Real Secret of Success

What is the most honest and realistic definition of success? Don’t go to the library for the answer. Yes, it may be hidden there but impossible to find amid the volumes of good, great, crappy advice wedged between the paragraphs of wisdom. Each portends or pretends to have the secret formula, the ‘just right’ ingredients to find Valhalla while still here on earth. But you have to look among the granules to find the real golden nuggets hidden there.

Back in the early 80’s, when my business, Sharden Productions, was doing very well, I was constantly being hustled by the ‘Get Rich Quick’ folks with their audio tape series. Rock and rollers began packaging their songs in tape collections. Soon the shape shifters of success were quick to follow. It was hours and hours of sage advice for the true believers. Most two-hundred-dollar packages promised hours of enlightenment and the true path to success.

As a businessman producing video tape series myself, I lived on the fringes of that world as part of my day-to-day hustling. Not surprisingly, those purveyors of feel-good cheerleading either saw me as a potential client or a distributor. Either way, I was packaged as someone they could hustle. The length and breadth of their material was staggering. It was a period of the truly enlightened marketing mavens like Amway, Shaklee, Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy and other multi-level marketing gurus reshaping, resizing, and remodeling the truth about success. There was always enough reality to what they were preaching in their gospel of success to attracted large numbers of followers.

Now with the passage of time, one can find a discernable pattern among the relics and ruins of that period. Truisms were lost or overshadowed among the glitter and gloss and breath-taking happiness promised to all true believers. Yet, there are true signs of success and they have nothing to do with financial accumulation, status symbols, material possessions and ‘I have arrived’ monikers to hang one’s street address on.

I used to think that health was a given and that only in old age would one have to worry about getting ‘old.’ Fact is, I know a lot of folks younger than me who are a hell of a lot older. Age and health aren’t mutually exclusive.

Social capitol is another asset seldom talked about but priceless. When the need arises, we all need someone to talk to or a shoulder to cry on. Fulfillment of that desire deep within one’s heart is complete, sans anyone having to know about it. Being there for someone else is priceless…period.

At its core, just being able to do what you want to do, when you’d like to do it, is its own greatest reward. If I wrote just for that royalty check or my name on the marquee, I’d be a very empty person. I write because I have to write. A friend once told me she taught to feed her stomach but she acted to feed her soul. Got it! I do understand.

If I were foolish enough to give advice to some youngster, I’d tell them there are some very simple, easy to understand truisms about how to be successful.

1.     Work hard (you have to do more than just your typical 9-5 job alone, no matter the occupation,) Doing just enough to get by doesn’t cut it.

2.     Be thrifty-smart and not stupid-cheap.

3.     Have a budget.

4.     Stick to your budget.

5.     Save some money early on and invest it.

6.     Be realistic but have high expectations of yourself. Ignore anyone who says otherwise.

7.     Never give up, no matter what. The alternative is not an option.