Baskadia

Success is not an accident. It is the result of our attitude and our attitude is a choice.

Hence success is a matter of choice and not chance.

Most crackpots keep waiting for a jackpot. But can that bring success?

A priest was driving by and saw an exceptionally beautiful farm. He stopped his car to

appreciate the bountiful crop. The farmer was riding on his tractor and saw the priest at

the corner. He drove towards the Priest and when he got there the priest said, "God has

blessed you with a beautiful farm. You should be grateful for it. The farmer replied, "Yes,

God has blessed me with a beautiful farm and I am grateful for it, but you should have

seen this farm when God had the whole farm to himself!"

How come one person moves forward with one success after another, and yet some are

still getting ready?

How come one man goes through life crossing one hurdle after another, accomplishing

his goals while another struggles and gets nowhere?

If the answer to these two questions can become part of the curriculum, it could

revolutionize the educational system. The uncommon man seeks opportunity, whereas

the common man seeks security. We need to keep our minds on what we want, not on

what we don't want.

WHAT IS SUCCESS?

A lot of research has gone into the subject of success and failure. All that we need to do

is learn our lessons from history. When we study the life histories of successful people,

we find that they have certain qualities in common no matter which period of history they

lived in. Success leaves clues and if we identify and adopt the qualities of successful

people, we shall be successful. Similarly, there are characteristics common in all failures.

If we avoid those characteristics, then we shall not be failures. Success is no mystery,

but simply the result of consistently applying some basic principles. The reverse is just as

true: Failure is simply a result of making a few mistakes repeatedly. All of this might

sound too simplistic, but the fact is that most truths are very simple. I'm not saying they

are easy, but they certainly are simple.

Poem about success:

To laugh often and love much;

To win the respect of intelligent persons

and the affection of children;

To earn the approval of honest critics

and endure the betrayal of false friends ;

To appreciate beauty;

To find the best in others;

To give off one's self without the

slightest thought of return;

To have accomplished a task, whether

by a healthy child, a rescued soul, a

garden patch, or a redeemed social condition;

To have played and laughed with

Enthusiasm and sung with exaltation;

To know that even one life has breathed.

easier because you have lived;

This is to have succeeded.

Success and happiness go hand in hand. Success is getting what you want and

happiness is wanting what you get!

Existence alone is not success! It is a lot more!

Do more than exist -- live

Do more than touch -- feel

Do more than look -- observe

Do more than read -- absorb

Do more than hear -- listen

Do more than listen -- understand

SOME OBSTACLES TO SUCCESS (REAL OR IMAGINED)

♦ Ego

♦ Fear of failure success ; lack of self esteem

♦ No plan

♦ Lack of formalized goals

♦ Life changes

♦ Procrastination

♦ Family responsibility

♦ Financial security issues

♦ Lack of focus, being muddled

♦ Giving up vision for promise of money

♦ Doing too much alone

♦ Over-commitment

♦ Lack of commitment

♦ Lack of training

♦ Lack of persistence

♦ Lack of priorities

THE WINNING EDGE

In order to get the winning edge , we need to strive for excellence, not perfection. Striving

for perfection is neurotic; striving for excellence is progress, because there is nothing that

can't be done better or improved.

All that we need is a little edge. The winning horse in the races wins 5-to-1 or 10-to-1. Do

you think he is five or ten times faster than the other horses? Of course not. He may only

be faster by a fraction, by a nose, but the rewards are five or ten times greater.

Is it fair? Who cares? It doesn't matter. Those are the rules of the game. That is the way

the game is played. The same is true in our lives. Successful people are not ten times

smarter than the people who fail. They may be better by a nose, but the rewards are ten

times bigger.

We don't need to improve 1,000% in any one area. All we need is to improve 1% in 1,000

different areas, which is a lot easier. That is the winning edge.

OVERCOMING OBSTACLES:

People who have overcome obstacles are more secure than those who have never faced

them . We all have problems and we feel discouraged some time. Most people get

disappointed; but winners don't get disheartened. The answer is perseverance.

An English proverb says, "A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner." Everything is

difficult before it becomes easy. We cannot run away from our problems. Only losers quit

and give up.

Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

HOW DO WE MEASURE SUCCESS?

True success is measured by the feeling of knowing you have done a job well and have

achieved your objective.

Success is not measured by our position in life but by the obstacles we overcame to get

there.

Success in life is not determined by how we are doing compared with others, but by how

we are doing compared with what we are capable of doing. Successful people compete

against themselves. They better their own record and keep improving constantly.

Success is not measured by how high we go up in life but by how many times we bounce

back when we fall down. It is this bounce back ability that determines success.

EVERY SUCCESS STORY IS ALSO A STORY OF GREAT FAILURE:

Story:

Failure is the highway to success. Tom Watson Sr. said, "If you want to succeed, double

your failure rate."

If you study history, you will find that all stories of success are also stories of great

failures. But people don't see the failures. They only see one side of the picture and they

say that person got lucky: "He must have been at the right place at the right time."

Let me share someone's life history with you. This was a man who failed in business at

the age of 21 ; was defeated in a legislative race at age 22; failed again in business at

age 24; overcame the death of his sweetheart at age 26; had a nervous breakdown at

age 27; lost a congressional race at age 34; lost a senatorial race at age 45; failed in an

effort to become vice-president at age 47; lost a senatorial race at age 49; and was

elected president of the United States at age 52.

This man was Abraham Lincoln.

Would you call him a failure? He could have quit. But to Lincoln, defeat was a detour and

not a dead end.

In 1913, Lee De Forest, inventor of the triodes tube, was charged by the district attorney

for using fraudulent means to mislead the public into buying stocks of his company by

claiming that he could transmit the human voice across the Atlantic. He was publicly

humiliated. Can you imagine where we would be without his invention?

A New York Times editorial on December 10, 1903, questioned the wisdom of the Wright

Brothers who were trying to invent a machine, heavier than air, that would fly. One week

later, at Kitty Hawk, the Wright Brothers took their famous flight.

Colonel Sanders, at age 65, with a beat-up car and a $100 check from Social Security,

realized he had to do something. He remembered his mother's recipe and went out

selling. How many doors did he have to knock on before he got his first order? It is

estimated that he had knocked on more than a thousand doors before he got his first

order. How many of us quit after three tries, ten tries, a hundred tries, and then we say

we tried as hard as we could?

As a young cartoonist, Walt Disney faced many rejections from newspaper editors, who

said he had no talent. One day a minister at a church hired him to draw some cartoons.

Disney was working out of a small mouse infested shed near the church. After seeing a

small mouse, he was inspired. That was the start of Mickey Mouse.

Successful people don't do great things, they only do small things in a great way.

One day a partially deaf four year old kid came home with a note in his pocket from his

teacher, "Your Tommy is too stupid to learn, get him out of the school." His mother read

the note and answered, "My Tommy is not stupid to learn, I will teach him myself." And

that Tommy grew up to be the great Thomas Edison. Thomas Edison had only three

months of formal schooling and he was partially deaf.

Henry Ford forgot to put the reverse gear in the first car he made.

Do you consider these people failures? They succeeded in spite of problems, not in the

absence of them. But to the outside world, it appears as though they just got lucky.

All success stories are stories of great failures. The only difference is that every time they

failed, they bounced back. This is called failing forward, rather than backward. You learn

and move forward. Learn from your failure and keep moving.

In 1914, Thomas Edison, at age 67, lost his factory, which was worth a few million

dollars, to fire. It had very little insurance. No longer a young man, Edison watched his

lifetime effort go up in smoke and said, "There is great value in disaster. All our mistakes

are burnt up. Thank God we can start anew." In spite of disaster, three weeks later, he

invented the phonograph. What an attitude!

Below are more examples of the failures of successful people:

1. Thomas Edison failed approximately 10,000 times while he was working on the light

bulb.

2. Henry Ford was broke at the age of 40.

3. Lee Iacocca was fired by Henry Ford II at the age of 54.

4. Young Beethoven was told that he had no talent for music, but he gave some of the

best music to the world.

Setbacks are inevitable in life. A setback can act as a driving force and also teach us

humility. In grief you will find courage and faith to overcome the setback. We need to

learn to become victors, not victims. Fear and doubt short-circuit the mind.

Ask yourself after every setback: What did I learn from this experience? Only then will

you be able to turn a stumbling block into a stepping stone.

Work hard in your life God will give fruit of it............

May God bless you with success.