The Only Secret to Success

[Ankesh]

“This guy has gone to the zoo and interviewed all the animals.

• The tiger says that the secret to success is to live alone, be well disguised, have sharp claws and know how to stalk.
  
• The snail says that the secret is to live inside a solid shell, stay small, hide under dead trees and move slowly around at night.
  
• The parrot says that success lies in eating fruit, being alert, packing light, moving fast by air when necessary, and always sticking by your friends.

All the animals are giving contradictory advice!”

- Michael F. Booth

Some people love Harvey Brody. Some people love Seth Godin. Some people love Jeff Bezos. Some people love Steve Jobs.

Who your personal hero is tells a lot about you.

To succeed, you have to find the right animal - the personal hero whose thinking pattern is the most similar to you.

If you want fame, you probably don't want to follow Harvey Brody. You probably want to emulate someone like Richard Branson. If you however want longevity without overheads, Harvey Brody seems like an excellent person.

Success begins with you. Your personality. Don't make the mistake of being dazzled by a tiger when you are more like a giraffe.

Because there are 101 secrets to success out there. But only 1 secret right for you.

As Sun Tzu says: know yourself first.

[GordonJ]

right on Ankesh.

The only problem is...and I've seen this time after time, person after person...most skip over this SQUARE ONE principle and don't really know who they are or what they want.

Know yourself first.

So few really do, therefore, they are handicapped right out of the gate.

And er to paraphrase Robert Burns the poet;

I what gift our gawdie give us, to see ourselves as others see us.

Knowing who you are, what you want and WHY the real YOU wants it is the foundation of almost all success achieved through planning and execution.

Gordon Jay Alexander

Originally Posted by Ankesh

Some people love Harvey Brody. Some people love Seth Godin. Some people love Jeff Bezos. Some people love Steve Jobs.

Who your personal hero is tells a lot about you.

To succeed, you have to find the right animal - the personal hero whose thinking pattern is the most similar to you.

If you want fame, you probably don't want to follow Harvey Brody. You probably want to emulate someone like Richard Branson. If you however want longevity without overheads, Harvey Brody seems like an excellent person.

Success begins with you. Your personality. Don't make the mistake of being dazzled by a tiger when you are more like a giraffe.

Because there are 101 secrets to success out there. But only 1 secret right for you.

As Sun Tzu says: know yourself first.

Originally Posted by GordonJ

right on Ankesh.

The only problem is...and I've seen this time after time, person after person...most skip over this SQUARE ONE principle and don't really know who they are or what they want.

Know yourself first.

So few really do, therefore, they are handicapped right out of the gate.

And er to paraphrase Robert Burns the poet;

I what gift our gawdie give us, to see ourselves as others see us.

Knowing who you are, what you want and WHY the real YOU wants it is the foundation of almost all success achieved through planning and execution.

Gordon Jay Alexander

Gordon, I could not agree more!

Many people sadly go through their entire lives as chameleons- changing their colours and adapting to what they think others expect of them.

In so doing we never truly take the time to get to know our true selves, our needs and our desires.

Granted, we are often told that in order to be truly successful we need to find others who are already succeeding at what we wish to do, learn from them and emulate their success. The question however is, how will we know who to emulate if we have not truly taken the time to get to know ourselves.

The greatest gift we can ever give ourselves is to truly know and believe in ourselves and in our own abilities, instead of trying indefinately to live in the image of how someone else may expect us to live.

When you truly know yourself, it is far easier to believe in your own abilities and that in my mind is at least half the barrier to success removed from our paths.

note: "seeing ourselves as others see us" is very different from knowing ourselves! -- In fact the two are usually pretty much mutually exclusive.

So, if your goal is truly knowing yourself, then seeing yourself "as others see you" is basically useless info -- far from a giftie gee -- or whatever way that poet described it.