has two sons, one grew up to be like his father, and was later sent to jail for attempted murder. The other son now raises three kids, enjoying his marriage and appears truly happy. He's also a regional manager for a major national concern and has no alcohol or drug addiction. The two of them were asked privately, unbeknownst to the other, why their life turned out that way and both of them surprisingly gave same answer 'what else could have I have become growing up with a father like that'. When you make the right decision, you will take the right direction. Two people can be given stones, one will use it to build or as steps to a higher ground while the other might consider them junks and throw them away.

How to Direct your Life towards Success

To direct your life towards success, you have to;

SET GOALS

'People love to win. If you are not clear about the purpose of what you are doing, you have no chance of winning'  
-David Allen

In his book, psycho cybernetic, Maxwell Maltz talks about the creative mechanism within us. He said, it will work automatically and impersonally to achieve goals of success and happiness, or unhappiness and failure, depending upon the goals which we set ourselves for it. Present it with success goals and it will function as a success mechanism, present it with negative goals and it will operates just as impersonally and just as faithfully as a failure mechanism. Your mind contains a cybernetic, a goal seeking mechanism, once you have programmed a target or a desire into your sub conscious mind; it drives towards the attainment of the goal.

SET CLEAR GOALS

According to Mark McCormack, in his book, what they still don't teach you at Harvard Business School, and which have also been confirmed by several thought leaders, 3% of adults have clear written goals and detailed plans to achieve them. This top 3% of goal setters are earning on an average, ten times as much in the same period as those with no written goals at all. Unwritten goals lead to confusion, vagueness, misdirection and numerous mistakes. The enormously successful Amyway Corporation has a way to spur the sales personnel to greater and greater accomplishments. Members of staff are asked to set individual sales goals and commit themselves to these goals by recording them on paper. The palest of ink last longer than the finest memory, the Chinese would say. Setting your goals is important, but more importantly is to make them clear enough to follow by writing them out and abiding faithfully to them. Sometimes it helps to show your goals people but those who will support your goals because it has been discovered that whenever one takes a stand that is visible to others, there arise a drive to maintain that stand in order to look like a consistent person (636)

Success is Goals

A high school dropout was asked how he was able to accumulate $10 million despite being a drop out. His response was 'I have always been goal oriented. I have clearly defined set of daily goals, weekly goals, monthly goals, annual goals and even lifetime goals. I even have goals to go to the bathroom. I always tell our young executive that they must have goals.' Without goals, you cannot attain success. Lloyd Conant, founder of Nightingale Conant Corporation of Chicago, one of the biggest producers and distributors of audio programs on success and achievements in the world, worked with and studied successful people for more than fifty years. He came up with the conclusion that, success is goals and all else is commentary.

Plan your Goals

'Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now'  
-Alan Lankein

Taking actions without planning is the major source of problems. You may have heard of the six P's formula; proper prior planning prevents poor performance'. Sociologist Dr Edward Banfield of Harvard University conducted a fifty years study for upward socio economic mobility in America. He concluded that the most single attribute of people who achieved great success in life is 'long time perspective'. He defined time perspective as the amount of time an individual takes into consideration when determining his present action. Someone once said that, a vision without a plan is hallucination. You have to have a plan to back your goals if not you are wasting your time. Conrad Hilton said it better when he said, 'to accomplish big things, I am convinced you must first dream big dreams, true, it must be in line with progress, human and divine or you are wasting your prayer. It has to be backed by work and faith, or it has no hands and feet. Maybe there's even an element of luck mixed in but I am sure now that WITHOUT A MASTER PLAN, you have nothing.

PROPERLY PLAN YOUR GOALS

BE SPECIFIC

There is only one quality that one must possess to win and that's definiteness of purpose, Napoleon Hill said. Goals with specific rather than i-will-do-my-best standards lead to better performance (Locke and Latham, 1990).

DO THE LITTLE THINGS WITH THE BIG IN VIEW

You have got to think about the big things while you are doing the small things so that all the small things will go in the right direction, Alvin Toffler said. In this aspect, think like the realist, who believes that what is doe or left undone in the short run determines the long run.

Strive Towards your Planned Goals

Research on the psychology of goals suggests that successful goal pursuit implies two subsequent task; goal setting and goal striving. It was boldly written in a church in Sussex, England that 'a vision without a task is but a dream, a task without a vision is drudgery, a vision and a task is the hope of the world'. H.L Hunt who was at a time the richest self made billionaire in the world was once asked by a television journalist for his secrets of success, he replied, 'there are only three requirements for success; first decide exactly what it is you want in life. Second, determine the price you are going to pay to get the things you want and third and this is most important, resolve to pay the price. Knowledge according to Napoleon Hill can be converted into power by organizing it into definite plans and then expressing those plans in terms of action.

BE FLEXIBLE IN GOAL STRIVING

Adhering blindly and rigidly to your plan is folly. Be flexible, the more you learn better ways to get your goal to accomplishments, the better you make adjustments. Because you couldn't have known every single thing you needed to know about your goal the moment you were planning it but be smart in making amends.

'You should give a lot of thought to your future because that is where you are going to be spending the rest of your life'  
-Brian Tracy

Be Focused on your Goals

'The sun's ray does not burn until brought to focus'  
-Alexander Graham Bell

Jack Welch, one time CEO of General Electric, said that his philosophy is either to be number one or two in every product area, which General Electric competes. If it cannot achieve the first and second position within a reasonable time period, it will withdraw from the market and focus its resources in another area it can dominate. Focus is critical in your journey to success. Focus on your strong points, focus on the direction you are heading, do not dissipate your energy around things not in line with your goal. Someone once said 'less is more', the lesser the things you focus your energy on, the better your result. Anthony Robbins said that, controlled focus is like laser beam that can cut through anything that seems to be stopping you.

WHEN YOU FOCUS, YOU AVOID LITTLE ERRORS

'Little things are not always little'  
-Robert Cialdini

The famous seventeenth century Ming painter, Chou Yung, one winter afternoon set out to visit a town that lay across the north from his own town. He was bringing some important books and paper with him and commissioned a young boy to help him carry them. On the ferry, Chou Yung asked the boatman if they could have time to get to the town before the gates were closed. The boatman glanced at the boy and the bundle of loosely tied paper and books, 'yes' he replied, 'if you do not walk too fast'. As they started out, however, the sun was setting, afraid of being locked out of the town that night and be left at the mercies of local bandits, Chou and the boy walked faster and soon began to run. Suddenly, the string around the paper broke and the documents scattered on the ground. It took them several more minutes to put the packs together again and when they reached the gates, it was closed. Only a little more focus on the little things like tying he books more tightly could have enabled them make it in time. Carl von Clausewitz said, 'there is no simpler law than that of keeping one's forces concentrated... in short, the first principle is; act with utmost concentration'.

FOCUS YOUR ENERGIES ON YOUR STRONGEST POINT

When you concentrate your energies on your strongest point, you gain more, for it is better to find a rich mine and keep mining it deeper than moving from one shallow mine to another. Keith Harrell, author of Attitude is Everything, said, 'we have a choice, we can concentrate on problems or we can focus on solutions', our strongest points are the solutions to the problems we face.

'Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least'  
-Goethe

WHEN YOU FOCUS, SUCCESS IS ALMOST SURE

'Every great man has become great, every successful man has become successful in proportion as he confined his powers to one particular channel'  
-Orison Swelt Marden

Hall of fame baseball player, Hank Aaron said that, he thinks what separates a super star from the average ball player is that he concentrates .just a little longer. When we focus on something, our ability for that thing is increased and we attain success because we gain mastery at that thing.

'The time of mastery is dependent on our intensity of focus'  
-Robert Greene

Ponder on These

'Life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to clean a window or write a masterpiece-Nadia Boulanger

'When the physical and mental resources is focused, one's power to solve a problem multiplies tremendously-Norman Vincent Peale

'The first law of success is concentration-to bend all the energy to one point and go directly to that point looking neither to the left nor right'-William Matthews

'Men are likely to discover easier methods when the whole attention of their minds is directed towards that single object than when dissipated among a variety of things-Adam Smith

'Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth-that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too'-Johann Wolfgang

'Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world indeed, it is the only thing that can-Margaret Mead

'You must have a clear mental picture of the correct thing before you can do it successfully-Alex Morrison
Chapter Five

FIFTH COMMANDMENT:

'Thou Shall Continually Improve Thyself'

'To have more, you must become more'  
-Daniel Herzner

Self-development is essential in life, if your life is directed towards success. The world is moving at a very fast pace and to catch up with its speed and stay ahead, you also have to be as fast in developing yourself or you will be left far behind in the race. In the Richest man in Babylon, George Clason talked about Sharru Nada, whose attention was caught by three men plowing a field. Forty years ago, while he was passing that field, he had seen those same men, had even envied them, and would have willingly exchanged places with them then. He looked back now and saw behind him his well-chosen camels and donkeys, loaded with valuable goods from Damascus. All this was but one of his possessions. He pointed to the plowers, saying, 'still plowing the same field where they were forty years ago'. Sharru Nada had in those years between improved himself and had become a better man but the three plowers saw no reason for improvement, they were comfortable with their abilities and therefore remained in the same condition he left them. Just little difference in our ability will lead to enormous difference in the result we see. Benjamin Franklin said, 'its hard for an empty bag to stand upright', but you will discover that when you fill an empty bag with just air and knot it, it would stand. Small improvement, big result. W. Edwards Deming, widely known as the father of quality introduced 'Kaizen' which loosely translates to 'Continuous improvement' in English and its widely practiced by most Japanese, that's why their nation is sparingly moving forward. When we continually develop ourselves, we become of high quality to both ourselves and people around us.

'People's lives change when they change something they do everyday'  
-John C Maxwell

Robert Greene would say, do not dream or make grand plans for the future; instead concentrate on becoming proficient at these simple and immediate skills. This will bring you confidence and become a base from which you expand to other pursuits. To develop ourselves, the little skills should not be ignored because they are the foundation of the bigger ones. According to Geoffrey Calvin in his book, Talent is overrated; most people learn their job in the first year of their employment and then never get better. Meanwhile, the millionaires, (according to the authors of The Millionaire next door, after investigating over 500 millionaires) continually improve themselves. Only one in five are not college graduates, but many hold advanced degrees, 18 percent law degrees, 6 percent medical degrees and 6 percent PhD.

Self-development is Inexhaustible

We can never reach a point in our lives where we will say, 'look, I have totally improved myself'. It's inexhaustible because perfection is a myth. Scientist in the field of human potentials have estimated we use as little as 10% of our abilities. What about the remaining 90% left unused? No wonder James T McCay said 'No matter the level of your ability, you have more potential than you can develop in a lifetime'. And the rate at which the world is moving so fast, as soon as you stop trying to get better, you automatically begin to get worse, out dated and less useful.

Invest in Developing Yourself

General Electric invested $5 billion in research and development over five years and said they have generated more than $70 billion in revenue. Big companies and industries are continually seeing the effect of continual development and therefore invest greatly in it, why shouldn't you? One time head of training for Motorola said that the company gets $30 for every $1 spent on training its executives. Self-development is never easy, so is life, that why Jim Rohn said 'don't wish it were easier, wish you were better' and you can be better by developing yourself. According to Yorkshire building society, the average Briton's savings would last only fifty-two days if they were unable to work again. 36% would last only eleven days but with people who intentionally developed themselves, they don't need all that, because they continually add value to people's lives, they are constantly needed and they could last a lifetime.

'Do not delude yourself into supposing that you can step into great advantage whilst overlooking smaller ones for if you could, the advantage would be temporary and you will quickly fall back to learn the lessons you have neglected'-James Allen

'The first and best victory is to conquer self'-Plato

'The bitterness of poor quality is remembered long after the pleasure of low price has been forgotten'-Thomas Ruskin

'Nothing changed, I changed'-Eric Thomas

If a horse can be dedicated to continually improving itself, we can be better

During the early twentieth century, the public was especially interested in animal intelligence owing to a large part of Charles Darwin's publication. Clever Hans was taken to show an advance level of human sense in an animal. It was a horse owned by Wihelm von Osten, an amateur horse trainer who took his time to continually train Hans. Hans was taught to add, subtract, multiply, divide, work with fractions, tell time, keep track of the calendar, differentiate musical tones, read, and spell and even understands German. Hans' abilities were reported in New York Times, 1904.

To Effectively Develop Yourself, You Have to;

WISELY CHOOSE YOUR FRIENDS

'You can't fly with the eagles if you continue to scratch with the turkeys'  
-Brian Tracy

Talleyrand surpassed all Frenchmen in graciousness, aristocratic charm and wit; indeed, he came from one of the oldest noble families in the country. Napoleon on the other hand was the opposite- a peasant from Corsica, taciturn and ungracious, even violent. Napoleon envied the way Talleyrand behaved and did as best as he could to keep him around himself hoping to soak up the culture he lacked. And Napoleon began to change gradually as his rule continued and his many rough edges was smoothened by association with Talleyrand. We are an average of all the people around us, because intentionally or unintentionally, we gradually soak up their attitude. If they are the right attitude, it develops us rightly, if they are wrong, it develops us wrongly. That's why the successful ones are friends to successful people. Grand Cardon said, we are only as good as the people in our circle. If everyone around us is sick, underperforming, we automatically become inflicted.

Henry Ford most outstanding achievements began from the time he formed acquaintance of Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, John Burough and Luther Burbanks. That's why Napoleon Hill said, no two mind ever come together without thereby creating a third mind. When Gabriellson, who was a graduate of economics and has worked in a number of senior sales positions, including export director met with Larson, who was an engineer and had worked for British automotive industry, their skill complemented each other and they formed Volvo. Wisely choose your friends that will add value to your life, or whose skill would complement yours. Pizza was a rarity and unheard of in Kansas region, Dan and Frank Carney didn't have a clue how pizza was made so they formed friendship and partnership with John Bender, who had worked in a pizza industry in Indiana and Pizza Hut was formed.

'Look carefully at the closest association in your life, for that is the direction you are heading'-Consultant Kevin Eikenberry

'An innocent association with either bad things or good things will influence how people feel about us'-Lott

'It doesn't matter if we did bad ourselves because in the eyes of the neighborhood, we would be known by the company we kept'

'In the long history of mankind (and animal kind too) those who had learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed-Charles Darwin

HAVE MENTORS

'Poor is the apprentice who does not surpass his master'  
-Leonardo da Vinci

Successful people almost always have someone they look up to, who guild them, show them where they have personally failed so that they won't also fail in those areas and hasten their success. Unsuccessful people belief they can do it on their own and therefore experience all the failures they could have avoided if only they had a mentor to guild them. Most people even surpass the success of their mentors. Faraday's mentor was Davy Humphrey, Alexander's mentor was Aristotle, Richard Burton was Sir Anthony Hoplain's mentor, Audrey Hepburn was Elizabeth Taylor mentor, and Joe Wielder was Arnold Schwarzenegger mentor. Theodore Roosevelt was William Taft mentor, Franklin Roosevelt was Lyndon Johnson mentor, Margaret Thatcher was John Mayor mentor, Bing Crosby was Frank Sinatra mentor, Mariah Carey was Christiana Aquirrela mentor, and Woody Guthrie was Bob Dylan mentor. Freddie Laker was Richard Branson mentor, Earl Shoaff was John Rohn mentor, Jim Rohn was Anthony Robbins mentor, Andrew Carnegie was Napoleon Hill mentor, Napoleon Hill was Earl Nightingale mentor, Earl Nightingale was Bob Proctor mentor... and there is an endless list of successful people who had mentors to look up to.

People like Henry Ford, Theodore Roosevelt, John Wanamaker, William Wrigley, James J Hill, Wilbur Howard Taft, Elbert Gray, King Gillette, Alexander Graham Bell, John D Rockefeller, and Thomas Edison, all admitted that they accumulated their vast fortune through Andrew Carnegie's teaching.

'One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil'  
-Friedrich Nietzche

FIND CHALLENGES, FACE CHALLENGES AND CHALLENGE YOURSELF

'People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they can't find them, make them'  
-George Bernard Shaw

Herbert Gray, a businessman, after spending eleven years searching for what he called 'the common denominator of success' by studying thousands of successful people, he finally concluded that the successful people are those who make the habit of doing things that the unsuccessful people don't like to do. From the days of the Greeks and the very first Olympic, it was debated whether a human could run a sub four-minute mile. The medical community, the scientific community, said that it was not possible. They said, if a person runs a mile that fast, his heart would explode. For thousands of years, people held that belief until a medical student named Roger Bannister came along in the 1950s to challenge the status quo and in 1956; he ran a mile in three minutes and 59.4 seconds. Challenges are made to be challenged, that's why they are called challenges. The successful ones sees challenges as opportunity for growth, the unsuccessful ones just shy away when challenges arise, that's why Joshua J Marine said, 'Challenges are what makes life interesting, overcoming them is what makes life meaningful'.

Challenges may come in the form of people mocking our abilities, like Freddie Roach (b. 1960) from birth he was groomed to be a boxing champion. His father was a professional fighter; his mother was a boxing judge. He trained with a coach several hours a day and six days a week but when he was fifteen, he began to give excuses to go to the gym because he felt burnt out and not good enough. One day his mother told him, 'why do you fight anyway? You get hit all the time. You can't fight.' This challenged Freddie and he was determined to prove her wrong, which he did. Charles Darwin's father also told him, 'you care for nothing but shooting dogs and rat catching and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family' this definitely challenged him towards success as he referred to it later in life.

Evariste Galois was a promising student in mathematics in France and revealed exceptional brilliance in Algebra. In 1831, at age twenty, he became embroiled in a quarrel over a woman, which resulted in his being challenged to a duel. The night before the duel, certain he was going to die, Galois sat down and tried to summarize all the ideas on Algebra that has been troubling him for years. The ideas flowed and even new ones came. Years after his notes were read and published leading to a revolution in higher algebra, which were far ahead of his time. It was hard for them to tell where the ideas came from. When we face challenges, are challenged or we intentionally challenge ourselves, we discover hidden potentials within us that we never knew existed and we gradually develop from there. Most times it's because we put limit on what we will do that is why what we can do also seem limited. Martin Luther King Jr., wearied with the persuasion of his fearful friends who were doubtful as to his safety if he should go to the Worms replied 'if they were as many devils in the worms as there are tiles on the housetops, I would go'. His zeal to be challenge made them rest assured and without him going after those challenges, he would probably already be forgotten by now.

Ponder on These

'Comfort zone can be treacherous, if you don't make a move, soon or later, life makes a move on you'-Keith Harrell

'You are not alone in your misery or joy. Be glad that you are part of it all. Take comfort that your experiences are universal. Rise to the challenge and develop the skills necessary to survive and thrive'-Keith Harrell

'Great souls have will, weak souls have wishes'

'...but the truth is, you let life push you into submission. Deep down you were terrified of taking risks. You really wanted to win, but the fear of losing was greater. You just wanted to play it safe'-Robert Kiyosaki

'Life is either a daring adventure or nothing'-Helen Keller

Hulda Crooks, the oldest woman to ascend Mount Fuji started learning how to climb at the age of seventy. She did it for twenty-five years scaling the highest peaks in the world. You develop yourself by exploring, and not been just specialized. (Note: have a area you are super good at, then explore others) find your limits and go beyond them like Arthur C Clarke said that the only way we can know our limits is to go beyond them into the impossible. Robert Kiyosaki also said that the more specialized we become, the more you are trapped and dependent on that specialty. But when you explore, you become generalized and more useful to yourself and everyone else in different ways. When you are vast and have explored so many things, you even become fun to talk to and when people love to talk to you, you are on your way to success. Larry King talks about Richard Nixon in that way, he said 'the bonus about Nixon is his interest in so many things- which makes him any talk show host's dream'

'Diversify or die'  
-Anon

Most times, to know more about things, we don't only sit back and just read about them, if not your knowledge on those things will be limited and constrained to other people's views of them. Instead, go directly and get to experience them, like Lord Chesterfield said that the knowledge of the world is only to be acquired in the world and not in the closet.

'I leaped headlong into the sea and thereby became better acquainted with the soundings, the quicksands and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore and took tea and comfortable advice'  
-John Keats

Ponder on These

'Good things comes to those who wait, but only what's; left over from those who hustle'-Thomas Edison

'A man cannot discover new oceans until he has the courage to lose sight of the shore'-Myles Munroe

'Some men see things as they are and say, 'why?'. I dream of things that never were and say 'why not?'-George Bernard Shaw

"Your self esteem automatically increases when you go beyond the point the average person would normally quit'

'To ignore the unexpected would be to live without opportunity, spontaneity and the rich moments of which life is made'-Stephen Covey

REACH FOR THE SKIES, IT'S CLOSER THAN YOU ACTUALLY THINK

Discipline Yourself

'Rather go to bed super-less than rise in debt'  
-Benjamin Franklin

Self-development is hard, hence discipline is necessary, if not we would definitely quit along the way or not even start at all. most people want to be physically fit, most people even knows what it takes to achieve this, despite this knowledge, most people never become fully well conditioned physically. Why? Because they are not disciplined enough. It will be hard and very uncomfortable, but that is where the growth is. Winners are those who have sacrificed through discipline their consumption of yesterday for the benefit of today.

Dr. Tolman found that if rats were permitted to roam about at will and explore a maze when well fed and with plenty to drink, they did not appear to learn anything. Later, however, if the same rats were placed in the maze while hungry, they showed that they had learned a great deal by quickly and efficiently going for the goal. Sometimes we have to discipline ourselves and intentionally avoid things that would make us too comfortable. Intentionally discomfort yourself to be hungry for success; you learn better that way. But do not over do it because it would create adverse effect of frustration. Other rats, which were forced to learn under the crisis of severe hunger and thirst, did not do so well. George Clason said that 'the hungrier one become, the clearer one's mind works'

DISCIPLINE YOURSELF TO WORK A LITTLE LONGER

B.U Darby, who later became very successful insurance salesman tells the story of his uncle who was caught up by the 'gold fever' in the gold rush days and went west to dig. He stalked a claim and went to work with pick and shovel. After a few weeks of labor, he was rewarded by the discovery of ore. He needed machinery to bring out the ore to surface and he quietly covered the mine and retraced his steps home in Williamsburg, Maryland. Told his relatives and a few neighbors. They got the money together for the machinery and had it shipped. The uncle and Darby went back to work on the mine. The returns proved they had one of the richest mine in Colorado and they continued drilling until suddenly, the vein of gold disappeared. They drilled on desperately trying to pick up the veins again all to no avail. Finally, they quit and sold the machinery to a junk man for a few hundred dollars and took the train back home. The junk man called a mining engineer who advised him and they calculated and discover the gold ore was just three feet from where Darby and his uncle had stopped and the junk man took millions of dollars in ore from the mine.

Ponder on These

'Man is born to live and not to prepare to live'-Boris Pasternack

'The moment that you rest, thinking you have attained the level you desire, a part of your mind enters a phase of decay'-Robert Greene

'The stubborn man who refuses to learn or mend his ways is the foolish man. He grows old in folly and grey hair do not bring honor and reverence'-James Allen

'You don't overcome challenges by making them smaller, you overcome by becoming bigger'-John C Maxwell

'If you want to succeed, you must work harder on yourself than on your job'-Jim Rohn
Chapter Six

SIXTH COMMANDMENT:

'Thou Shall Always be Creatively Active'

'It is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory and of creative action that a man finds his supreme joys'  
-Antoine de Saint-Exupery

On the Forbes list, over time now, the richest men in the world are men who became rich as a product of their creative action. Successful people are successful because they are creative enough to create something that solves the problems of people. Self-employed people make up less than 220 percent of the workers in America but account for two-third of the millionaires. People are usually afraid to show forth their creativity and create something that would solve problems, no matter how little it is. A professor once asked a group of sixty MBA students who were executives of public corporation, 'what is risk?' one student replied, 'being an entrepreneur' and his fellow students agreed with him. Then the professor replied, '...employees are at risk, but an entrepreneur who sells janitorial services has hundreds of customers and hundreds of income is not'. No problem is too small to create a solution for, and as you continually create, you become active creatively. The world is so big and enough people are already creating enough problems to be solved. Solve them. The people who discover these problems and solve them become successful that's why Catherine Ponder said, 'why settle for so little in life when you can have so much by just daring to be different in your thinking'.

Being creatively active is a conscious act, you are only intentionally creative and that is when you begin to see things in what others miss. James Allen said, 'the wild flower which the casual wayfarer thoughtlessly tramples upon is to the spiritual eyes of the poet an angelic messenger from the invisible, where the ordinary mind sees a perfect sequence of cause and effect, and where the materialist sees nothing but endless death, the mystic sees pulsating and eternal life'. Myles Munroe said it more precisely when he said, 'some look, but others see'.

Creative People Solve Problems

'You can have anything you want in life if you just help enough other people get what they want'  
-Zig Ziglar

Adi Dassler was determined to provide every athlete with the best possible sporting equipment and Adidas was formed. Today, a company that began out of the quest to solve sporting problems is the second biggest sport equipment manufacturer. Google was also formed out of the zeal to solve the problems that the leading search engine then, Alta Vista, had. Sergey, an expert in extracting information from vast amount of data, joined forces with Larry who was studying Alta Vista and they set out to download the entire web to study the relevance of web links which Alta Vista didn't appear to take into account.

Robert Kiyosaki in his bestselling book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, says that his rich dad usually told him that poor people are greedier than the rich people are because the rich person is rich because he was providing something that other people wanted. Pierre Omidyar, who founded eBay said, 'I've got a passion for solving problems that I think I can solve in a new way'. Be like Omidyar and be passionate about solving problems and you would achieve great success. Gordon Merchant kept looking for ways to perfect the board that would provide the ultimate ride. Gordon realized that there was serious lack of good quality dedicated to surf wears. He knew something had to be done. After much trials, errors, and taking crash courses in clothing design to learn the required skills, he eventually designed a short durable and functional board for surfing and Billabong was formed.

During World War II, sales in Volvo dropped significantly due to petrol rationing, instantly Volvo thought of a way to solve that problem and began making cars, which ran on low-grade fuels, and sales rose again. Give yourself the responsibility of solving problems and you will see your true abilities show up and success will follow.

As a young man out of the desire to belong to a group, Dwayne Chapman particularly known as 'dog' joined a motorcycle gang, the Devil's Disciple, one day, in the midst of a drug deal gone bad, a gang member shot and mortally wounded a man at the scene. He was caught and ended up serving years of hard time. After his release, he pursued a number of colorful careers and settled on starting a private investigation business. The judge offered Dog a moneymaking opportunity in lieu of payment he would never materialize. He suggested Dog track a rapist who had victimized many women in Denver area. The judge suggested he use distinction he had made in the in the prison to assist him in figuring out what his criminal might be doing and where he might be hiding. Although law enforcement officials had tried unsuccessfully for over a year to find the rapist, Dog delivered him in three days. Seeing that as an opportunity, he began to solve the problems of wiping out criminals and since then, he had made over 3000 arrests and has one of the best records, averaging 360 arrests a year, almost one arrest a day. Solve problems and success will surely come your way.

'The greatest among you shall be the servant of all'  
-Bible

Creative People are Curious

'Because it is always that way isn't enough reason to maintain status quo'  
-Karen McCreadie

Social psychologist, Robert Cialdini believes that we are driven to remain consistent with past decisions and actions even when they are obviously wrong. The curious ones who always want to find out why things are done a certain way or even become curios enough to try new things eventually become successful. Coca-cola, one of the biggest global brands and the most popular branded drinks, is a product of curiosity. A pharmacist named John Pemberton, who lived in Atlanta, Georgia, invented coca cola one afternoon in 1886. He was experimenting with combinations of ingredients in a three legged brass pot in his backyard to try to develop a new drink. He came up with a fragrant caramel colored liquid out of sheer curiosity; he took it to neighboring customers who thought it was something special. Jacob's pharmacy started selling at five cents per glass.

Creative People Make the Most of:

OPPORTUNITY

'To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunity as you do at conclusions'  
-Benjamin Franklin

Successful people understand that opportunity is a doorway to success and hence make the most of them. As soon as Bill Gates found out that Albuquerque Company was developing something called 'personal computer' that needed BASIC software, he called them and promised to deliver it even though he had no such thing at that time. Harland Sanders also spotted an opportunity to serve food after customers who had stopped for petrol asked if they could get food nearby and KFC was formed. Most successes have always been as a result of the way we handle opportunities. One day Freddie Roach went to Futch's gym after years of retiring from boxing and indulging in heavy drinking to watch his friend Vigil Hill Spar with a boxer about to fight for a title but nobody was in Hill's corner helping him, so Freddie brought him water. And gave him advice. He soon became regular at Futch's gym, though he wasn't paid but he saw it as an opportunity. He began to show up on time and left later than anyone else. Having being a boxer himself training under Futch, he knew Futch techniques and soon began to train boxers. Soon he left Futch to work on his own and quickly established a reputation for preparing his boxers better than anyone else within a few years; he rose to become the most successful trainer of his generation. One of his trainees was Manny Pacquaio, one of the greatest boxers of this generation.

'Do what you can, where you are, with what you have'  
-Theodore Roosevelt

Around 2004, Mark Zuckerberg invited five people to his Harvard Dorm room to discuss business opportunity but only two showed up, Dustin Mostovitz and Eduardo Saverin, who as at this time are worth about $10.8 billion and $7.4 billion respectively as a result of that opportunity. This is a wonderful moment to be alive because it is filled with countless opportunities but you have to always take advantage of them. Some opportunities come, we won't even recognize them as opportunities, and then we turn them down at our own loss. Napoleon Hill made reference to this when he said 'that is one of the tricks of opportunity, it has a sly habit of slipping in by the back door and often comes distinguished in the form of misfortune and temporary defeat. Perhaps that is why so many fail to recognize opportunity.

History of a young man named Alexander Graham Bell. Bell had just patented his telephone and was having growing pains because the demand for his innovation was so strong, needing a bigger company, he then went to the giant at that time, western union and asked if they would buy his patent and his tiny company. He wanted $100, 000 for the whole but the president of western union scoffed at him and turned him down saying the price was ridiculous. Feeling defeated, he went back and a multibillion-dollar industry AT&T was born from it. Another perfect example would be Michael Landon, who one day in high school, the gym teacher took the class out into the football field to take a shot at throwing an old rusty javelin. When his turn came, Landon who before this had an extremely low self esteem because he bed wet and his mother would beat him publicly, he hurled the javelin forward and it flew out of the track area, thirty feet farther than anyone else in that moment, he knew he had a future. He begged the coach to let him take the javelin home for the summer and he agreed. During the summer, he threw it continually and by his senior year, he had broken the US record for high school students in Javelin throw, winning an athletic scholarship to the University of Southern California.

Tony and Maureen Wheeler also maximized opportunity they found after they decided to go on an adventure of a lifetime through Europe, around Asia and down to Australia. When they came back, people began to ask questions about the places, 'how much does it cost?' 'What is Bali like?' 'Is Afghanistan dangerous?' etc. they spotted an opportunity in that and began to write down information about this and considered selling it. They published it themselves, which was their first guide, Across Asia on a Cheap, it sold several copies and eventually they formed their publishing firm, Lonely Planet. Take advantage of opportunities and harness them when you spot them.

'When nothing is sure, everything is possible'  
-Margaret Drabble

RESOURCES

'The earnings of an individual may either be s pent on things that are consumed immediately or it can be spent on things more durable, which can therefore be accumulated'  
-Adam Smith

There was a challenge in the aviation field and a lot of people began to try it out, the favorite was Samuel Langley, secretary of the Smithsonian institution, he had enormous grant to pursue his work. Wilbur Wright and Orville Wright had no grant and used the profits of their bicycle shop to try. Their total cost of apparatus was $1000-the least among their competitors but they maximized it and on December 17, 1903, they beat all their competitors who had more resources and money than they did to produce the first manned powered flight in history.

Creatively active people who became successful were creative in the use of their resources also, they make the very most of them, most especially money is important in the ladder up success. That is why Zig Ziglar said that money is not the most important thing in life but it does rank right up there with oxygen.

SAVE

A man was asked about his frugal habits and he said 'my family in Nebraska understands the value of a dollar. Dad used to say seeds are a lot like dollars, you can either eat the seeds or sow them but when you see what seeds turn into... ten foot high corn... you don't want to waste them. Consume them or plant them. I always get a kick out watching things grow.' A young Chinese couple was interviewed about their lives. Both worked in an electric factory in Shanghai yet their home did not have a single item that their manufacturing plant made. They saved half of their income and their dream was to live in a quieter area and buy a car. When you have dreams and you really want to be successful with those dreams, you must learn to be frugal in your spending because if you are not financially independent, you are not yet successful. Webster defines frugal as 'behavior characterized by or reflecting economy in the use of resource'. Whatever your income is, always live below your means because like Ralph Waldo Emerson said, 'the longer you put in without getting out, the greater will be your return when it finally comes.'

Ponder on These

'Wealth can only be accumulated by the earning of industry and the savings of frugality'-John Tyler

'Whenever a person saves from his revenue, he adds to his capital'-Adam Smith

'Nowadays, people can be divided into three classes-the haves, the have-not, the have-not-yet-paid-for-what-they-have'-Earl Wilson

'Money, says the proverb, makes money. When you have got a little, it is often easy to get more. The great difficulty is to get that little'-Adam Smith

'Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million'-John Jacques Rousseau

Creative People are Anormal

'The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, the unreasonable man persist in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man'  
-George Bernard Shaw

The creative active man always seems not normal to the normal man. Marconi's friend took him into custody and examined in a psychotic hospital when he announced that he had discovered a principle through which he could send messages through the air without the aid of wires or other direct physical means of communication. Sometimes, this anormality creates a kind of charm that people cannot but give us their total attention. When Keith Harrell wanted see the manager in charge of office equipments while he still worked at IBM, but was always turned down with excuse by the receptionist despite the fact that he looked totally normal-well dressed, well-mannered, polite, etc. One day, he chose to shift from normal just a little and switched clothes with his short friend, him being very tall and they both looked very funny. As soon as he entered the office, the thrilled receptionist couldn't turn them down and they met the manager who also granted their request.

Creative People Always Strategize

'It is not enough to have a good mind, the main thing is to use it well'  
-Rene Descartes

Strategy have over time been the winning key of a creative person, while the uncreative person is still trying to do the norms, the creative mind quickly strategize and wins the normal man. A beggar one day met P.T Barnum, America's premier nineteenth century showman. Instead of giving him money, he decided to employ him, taking him back to the museum. He gave the man five bricks and told him to make a slow circuit of several blocks, at a certain point; he was to lay down a brick on the sidewalks, always keeping one brick in hand. On the return journey, he was to replace each brick on the street with the one he held. Meanwhile, he was to remain of serious countenance and to answer no questions. Once back at the museum, he was to enter, walk around inside and then leave again through the back door and make the same brick laying circuit again. On the first walk through the street, several hundreds of people watched his mysterious movement and by the fourth circuit, on lookers swarmed around him, debating what he was doing. Every time he entered the museum, people who had to buy tickets to enter to keep watching him followed in him. He drew in thousands of New Yorkers into the museum before the police finally stopped him because the crowds were blocking traffic and with that strategy, Barnum surpassed his competitors because he was actively creative.

Great General Chuko Liang also known as 'sleeping dragon' during China's war of five kingdoms (AD 207-265) while leading the forces of the Shu Kingdom dispatched his vast army to a distant camp while he rested in a small town with a handful of soldiers. Suddenly Seritenels hurried in. With the alarming news that an enemy force over 150,000 troops under Sima VII was approaching, with only a hundred men to defend him, Liang decided to order his troops to take down their flags, throw open the gates and hide. He himself then took a seat at the most visible part of the city's wall, wearing a Taoist robe. He lit some incense, strummed his lute and began to chant pretending not to notice them. Seeing this, the attackers became scared and thought he had something up his sleeves and instantly retreated. Strategies never cease to come to a creatively active mind and this has always been their winning edge. When Sony created Walkman, they discovered it was not a creative product and they strategized to market it and eventually sold millions of it.

As a tool for strategy, creatively active people most times uses;

SPARKING OF RUMOR: They create controversies so that they are always talked about, when they are always talked about, they stay relevant. Like Shanna Alexander, a journalist said, 'trying to squash a rumor is like trying to unring a bell' they know this and use it to their advantage.

THEY CONCENTRATE THEIR FORCES: they know like Benjamin Franklin said that 'a spoonful of honey will catch more flies that a gallon of vinegar' so they effectively use 'honey'.

MAKE A THING OF LITTLE VALUE LOOK SO VALUABLE by making it look forbidden to either the poor or to a certain set of people they create a kind of charm around it that makes people want it more. Like Publis Cornelius Tacitus said 'Forbidden things have a hidden charm', that charm is only psychological because in the long run, they tend to almost have little or no use compared to the stated price.

People inactive with their creativity are rigid in their process of acquiring success but the creative people have their plans on ground but they are flexible about the process of getting to the end result. A publisher of books made a discovery that many people buy title and not the content of the book when he merely changed the name of one book that was not moving and his sales on that book jumped upward more than a million copies. The content of the book was not changed in any way.

Creatively Active People Always Generate and Gather Ideas

'The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas'  
-Linus Pauling

When Walt Disney was asked if he was worried about people copying his ideas, he replied 'don't worry, we will come up with new ideas faster than anyone could possibly steal them'. That's how creatively active people act, they always generate ideas, but also learn to protect your ideas. Maxwell Maltz described searching for a new idea has been similar to searching for a name you have forgotten. You know the name is there or else you wouldn't have searched. It is the inactive ones that scarcely search if not they would have discovered that it's in them. Thomas Edison was complimented for his creative ideas, he disclaimed credits saying, 'ideas are in the air, if I had discovered it, and someone else would have'. They always believe ideas are somewhere attainable but uncreative ones feel that just some people are able to get these ideas. Ideas are a product of thoughts and successes are the products of man's ability to think because its only when we think that we look at what everyone else sees but think of it in a different way. On the other hand, when you are lazy and not in control of your own life, you indirectly let other people do your thinking for you. David Kelch said 'if you are consciously aware of putting faith the self guided integrated thinking, then you are giving into laziness and no longer in control of your life'.

Ponder on These

'When we all think alike, no one thinks very much'-Walter Lippman

'Never invest in an idea you can't illustrate with a crayon'-Warren Buffet

'Every advance in humanity begins with an idea'

'Imaginations rule the world'-Napoleon Bonarparte

'Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only on you have'-Emile Charter

'Once you get all the ideas out of your head and in front of your eyes, you will automatically notice natural relationship and structure'

'Ideas are like that, first you give life, action and guidance to the idea and then they take on a power of their own and sweep aside every opposition'

'All achievements, all earned riches have their beginning in an idea'

Creative People Sometimes Obey Their Intuition

'Often you have to rely on your intuition'  
-Bill Gates

Albert Einstein said that the intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the natural mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and have forgotten the gift because as the Chinese proverb has said that 'he who deliberates fully before taking a step will spend his entire life on one leg' so creative people often go with their intuition.
Chapter Seven

SEVENTH COMMANDMENT:

'Thou Shall Diligently Work Hard and Never Give Up'

'A ploughman on his legs is better than a gentleman on his knees'  
-Benjamin Franklin

Dr Thomas Stanley in his study of affluent Americas, reports that almost everyone of the self made millionaires he interviewed told him that their successes was due more to hard work than any other factor. Plans will get you into things but you have to work your way out. In 1938, while he was in school, Mr. Honda took everything he owned and invested it in his little workshop where he began to develop his concept of piston ring. He wanted to sell his work to Toyota Corporation, so day and night he would work very hard sleeping in the machine shop always believing that he could produce the result. After he completed the piston ring and presented it to Toyota, he was told he didn't meet the Toyota standards, he had to go back to school for two years. His instructors and fellow students laughed at him and his design but he continually worked hard on it and focused on his goal. After two years, he got the contract with Toyota and gradually, through more hard work, Honda came into being. Katherine Hepburn said 'I don't think that work ever really destroyed anyone, I think the lack of work destroys them a whole lot more' which is true, when Dr David Fryer, psychologist from Stirling university in Scotland spent years in studying the effect of unemployment. His studies show that up to 40 percent of unemployed people suffer from psychological distress. So working hard even aids your psychological being aside the fact that it brings success. Most successful people reason like Sharru Nada, in The Richest Man in Babylon, who said 'life is rich with many pleasures for men to enjoy. Each has its place. I am glad that work is not reserved for slaves. Was that the case, I would be deprived of my greatest pleasure. Many things I do enjoy but nothing takes the place of work'. The unsuccessful or the potentially unsuccessful does not consider work as pleasure. Even the bible says that faith without works is dead. You have to work and work really hard.

'There's been some luck mixed in for sure but believe luck doesn't just happen, you have to work at it'  
-Richard Branson

Laziness is More Expensive and Less Rewarding

'... but idleness taxes most of us much more; sloth, by bringing on diseases absolutely shortens life. Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears, while the used key is always bright.  
-Benjamin Franklin

It is actually harder to be lazy than it is to work hard but our mindset have pushed people to belief that hard work is harder probably because of the hard in front. Robert Kiyosaki advised that we should remember that the easy road often becomes hard and the hard road often becomes easy. And laziness is that road that usually looks easy but leads to a hard life. Benjamin Franklin in his book, Way to Wealth, said 'Laziness drives so slowly that soon poverty overtakes it. Laziness decreases our chances of good health and wealth. Why be lazy then? When you are concerned about pleasing results you will not bother about the process. The lazy and unsuccessful looks for pleasing methods and therefore don't get pleasing results. The two roads leads to two different destinations. Building wealth, attaining success, getting to the peak, winning, takes discipline, sacrifice and hard work always. The lazy person always want to feel like working before he gets up to work but the successful think like O.H Mowrer has said 'it is easier to act yourself into a better way of feeling than to feel yourself into a better way of acting'. Don't just sit around and talk of work, motion beats meditation.

'When your mental energy is allowed to follow the line of least resistance and fall into easy channels, it is called weakness.'

Remember: Talent Can Never Replace Hard Work

'Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separated the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work'  
-Stephen King

John C Maxwell would say, 'Talent is given, success is earned'. Talent is not the source of success, it is the consistent hard work on that talent that brings success that's why the French would say 'everyone according to his talent and every talent according to his works' because your talent needs a lot of work to show forth its beauty. Talent is like gold in its ore form; work purifies it and makes it beautiful. Leonardo da Vinci was born out of wedlock; he was mostly to himself so he would wander through the forest, cliffs, waterfalls and variety of life in the forest. It enthralled him. Then he took sheets from his father's office where it was abundant and began to sketch the various sights around him. He discovered that he was talented with drawings at that moment, he had no teacher or paintings to look at, so he had to work extra hard to attain his level of mastery.

'Everyone holds his fortune in his hands, like a sculptor, he will fashion it into a figure. But it's the same with that type of artistic activity as with all others. We are merely born with the capability to do it. the skill to mold the material into what we want must be learned and cultivated'  
-Johann Wolfgang bon Goethe

Consistently Prepare and Practice

'I will prepare and one day my chance will come'  
-Abraham Lincoln

As business expanded in the middle ages, masters of various crafts could no longer depend on family members alone, they needed more hands, so they went in search of workers but needed workers with stability and time to build up skills in them. They developed apprenticeship system in which a young person approximately ages of twelve to seventeen would sign a contract to commit themselves for seven years. At the end, apprentice will have to pass a master test or produce a masterwork to prove their level of skill. Once passed, they were now elevated to the rank of journeyman and could travel to wherever there was work, practicing the craft. Approximately, each apprentice practiced more than 10,000 hours during apprenticeship. To become successful in a field, you have to practice that skill endlessly. There is no shortcut. Except of course you want to be mediocre or a loser. Great people choose to spend hours practicing, like sir Henry Lauder, the famous Scottish actor and comedian, once admitted that he had practiced a certain routine 10,000 times in private before ever giving the performance publicly. Gene Tunney also, years before he actually fought Jack Dempsey in the ring, he secured all the films of old Dempsey fights he watched them until he knew everyone of Dempsey moves and practiced counter moves.

Practice requires your total attention

When Leonardo da Vinci wanted to create a whole new style of painting, one that was more lifelike than emotional, he engaged in obsessive study of details. He spent endless hours experimenting with forms of lights hitting various geometric solids, to test how lights could alter the appearance of objects. He devoured hundreds of pages in his notebooks to explore the various gradations of shadows in every possible combination. He gave the same amount of attention to the folds of gown, the pattern of hair, the various minute changes of expression of a human face.

You turn yourself from zero to hero with practice

'Real pleasure comes from overcoming challenges, feeling confident in your abilities, gaining fluency in skills and experiencing the powers this brings'  
-Robert Greene

Bill Bradley was tall and loved basketball yet he had no skill or talent at it so he started practicing three and half hour after school and on Sundays, eight hours every Saturday and three hours a day during summer. He would put ten-pound weight in his shoes to strengthen his legs, he wore eye glasses framed with pieces of cardboard taped to the bottom so that he would not see the basketball while he practiced drilling. He would set up chairs as his opponent and dribble around them back and forth for hours until he could glide past them quickly changing directions and Bradley slowly transformed himself into one of the biggest stars in basketball.

Prepare for opportunities and they won't pass you

'Opportunity is a haughty goddess and waste no time with the unprepared'  
-George Clason

When she was nine, the middle class Jeanne Poisson was told by a fortuneteller that she would be the king's favorite someday. This seemed absurd since the mistress almost always come from the aristocracy. Jeanne nevertheless prepared herself and began practicing all things the king's favorite had to have- music, acting, dancing, and horseback riding. And with focus she excelled in everyone of them and one day she met the king in the field and these qualities drew him and she eventually became the Madame de Pompadour of King Louis XV of France, who eventually made her a duchess and then the minister of foreign affairs.

'Chance favors only the prepared mind'  
-Louis Pasteur

Practice is hard work that's why unsuccessful people try to skip it and think they can rush to success but keep falling back because they have not effectively built a strong foundation with practice. If you want to build a mansion, you would have to dig deep and put a strong foundation but if you want to build a small mud house, you don't need a deep foundation, but you can't make a shallow foundation thinking you can build a mansion on it without crumbling. People like Ben Feldman, a salesman for the New York life insurance company who was written up in the Guinness book of record as a top salesman of all times understands this, he was famous for spending two hours each night revising and rehearsing his material so that he would be sharp and well prepared the next day. Preparation is never easy but effective performance must be preceded by painstaking preparation

'Make hay while the sun shines'  
-Miguel de Cervantes

Never Follow Cheap Routes

'If it's too good to be true, it probably is'  
-Platitude

We are in a generation where competition is high and a lot of people have become really smart, a lot also to keep up have also become really hardworking, but others want to quickly get to the top without wanting to pay the price of hard work and consistent practice. The smart people know that this kind of people exist and surprisingly are the largest of our population so they feed on that and promise them so much to do so little. At the end of the road, the lazy ones lose the little they have to those smart folks. Adam Smith said 'the subvert people scarce look upon it as folly to pay a small sum for the chance of gaining twenty thousand pounds, though they know that even that small sum is twenty or thirty times worth more than the chance is worth'. George Clason also warned about cheap routes when he said 'therefore be not swayed by the fantastic plans of impractical men who think they see ways to force thy gold to make earnings unusually large. Such plans are creations off dreamers unskilled in the safe and dependable laws of trade. Be conservative in what thou expect it to earn that thou mayest keep and enjoy thy treasure'.

There are no short cuts to true success, if you seek, you won't find. That's why motivational speaker, Zig Ziglar said, 'the elevator to success is out of order but the stairs are always open'. The roads are hard, but they are definitely worth it at the end.

'Truth always looks barren at its commencement. It is only error and delusion which are first inviting and fascinating'  
-James Allen

Be Diligent

'Diligence is the mother of good luck so plough deep while the sluggard sleep and you will have more to keep'  
-Benjamin Franklin

According to studies, the highest paid American entrepreneurs, executives, professionals, salespeople-work an average of fifty-nine hours per week diligently for many years to become successful. Longfellow tried to summarize how great men have attained great heights through diligence in this short poem.

Those heights by great men, won and kept  
were not achieved by sudden flight  
but they, while their companion slep  
were toiling upward in the night

Great men understand the power of diligence and therefore continually work because they know like Goethe said that everything is hard before its Easy and its diligence that makes it easy.

WITH DILLIGENCE, WE CREATE HABIT AND THEN IT CREATES US

'We are what we repeatedly do'  
-Aristotle

Adam Smith said that the difference between a common street porter and a philosopher seems to arise not so much from nature as from habits, custom, and education. Habits make us greater or worse and we create such habits with what we diligently do. Nathaniel Emmons said 'habits are either the best of servants or the worst of masters' because our habits are strong determinants to our future. Napoleon Hill made it a habit to diligently spend twenty-five years of his life in research, analyzing more than 25,000 people leading to the publication of his masterpiece Think and Grow Rich. It's not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives but what we do consistently over a long period of time. Failure, itself cannot cope with persistence.

Ponder on These

'A consistent man believes in destiny. A capricious man in chance'-Benjamin Disreali

'The difficult takes time, the impossible just takes a little longer'-Keith Harrell

'Nothing great will ever be achieved without great men, and men are great only if they are determined to be so'-Charles de Gaulle

'Quality is never a mistake, it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful; execution, it represent the wise choice of many alternatives'-William A Foster

'By the yard, it's hard, but inch by inch, anything is a cinch'

'Out of the strain of doing into the peace of done'- Julia Louis Woodruff

'The foolish wish and grumble, the wise work and wait'-James Allen

Strive to be Effective

'Intelligence, imaginations and knowledge are essential resources but only effectiveness converts them into results'  
-Peter Drucker

When you are effective, your hard work will not be in vain, because effectiveness turns them into result. You don't need too much to be effective, it just involves focusing on one thing and doing it really well, that's why the Italians say 'often he who does too much, does too little' that's the effect of being ineffective, you do too much and get too little results. Unsuccessful people get too busy with unnecessary things and end up confusing activity with achievements. Successful people understand this and make sure they work hard in effective way. Before they put their hands to work, they spend time planning first because they know that every minute they spend in planning saves ten minute in execution.

'The habit of sauntering and of indolent careless application by workmen oblique to change his work and his tools every half hour renders him almost always slothful and lazy and incapable of vigorous application even on the most pressing occasion'  
-Adam Smith

Never Stop Trying

'In every triumph, there are a lot of tries'  
-Author Frank Tyger

Success never come at one trial, you have to keep trying because the more your failures, the more your chances of success. The great Babe Ruth, who holds the record for most home runs in baseball also holds the record for most strike outs, Michael Jordan puts his failure in perspective 'I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career, I've lost about 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over again in my life and that's why I succeed'.

In Anthony Robbins bestseller, Awaken the Giant Within he talks of a simple illustration using a stonecutter, who when he wants to break open a boulder starts out with a big hammer and whacks the boulder as hard as he can. The first time he hits it; there is no scratch or chip. He hits again and again- 100, 200, 300 times without even seeing a scratch but he keeps hitting. People sometimes passed by and laughed at him for persisting when obviously, his actions are having no effect but at some point, maybe the 500th or 700th or even 1004th hit, the stone doesn't just chip, but literarily split in half. But like Ralph Waldo Emerson said, 'a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds' don't be consistent on foolish things and expect to attain success. Zen Master Hankuin also gave his own illustration of persistence, 'it is like chopping down a huge tree of immerse girth. You won't accomplish it with one swing of your axe. If you keep chopping at it, though and do not let up, eventually, whether it wants it or not, it will suddenly topple down... but if the wood cutter stopped at one or two strokes and asks the third son of Mr. Chang 'why doesn't this tree fall?' he would never succeed in felling that tree.'

'I am not discouraged because every wrong attempt is another step forward'  
-Thomas Edison

When winners fail; it inspires them to quickly do more but losers are defeated by failure. Tommy Lasorda once the manager of the Los Angeles dodgers said 'the best day of my life is when I manage a winning game, and the second best day is when I manage a losing game'.

EXAMPLES

There are countless examples of successful people who never gave up. In short, all successful people are only successful because they never gave up. Few examples are;

1)

Thomas Edison lost a laboratory worth millions in a fire, with no insurance, 'what in the world would you do?' someone asked him, 'we will start rebuilding tomorrow morning' Edison said. He usually applied this attitude of never giving up to his work life. When he worked endlessly on a problem, using the method of elimination, if a person asked him whether he was discouraged because so many attempts proved unavailing, he would say, 'no, I am not discouraged because every wrong attempts discarded is another step forward'

'A young man who wants to be a scientist (or anything in life) must be willing to fail 99 times and suffer no ego damage because of it'  
-Charles Kettering

2)

Lance Armstrong; twenty five years old rising star on the international circuit, discovered in 1996 that a particular deadly form of cancer had spread from his testicles to his stomach, lungs and brain. Doctors said that he had 50 percent chance of surviving. His racing career was put on hold while he underwent intensive chemotherapy. He got back on his bicycle and continued to train during his treatment, sometimes riding as much as fifty miles a day. Armstrong cancer then disappeared entirely. Afterwards, he reached new levels of accomplishments. In summer of 1999, he set a new world record in winning one of the sports world's most demanding events, the 2,285 mile tour de France. He continued to break record after record. In 2004, he got his six straight Tour de France victory, a first in the 101-year history of the race.

'All you've got to do is decide to go and the hardest part is over, so go'

3)

Charles Darrow sent his game idea to Parker brothers, but they politely declined the idea, they cited fifty-two reasons why the game would never sell including the fact that nobody was interested in making a game of real estate holdings. Fortunately, for the Parker brothers, Darrow didn't give up. His game Monopoly became the best selling game of all time.

'Every successful person finds that great success is just beyond the point when they are convinced the idea is not going to work'  
-Napoleon Hill

4)

Abraham Lincoln lost his job in 1832, suffered nervous breakdown in 1836, defeated for the speaker of the state legislature in 1838, defeated for nomination of congress in 1843, rejected for the position of vice president of USA in 1856, defeated for senate in 1858 but was elected president of the USA in 1860.

Many goals cannot be accomplished by simple discrete one shot action but requires that people keep striving for the goal over an extended period of time. Such staying on track may get very difficult when certain internal (e.g. being anxious, tired or over burdened) or external stimuli (e.g. temptation, distraction) interfere (Gollwitzer). So like Eric Thomas had said, when you find out what you really want, spend the rest of your natural life going after it.

'Through sweat and blood, never give up'  
-Manny Pacquaio

Ponder on These

'Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor'-Truman Capote

'Action not taken is opportunity lost'

'Success is a little like wrestling a gorilla, you don't quit when you are tired, you quit when the gorilla is tired'-Robert Strauss

Try, Lose, Fail, Fall, Get up, and Continue

'If you want to be successful faster, you must double your rate of failure. Success lies on the far side of failure'  
-Thomas J Watson Sr.

Art Berg had a serious automobile accident days before he was about to marry his fiancée at the age of twenty-one. He became handicapped, lost his business and for many years was unable to get a job. He said 'I decided that this could be the greatest experience of my life' and afterwards, convinced Bell Atlantic to hire him. There he won three national awards for sales excellence in his first three years, he married his fiancée, in 1992, he was named regional young entrepreneur of the year. Authored a book, Some Miracles Take Time, started Invictus communication inc. he was inducted into the speaker's hall of fame. In July 10, 199, he set a world record to become the first quadriplegic at his level of ability to race an ultra marathon of 325. He did all this before he was thirty-nine. Countless of other successful people have taken steps of failing, getting up again and continuing because all successes have this mindset.

EXAMPLES

1)

In his first year of business, Pemberton sold just nine glasses of Coca cola, which made him about $50. It had cost him $70 to create and advertise the drink. So he made a loss but it didn't stop him, he got up and continued.

2)

In 1939, fire destroyed Harland's original building, he rebuilt. World War II posed bigger challenges and he had to close down, after the war, he reopened, then transport development provided an interstate highway, giving travelers alternative north south route by passing his restaurant and sales dropped drastically and he had to sell it. in his 60s , still armed with the belief in his fried chicken product , he began to take it to restaurant which became a huge turn around for KFC.

'If you want to know how long you will get to the top, consult a calendar, if you want to know how long it will take to fall to the bottom, consult a stopwatch'  
-John C Maxwell

3)

Masaru and Akio formed a partnership, made a rice cooker but it failed commercially, as the rice was either over cooked or under cooked. Next, they came up with the first tape player and recorder in Japan, which they called G-type. It was huge and bulky and also failed commercially, but that didn't stop them and that was how the giant Sony began.

'Failure is an opportunity to more intelligently begin again'  
-Henry Ford

4)

Maxcy Filler took the California bar exam for the first time at the age of 36 and failed. He tried again and again and each time failed. He took it in San Diego, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Francisco, and anywhere else it was offered and failed. After 25 years, $50, 000 in exam fees and review courses, 144 days of his life spent in testing rooms, Maxcy Filler took the test for the 48th time and passed at the age of 61.

'If you are going through hell, keep going. A lot of people stop and never got out. Keep moving forward, tomorrow holds a brighter future'  
-Winston Churchill

5)

Cher Ami saved more than 200 men (lost battle of the 77th division in the battle of the Argonne, October 1918) and she was just a pigeon but an example we should learn from, a tactics most winners use. She was dispatched with a note on her leg, and as she tried to fly home, the Germans saw her rising out of the bush and opened fire. For several moments, she flew with bullets zipping through the air all around her. Cher Ami eventually got shot but managed to take flight again and delivered the note which saved the lives of 194 survivors. She delivered the notes despite having been shot through the breast, blinded in one eye, covered in blood and with a leg hanging only by a tendon. She became a hero.

'Before success comes to most people, they are sure to meet with temporary failures'

No one has ever won on first trial; they must have failed over and over again before they finally come to success. Starbucks incurred losses for three straight years when it began –more than $1 million in 1989 alone- but Howard Schultz never gave up. The first few years of Fedex were also full of financial disaster, losses accumulated in millions of dollars but Fred Smith stayed persistent. Many great men have gone into bankruptcy and came out of it even stronger people like J.C Penny (at age 65), Henry Ford (twice), Walt Disney, Donald Trump, Mark Twain, Willie Nelson, Burt Reynolds, Robert Kiyosaki and a whole lot more.

'If you are not failing enough, you are not trying hard enough'  
-Richard Holden

Take Chances. Risk it

'I have learned from years of experience with men that when a man really desires a thing so deeply that he is willing to stake his entire future on a single turn of wheel in order to get it, he is sure to win'  
-Napoleon Hill

Richard Branson once said 'don't be afraid to take calculated risks, sometimes they turn out to be less dangerous than the sure thing'. Winners understand this and hence use it, but not foolishly, they take calculated risk. John Lowenstein, a talented major league baseball player told a reporter why he's not afraid to take chances and even make errors, he said 'look, there are a billion people living in China and tomorrow morning not one of them will know I missed that bunt'. When you become successful finally, you won't be known by your errors or failures but by your success. Nobody talks about the fact that Thomas Edison created a very ugly talking doll (his failures) he is celebrated for his successes. Peter Drucker said 'whenever you see a great business, someone once took a big chance'. This might be your only chance, don't wait for an ideal moment because it will never come.

'You miss 100 percent of the shots you don't take'  
-Wayne Gretzky

Ponder on These

'To be ever wallowing in the bogs of doubt, to be drawn continually into the quicksands of fear or blown carelessly about by the winds of anxiety, is to be a slave'-James Allen

'It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end'-Leonardo da Vinci

'Risk more than others think is safe, care more than others think is wise, dream more than others think is practical, expect more than others think is possible'-Winston Churchill

'Analysis by the Washington post concluded that 'Trump is a mix of braggadocio, business failures and real success'

'There is a time in every man's education where he arrives at the correction that envy is ignorance, that imitation is suicide, that he must take himself for better or worse, as his portions. That although the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried'-Dale Carnegie
Chapter Eight

EIGHTH COMMANDMENT:

'Thou Shall Never Stop Learning'

'A winner knows how much he still has to learn even when he is considered an expert by others. A loser wants to be considered an expert by others before he has learned enough to know how little he knows'  
-Sydney J Harris

The word educate was derived from the Latin word 'educo' which means to draw out, to educe, to develop from within. Learning continually have always been a skill winners arm themselves with because they know that the moment they begin to let ignorance step in, they begin to fail. Failure on its own is another learning process and winners understand this. They carefully pick the lessons from the failure and use them as stepping stones towards their success because like Robert Kiyosaki said that 'most of the time, life does not talk to us. It just sort of pushes you around. Each push is it saying 'wake up; there's something I want you to learn. If you learn life's lessons, you will do well, if not, life will just continue to push you around. Life is constantly providing valuable lessons. It's up to us to absorb those lessons.' Open up your mind to learn from people both in books and in person, and anywhere else you could learn from because like Charlie Jones said 'you are the same today as you will be in five years except for two things. The people you meet and the books you read' that's where you will continually draw out life's lessons. Reading builds your mind and wise men read a lot. They consistently want to amass knowledge because like Socrates said 'the wise man is he who knows how little he knows' and the wise man also understands that knowledge is power and like Adam Smith will put it 'the qualification of the mind alone give very great authority' that's why they constantly invest in their minds.

Alexander Hamilton, a founding father of the United States and its first secretary to treasury said that 'people give me credit for genius but all the genius lies in this, when I have a subject at hand, I study it profoundly'. The only real asset we have is our mind, so we should continually build it. In The Millionaire Next Door, the author asked several millionaires if school/ college learning is/was of little use to them in the real world of making a living. Only 14% agreed, 6 percent had no opinion and the balance 80 percent disagreed. That is why you see that millionaires themselves invest greatly in the education of their children.

'Man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions'  
-Oliver Wendell Holmes

Be Open to Learning

'If you go through life convinced that your way is the best, all the new ideas in the world will pass you'  
-Akio

Late in his career, Mozart encountered for the first time the music of Johann Sebastian Bach-a kind very different from his. Mozart was open minded and decided to study it for almost a year, absorbing it into his vocabulary and this gave his music a new and surprising quality. People who are not open to learning are like oysters that have thick shell, which protects them from everything. They are never hurt; they are isolated and secure but are never creative. They cannot go after what they want, they wait for it to come to them and often time it doesn't. a common proverb says that a person who can read but chooses not to do so is no better off than the person who can't. Be opened to learning, as soon as you are ready, your mind will draw towards you lessons and teachers that will teach you. If you don't learn, you can't go far in life. Keith Harrell said 'only the limits of our mindset can determine the boundaries of our future'. Don't depend on old knowledge that have always saved you to keep saving you. Karl Wallenda, the still-skilled patriarch of the famous 'flying Wallendas family' opted to trying one more stunt. He would walk a tight rope between two skyscrapers, normally, an easy feet for a professional tight ropewalker. The challenge was made difficult by the breezes that were sweeping through the gap between the two buildings; suddenly a great gust blew Wallenda off balance. Observers reported that as he stumbled, Wallenda could have easily reached out and grabbed the tightrope to stop the fall, instead he held tight to his balancing pole (his old knowledge, the one that have kept him all this while from falling) all the way to his death.

Keith Harrell was also not at first opened to learning, he was focused on basketball and after his name was not called for the NBA draft, he felt disconnected from life and didn't know what to do anymore until he opened himself to learning new things and skills. Statistics shows that less than ten percent of people who buys a book read past first chapter. They believe they have totally absorbed all the lessons or already know what the author has to say.

'Do you see a man who is wise in his eyes? There's more hope for a fool than him"  
-Proverbs 26:12

Be Curious. Question Everything

'He who asks questions, cannot avoid the answers'  
-Cameroon Proverb

At a very young age, Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) became used to doing things for himself became use to doing things for himself because his family was poor. He had to earn money to help his parents and sold newspapers on trains during these travels, he developed curiosity about everything he saw and wanted to know how they work. With no teacher or school in his life, he turned to books, particularly anything he could find on science and gradually, he began to conduct his own experiments in the basement of his family home. In every city he went, he frequented himself with their public library and one day, he found 'Experiment Research in Electricity' a book by Faraday, he knew from that moment that he has found his purpose. Successful people are curious, they always question life and as a result, they get better. Albert Einstein said 'the important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structures of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend only a little of these mysteries every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.'

'There is a saying that you can broaden your horizon through travel but if you are curious enough to listen to other people you can broaden your horizon without leaving your backyard'  
-Larry King

Know Little of Everything then Selectively Know One Intensively

'Everyone is ignorant, only on different subjects'  
-Will Rogers

Never try to know everything about everything, choose to be partially ignorant about some and selectively choose, especially your area of calling, to learn intensely because intensity always beats extensity. The world is filled with information, too much to study in one lifetime. Brian Tracy, when he wanted to go into business said he invested 4,000 hours of his time studying business subjects and business principles. Over the years, he read hundreds of additional books and articles in search of secrets to success in business and when he moved into real estate development, he borrowed all the books the library had on real estate development and studied them. This is a typical of what most winners do because they understand that it is better to find a gold mine and dig it deep than going from one copper mine to another.

By 12, Mike Lazardis has read every single science book in the local public library in Windsor, Canada in 1984, while studying electrical engineering, he opened his electrical company RIM (Research in Motion) and eventually made blackberry. What if he had dissipated his learning, he probably wouldn't have known enough to create a new mobile phone that sold to millions all over the world.

'Become who you are by learning who you are'  
-Great Poet Pindar

Don't clutter your mind with unnecessary information. A young physicist asked Albert Einstein for his phone number. Einstein picked up his university phone directory, located his phone number, transferred it to a slip of paper and then handed it to the scientist. Bemused, the young man blurted out, 'Mr. Einstein, you don't know your own phone number?' to which the great thinker answered 'why should I clutter my mind with something can easily look up?'

Learn Fast

'In today's fast changing world, it's not so much what you know anymore that counts because often what you know is old. It is how fast you learn. That skill is priceless.'  
-Robert Kiyosaki

The human brain is capable of processing 30 billion bits of information per second so we were programmed to be fast learners because our maker knew that we would come to a time like this where we will have to learn fast to be relevant. Information is the wealth of the 21st century but information flies around with speed and how fast you grab these information is how fast you move. That's why you no longer need to sit around waiting to be taught all you will know. Experience has shown that the best-educated people are the self-educated people.

'Over the head of every personal joy hangs the Damocletian sword of pain, ready at any moment to fall and crust the soul of him who is unprotected by knowledge'  
-James Allen

Be Humble in Learning

'The greatest lesson to learn is to know that even fools are sometimes right'  
-Winston Churchill

Robert Kiyosaki said 'today, I often say 'how would peter Lynch do this or Donald Trump or Warren Buffet or George Soros?' the only way I can access their vast mental power is to be humble enough to read or listen to what they have to say. Arrogant or critical people are always the ones with low self-esteem who are afraid of taking risk.' Every teacher loves to teach a humble student who is willing to learn. In The Richest Man in Babylon, George Clason talks about a slave who was becoming fat and desperate when a good natured man walked up to the wall and asked if there was a baker among them, the desperate man walked up to him saying 'why should a good baker like thyself seek another baker with inferior ways? Would it not be easier to teach a willing man like myself your skilled way? Look at me, I am young, strong and like to work. Give me a chance and I will do my best to earn gold and silver for thy purse'. He was impressed by the man's humility and willingness to learn and bargained with the dealer. Larry King said that his first rule in conversation is that he never learns a thing while he's talking so anything he is going to learn, he's going to learn by being humble enough to listen'.

Ponder on These

'The most important skill to learn is learning how to learn'-Author John Waissbitt

'Think of yourself as an explorer, you cannot find anything new until you leave the shore'-Robert Greene

'What intensifies fear is ignorance'-Robert Kiyosaki

'This learning takes energy, passion and a burning desire'

'Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience but to their capacity for experience'-George Bernard Shaw

'Tell me and I will forget, show me and I may remember, involve me and I will understand'-Chinese Proverb

'Seek and you shall find, for all who seek findeth'-Bible

'Seek first to understand and then be understood'-Stephen Covey

'Men are yet learners in the school of life and most men die learners'-James Allen

'It is only by ignorance and folly that a man is slavish, by knowledge and wisdom, his kingdom is restored'- James Allen

'Exposure and experience probably together account more for one's success in life than education does but without education, the experience and exposure would not only be limited but also of limited utility'- Nasir El Rufai

'The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn, relearn'-Alvin Toffler
Chapter Nine

NINTH COMMANDMENT:

'Thou Shall Always be Time Conscious'

'If time be of all things most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality'  
-Benjamin Franklin

As humans, time is very precious to us because it's limited for us, so the less we waste it, the better our lives. That's why you must discipline yourself to do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not because time is life, that's why Benjamin Franklin said, 'but dost thou love life, then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of'. Ingvar Kramprad suggest a way to effectively use our time when he said, 'you can do so much in 10 minutes; 10 minutes once gone are gone for good. Divide your life into ten minutes unit and sacrifice as few of them as possible on meaningless activity.' Marc Mancini made a wonderful illustration of time in his book time management where he said, 'imagine a bank that credits your account each morning with $86,400 but since it doesn't carry over a balance from one day to the next, any amount you fail to spend today will be deleted from your account. What would you do? You'd probably draw out every penny, every single day before closing time. And if you are smart, you'd invest some of it for your tomorrow. Each of us has a bank very much like this imaginary one. It's called time. Every morning, it credits you with 86,400 seconds. Every night, it writes off as lost whatever second you have failed to use to your advantage, it carries no balance, it permits no over draft, if you fail to make full use of the day's deposit, you lose what you don't use.'

'Space we can recover, time, never'  
-Napoleon Bonaparte

To effectively use our time, we have to start somewhere. Most times, the major waste of time occurs at decision stage, where we decide whether we should begin or not, how we should do what we have to do. The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu reminds us that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a step, when you start, the hardest part is over.

'We have enough time, if we but use it aright'  
-Johann Wolfgang

How to Manage Time Effectively

QUIT EXCUSES

'You can make excuses or you can make things happen but you won't be able to do both. Excuses are like the stars in heaven, they are limitless.'  
-Daniel Herzner

Do you know that what is in your power to do also is in your power not to do? Then why choose not to do these things and choose excuses. Several philosophers have studied and discovered that excuses is a major cause of failure that's why authors like john C Maxwell would say, 'it's easier to move from failure to success than to move from excuses to success' and Brian Tracy also said, 'losers make excuses, winners make progress'.

'There are a thousand excuses for failure but never a good reason'  
-Mark Twain

SHUN PROCASTINATION

'The wise does at once what the fool does finally'  
-Baltasar Gracian

Only about two percent of the population has a sense of urgency and they eventually outpace everyone else. Procrastination is a killer of time and 'time is money' as Benjamin Franklin stated over 200 years ago, and which is still valid until date. So if you kill your time, you kill your chances of success. Procrastinators are lazy people and that's why they barely get anywhere in life. Jimmy Lyons said that tomorrow is the only day in the year that appeals to a lazy man, and the lazy man's tomorrow never arrives so he ends up doing nothing with his life.

He slept beneath the moon  
he basked beneath the sun  
he lived a life of going to do  
and died with nothing done.-James Albery

QUIT UNNECCESARY THINGS

'Successful people are those who are able to delay gratifications and make sacrifices in the short term so they can enjoy far greater rewards in the long term.'  
-Brian Tracy

According to Peninsula, an employment law firm, employees wastes 233 million hours on social networking sites at an estimated cost to UK business of £130 million a day and these same people who waste time, tend to waste more time in complaining of how short time is, leading to a decline in wealth. Social media have taken over our lives, though some people actually use it to promote their business or brand but the majority does a whole lot of unnecessary things there.

'Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its shortness'  
-Jean de

DO THE BIG THINGS FIRST, BUT BREAK THEM INTO SMALLER BITS

'The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into smaller manageable tasks and then starting on the first one'  
-Mark Twain

The law of forced efficiency states that 'there is never enough time to do everything but there is always time to do the most important things'. To get things done, do the most important, the big things first and there would be space for the smaller things. One day, a time management expert spoke to a group of business students. He set a wide mouthed gallon mason jar on the table in front of him. Then he produced about a dozen fist-sized rocks and placed them carefully, one at a time, inside the jar. When the jar was filled to the top and no more rocks would fit inside, he asked, 'is the jar full?' everyone one in the class answered 'yes'. Then he reached under the table and pulled out a bucket of gravel then dumped some gravel in and shook the jar, causing the pieces to work down into the spaces among the big rocks. He asked once more, 'is the jar full?' by this time, the class answered 'probably not'. 'Good' he said. He reached under the table and brought out a bucket of sand. He started adding sand to the jar and it slid into spaces remaining among the rocks and gravel. Once more, he asked the same question and the class all shouted 'No'. 'Good' he shouted grabbing a pitcher of water and pouring it into the jar until it was full to the brim. Then he looked up to the class and asked, 'what's the point of what I just did?' one student raised her hand and replied, 'the point is, no matter how full your schedule seems to be, if you try really hard, you can always fit some more things.' 'No' the speaker replied, ' the truth this illustration teaches us is, IF YOU DON'T PUT THE BIG ROCKS IN FIRST, YOU WILL NEVER GET THEM ALL IN'.

ALWAYS REMEMBER TO REST

'The art of resting the mind and the power of dismissing from it all care and worry is probably one of the secrets of our great men'  
-Captain A

Resting after a good work is not waste of time, instead it aids you because you become more productive after a good rest. An excerpt from the meditations of Marcus Aurelius, translated by George Long, mount Vernon, NY, Peter Pauper press, read ' for nowhere, either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul. Particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them, he is immediately in perfect tranquility and I affirm that nothing else is better than the good ordering of the mind. Constantly then give thyself to retreat and renew thyself.'
Chapter Ten

TENTH COMMANDMENT:

'Thou Shall Die Fulfilled When You Die Empty and Have Impacted'

'Just as a well filled day brings a blessed sleep, so a well employed life brings a blessed death.'  
-Leonardo da Vinci

Will you want to leave this earth without a trace that you ever lived? What will be different because you came into this world? Great men understands this commandment and hence try to drop a trace by constantly trying to impact lives around them and using every of their inner potential to drop a mark on earth. Myles Munroe said, '... though it may surprise you, the richest deposits of our planet lies just a few blocks from your house. They rest in the local cemetery or graveyard, buried beneath the soil, with the walls of those sacred ground are dreams that never came to pass, songs that were never sung. Books that were never written, paintings that never filled a canvas, ideas that were never designed, plans that never went beyond the drawing board of the mind and purpose that were never fulfilled. Our graveyards are filled with potentials that's remained potentials'. So many people die unfulfilled because they refused to harness their full inner self, using the previous nine laws, forgetting that, as Louis Balfour Stevenson said, that everybody soon or late, sits to a banquet of consequences.

Never Forget to Plant in Others

'You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you'  
-John Wooden

As the saying goes, 'a candle loses nothing by lighting other candles'. When you have attained success or even in the process of attaining success, never forget to teach. Plant in the young ones, that's a great way to leave your mark, in the heart of men, there you will attain true happiness. Burleigh wrote a wonderful poem, which read;

I followed happiness to make her mine,  
Past towering oak and swinging ivy vine,  
she fled, I chased, over slanting hill and dale,  
Over fields and meadows, in the purpling vale;  
pressing rapidly over dashing streams  
I scaled the dizzy cliffs where the eagles scream  
I travelled swiftly every land  
but always happiness eluded me  
exhausted, fainting, I pursued no more  
But sank to rest upon a barren shore  
one came and asked for food and one for alms  
I placed bread and gold in bony palms  
one came for sympathy and one for rest  
I shared with every needy one my best  
when sweet happiness, with form divine  
stood by me, whispering softly, 'I am thine.'

Harvey Mackay, one of the world's most notable networker and motivational speaker, teaches that the world goes around on favors. When you plant in someone today, the person will plant in another or in you something that you lack and the world will be a better place from just one mark you left. Someone once said 'I touch the future, I teach'.

'He who has done his best for his own time has lived for all times'  
-Johann von Schiller

Shun all forms of evil, deceitfulness, dishonesty, insincerity

'Evil is inherently weak, ineffectual and cowardly. Good is essentially strong, effective and courageous.

In trying to deceive others, a man most of all deceives himself

It is sincerity, which places a crown upon your lives. Without it, our best actions will be valueless-Confucius

Money should never change your values, making money is only a report card, it shows how well you are doing.

A final illustration of how doing good can be a mark you plant in others who will eventually try to plant back is the story of a university professor several years ago, who tried a little experiment. He sent Christmas cards to a sample of perfect strangers although he expected some reactions but the response was amazing – holiday cards addressed to him came pouring back from people who had never met him or heard of him. The great majority of those who returned the card never inquired into the identity of the unknown professor (Kunz and Woolcat, 1976).
BIBLIOGRAPHY

13 Secrets of World-Class Goal Achievers (Special Report from the Champions Clubs)- Vic Johnson

A Plum in the Syrup: 17 Observations, suggestions and truth you can adopt to live a more fulfilled life- Daniel Herzner

Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations: A Modern-day Interpretation of an Economic Classic- Karen McCreadie

Attitude is Everything: 10 Life-changing Steps to Turning Attitude into Action- Keith Harrell

Awaken the Giant Within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical, and Financial Destiny- Anthony Robbins

Becoming Unstoppable\- Paul Myers

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity- David Allen

How They Started Global Brands\- David Lester

How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationship- Leil Lowndes

How to Talk to Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere\- Bill Gilbert and Larry King

Influence: Science and Practice- Robert B. Cialdini

Like a Virgin: what they won't teach you in business school- Richard Branson

Mastery\- Robert Greene

No Excuse: The Power of self discipline (21 ways to achieve lasting happiness and success)- Brian Tracy

Psycho-Cybernetic\- Maxwell Maltz

Rich Dad, Poor Dad\- Robert T. Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter

Speak More Effectively: Dale Carnegie Training, Part one: Public Speaking A Quick and Easy Way- Dale Carnegie

Talent is never Enough\- John C. Maxwell

The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success\- Brian Tracy

The 48 Laws of Power\- Robert Greene

The Life Triumphant: Mastering the Heart and Mind- James Allen

The Millionaire Next Door: The surprising secrets of America's Wealthy- Thomas J. Stanley, Ph. D & William D. Danko, Ph. D

The Path to Prosperity\- James Allen

The Power of Planning: Effective Self Regulation of Goal Striving- Peter M Gollwitzer et al

The Richest Man in Babylon\- George S. Clason

The Way to Wealth\- Benjamin Franklin

Think and Grow Rich-Napoleon Hill

Time Management\- Marc Mancini

Understanding Your Potential: Discovering the Hidden You- Dr Myles Munroe
