“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.”
– Maxwell Maltz

Realize that whatever you choose to focus on affects your quality of life, or what Zig Ziglar calls your “standard of life,” and not just your standard of living. For instance, if you focus on the future by setting goals, you may be forcing yourself to remain in your comfort-zone and probably without ever knowing how far you can really go.

Jim Rohn said, “To know how far we can go is to risk going too far.” To reach your potential therefore, you will unquestionably need to confront risks. They are inevitable. They are unavoidable. You simply have to take them if you want your successfulness to manifest, and there’s no way of tiptoeing around it.

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“Perfect self-expression will never be labor; but of such absorbing interest that it will seem almost like play.”
– Florence Scovel Shinn

In Succeeding Through Inner Strength, Dr. Nathaniel Branden says that people unconsciously lower their self-esteem through their goals.

They usually start by writing down some nebulous wish and may start working on it with the best of intentions. They may even know exactly what they want and work really hard in order to get it. However and more often than not, they quit and do so sometimes just as fast as they have written it down.

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“You do not pay the price of success, you enjoy the price of success.”
– Zig Ziglar

Again, the inner you is your conscience while your connection to it is your consciousness. While you can act in accordance with or in opposition to your conscience, you can’t betray your conscience for it is the wisdom of the highest that’s within. Therefore, if your goals ignore your conscience, they will unconsciously bring unnecessary turmoil in your life. But if your goals follow your conscience, you are then consciously purposeful.

If you’re like most people, you have certain needs and aspirations at this moment. You probably want to reach higher goals, get promoted, make more money, spend more time with your family, find a better job, lose 10 pounds or so, take that vacation in the Caribbean, start a business, etc. In other words, you want to improve your quality of life right now and not at some point in the future.

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“The secret of success is constancy of purpose.”
–Anonymous

I agree that, if one wants to achieve more, the most important tool for doing so in today’s world is time management. The challenge in dealing with an incessantly increasing demand on this scarcer commodity that we call time is prevalent in our society. People are busier than ever before and seem to never have enough time to do what they really want.

However, if you study truly successful men and women, you will recognize that they always seem to have lots of time. They live in the moment, are happy and love what they do, and are intrinsically very productive. Moreover, they have intense focused concentration on the task at hand and seem to manage their time almost instinctively. And they do so with passion, zest and fervor.

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“We are at our very best, and we are happiest, when we are fully engaged in work we enjoy on the journey toward the goal we’ve established for ourselves. It gives meaning to our time off and comfort to our sleep. It makes everything else in life so wonderful, so worthwhile.”
–Earl Nightingale

“Success is a journey… Not a destination.”
–Ben Sweetland

Goal achievement is considered by some to be success, for it is true that success is defined by the achievement of a desired objective. But you may have noticed that I like to use words such as “potential,” “alignment,” or “successfulness” to describe this true success to which I am referring. As you can understand, goals are personal and success is relative to the individual.

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“We are hoarding potentials so great they are just about unimaginable.”
– Jack Schwartz

“Humanity has only scratched the surface of its real potential.” “You are within God. God is within you.”
– Peace Pilgrim (1900-1981)

Come to think of it, by definition success is an end-result or an achievement of some sort. But true success, however, doesn’t stop after you’ve reached a goal or cease once you’ve attained a certain rank. If you want to be successful, you will have to accept that success is an ongoing process.

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“Success is always temporary. When all is said and done, the only thing you’ll have left is your character.”
–Vince Gill

Today, when one is considered “successful,” that person is usually labeled as such according to some external criterion. This is only natural, for along with the majority of the human race you have the tendency to judge a book by its cover. What you perceive or observe through any of your five senses is oftentimes interpreted as reality or truth. And the problem, however, is that when you distinguish that which is success to you, you are only scratching the surface.

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