Learning success from the masters (First of three parts)

Again, I owe today’s and the next two columns to a reader turned personal friend for surprising me an audio book entitled 50 Success Classics – Winning Wisdom for Work and Life from 50 Landmark Books by Tom Butler-Bowdon. Indulge my being a little bit melodramatic but I almost refused to accept this gift feeling underserved of such generosity more so the trouble of personally handing the gift like a present. And to you my dear friend, Mr. Revelation, (name withheld) I sincerely appreciate the unrelenting generosity and enthusiasm to share your resources in the same zeal to make this little nook a little bit interesting and informative.

The audio book consists of nine CDs with more or less 8 to 10 tracks per CD. Each track can be best described as select compilations or should I say pruned versions of the works of famous success bestsellers like Stephen Covey, Robert Kiyosaki, Nelson Mandela, Michael Dell, Andrew Carnegie and many others capturing the essential and compelling insights about their secrets to becoming a winner. I still have to complete the entire tracks though, but in a nutshell, this audio collection is all about authentic or meaningful achievement which is also a sequel to Bowdon’s 50 Self-Help Classics. A printed version (of 50 Success Classics) is available in popular bookstores.

Bowdon’s introduction alone was for the most part very stirring when he said “We desire success almost as much as we need to breathe. From the moment we are born we want to do more, get more, be more. While we may have a mental picture of success as striving hard toward perfection, in truth it is more natural. Success can be described as the courage to let out the potent dreams and potentialities already in us, simply to give them air. Most people don’t do this because it seems dangerous, it is not routine. Yet those who have gone this way do see it simply as the normal path of life. It feels more like home, a place that should be everyone’s experience.”

For want of space, I’d like to pick up a few of my personal favorites so far. People who are optimistic are likely to succeed “not simply because they believe that everything will turn out right, but because the expectation of success makes them work harder.” Optimism, therefore, fuels the person not only to act but is consistently self-driven to overcome any challenge that comes along in order to reach his or her goals. “This is a secret discovered by all who succeed against great odds. Nelson Mandela, Ernest Shackleton, Eleanor Roosevelt—all admitted that what got them through tough times was an ability to focus on the positive. They understood what Claude Bristol called ‘the magic of believing.’” says Bowdon. There is power in optimism.

An erstwhile factory worker, railway clerk and telegraphist who earned only 35 dollars a day, Andrew Carnegie rose from the ranks for his excellent performance at the Pennsylvania Railroad. Despite his meager earnings, he invested a small amount of his salary in oil shares in which part of the handsome dividends went to building up an iron and steel manufacturing business that supplied the US railway expansion which brought him to become the richest man in the world in 1919. Carnegie’s success centered on investing in oneself -- knowing your strengths and acquiring the appropriate knowledge and skill to support your envisioned enterprise. For Carnegie “I believe the true road to preeminent success in any line is to make yourself master in that line. I have no faith in the policy of scattering one’s resources, and in my experience I have rarely if ever met a man who achieved prominence in money-making… who was interested in many concerns.”

“Winning is overcoming obstacles to reach a goal, but the value in winning is only as great as the value of the goal reached.” states the seventies tennis sensation and author of the bestselling book the Inner Game of Tennis, Timothy Gallwey. Gallwey, however, begs to differ as to his definition of success in that winning a game is just only one dimension of success. He believes that it is possible to go through life being so focused on external achievement that you forget to appreciate the wonders of nature, neglect to love those closest to you, and never stop to reflect on your broader life purpose. You need to make a distinction between a compulsion to succeed for the sake of winning, and a desire for success that will enrich your life and those of others.

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