All ambitious people want success, but what is success?
How do you measure or compare success? If you are successful by most measures, you will be different from the norm. Our society frowns on people who appear different from the norm.
Is that why success principles are not taught I schools, colleges or universities? Maybe there was a time when passing exams meant success. Today there are many highly qualified people who have little success to show for it and a significant number of successful people who have few qualifications.
Another noticeable trend is that the role models for many young people are celebrities! We may ask what has celebrity to do with success?
Inevitably we come to the conclusion that each person needs to define what would constitute success for them! Once they have done that, then it becomes possible to map out a route to get there?
What is the difference between people who are generally held to be successful and those who are not? Successful people mostly agree it can only be the way they think. Our thinking about success (and many other things) is partly the result of our upbringing and experiences. But we can’t just blame our parents for our thinking. We can always change ourselves. So how do we change our thinking? Only by exposing ourselves to the thinking and experiences of people who have achieved some measure of success! Generally we can only do this by reading what those successful people have written about they have learned on their journey.
To help you start or continue the process of moving towards success, we list some of the classic books on achieving success.
The Magic of Thinking Big - David Schwartz Ph.D
This is one of the classic success manuals and was first published in 1979. This is the book that more people say turned their life around than any other. It does not assume any previous knowledge and takes the newcomer gently through the basics of success strategy.
In fact he knows how people put success out of their reach with what he calls 'The Failure Disease'. He explains this and the antidote to it in Chapter 2. David Scwartz shows you do not need to have great intellect to be a giant among men but you do need the habit of thinking and acting in a manner that brings success.
The Psychology of Winning – Denis Waitley
Another classic success book based on personal research plus drawing on the wisdom of the big names in human development of 20th century. Most of these names are unknown to the general public but they and their work are introduced during the course of this book.
Denis Waitley holds a doctorate in human behaviour and has studied and lectured widely the success tactics used both by survivors of the Vietnam POW camps and the members of the Astronaut programme.
Think & Grow Rich – Napoleon Hill
The history of how this book came to be written is a story in itself. As a student journalist at the beginning of the 20th century, Napoleon Hill was granted an interview with Andrew Carnegie, the architect of the United States Steel industry. As a result of this meeting he spent the next twenty years interviewing over 100 of the major figures of the US industrial revolution to discover the secret of their success. These included such names as Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Alexander Bell, Woodrow Wilson and many others who are household names all over the world. He found that many of them were already using the same principle as Andrew Carnegie and the others were ready to adopt it to further their own success.
Napoleon Hill became an advisor to Franklin D Roosevelt during the post depression period and in 1937 he published his first edition of this book. He intended it as a popular explanation that would offer Carnegie’s secret to those members of the general public who are ready for it. This book has changed the lives of innumerable people in the last 70 years.
Follow your Heart – Andrew Matthews
At the other extreme this book was written in Australia and first published in 1997.Since then it has sold over 1 million copies and has been translated into 23 languages. Andrew Matthews is not just a writer but also an artist. He has produced this simple, amusing and direct book with a multitude of his own illustrations.
As a taster of his humorous approach here is a short quote –
‘We are here to learn Lessons and the world is our teacher. When we fail to learn a lesson, we get to take it again…and again! Once we have learned the lesson, we move onto the next one.’