Defining Success
Defining Success
Few have had as great an impact on as many
people as Zig Ziglar. As a sales trainer, motivational speaker and best-selling
author, Ziglar has helped millions of individuals improve not only their
perspective on life, but, more important, their results.
After a bumpy start, Ziglar built a wildly
successful career in sales. But the more he learned about selling and personal
achievement, the more interested he became in motivational speaking. He wanted
to help others attain the success he enjoyed. In 1970, while in his early 40s,
Ziglar made a career shift and began to speak full time. Since then, he has
engaged thousands of audiences and sold millions of books and audio programs, including the best-selling "See You at the Top": 25th Anniversary Edition,
which sold more than 1.5 million copies, and the audio program "How to Stay
Motivated". Exactly how many lives has the 83-year-old Ziglar touched? “We
began counting the number of people Zig has impacted and had to stop at 25.5
million people,” says a spokesperson with the Zig Ziglar Corporation.
With his unique cadence and strong Southern
drawl, Ziglar admonishes people to be specific about what they want to achieve,
to be purposeful in their approach to personal development, and to help as many
others as possible along the way. And though he is a dyed-in-the-wool believer
in the power of positive thinking, there is nothing secret about his philosophy
on achieving success. “Positive thinking won’t let you do anything,” Ziglar
says. “But it will help you do everything better than negative thinking will.”
His constant message is that success requires full engagement and hard work.
When combined with an unshakable positive attitude and character, success is
inevitable. Here are a few more of Ziglar’s tried-and-true strategies.
Live a Balanced, Focused Life
Success is never about acquiring what you want
in one area of life, but in every area of life. Ziglar asks audiences to consider the fallacy of one-sided success. Take a
moment and ask yourself these questions:
+ If
I earn millions of dollars, but destroy my health in the process, is that
success?
+ If
I become the best in my industry, but neglect my family and friends, is that
success?
+ If
I acquire great wealth and notoriety, but compromise my integrity and faith to
do so, is that success?
The obvious answer to each of these questions is
“no.” Success isn’t one-sided. Our achievements aren’t fulfilling when we
neglect or destroy our relationships, health or faith.
Ziglar says there are eight basic things people
want to feel successful.
“People want (1) to be happy, (2) to be healthy, (3) to be reasonably prosperous, (4) to be reasonably secured; (5) to have friends, (6) to have peace of mind, (7) to have good family relationships and (8) to hope,” he says. With a focused goal to continually improve in each of these areas, we can enjoy life to the fullest. 
Goals give us a target and bring meaning to our
mission. Without goals, life simply happens. But when we have a target, we can
move with purpose, helping us achieve more. “People often complain about lack
of time, when lack of direction is the real problem,” Ziglar says. “Time can be
an ally or an enemy. What it becomes depends entirely upon you, your goals and
your determination to use every available minute.”
Action →
Don’t confuse activity with accomplishment. You must have specific, clearly
identified objectives. In the "How to Stay Motivated" audio program,
Ziglar advises listeners to write down everything they want to do, be or have.
Once you’ve created your list, pick five things you want to accomplish this
year and outline a plan for each by defining daily, weekly and monthly targets.
Then get started!
Take a (Mental) Bath Every Day
Getting motivated to improve in any one of these
eight areas of life is relatively easy. But staying motivated enough to
maintain the behaviors required to realize real change is challenging.
We are easily motivated to start a
life-improvement project, but staying motivated takes work. Ziglar comments
that people frequently complain to him that the effects of motivational
seminars, books and audios don’t last. His response: “Neither does bathing;
that’s why we recommend it daily.”
In his Christian Motivation for Daily Living audio
program, Ziglar references a study that indicates 80 percent of what our minds
take in each day is negative. Be it from talk radio or what Ziglar refers to as
the “income suppressant” (aka the television), or the gripes and sour attitudes
of our friends, co-workers, family members and acquaintances, we are inundated
with negative thoughts, comments and messages. We can spend a full day at a
motivational seminar or sales conference and get pumped with enthusiasm. But,
as soon as we step out into the “real world,” the onslaught of negativity is
akin to having someone dump garbage into our freshly cleaned mind.
“If I were to come into your home with a pail of
garbage and dump it on your living room floor, we would have problems—fast,”
Ziglar writes in "See You at the Top". “The person who dumps garbage into
your mind will harm you more considerably than the person who dumps garbage
on your floor, because each load of mind garbage negatively impacts your
possibilities and lowers your expectations.”
To offset the negativity and to stay motivated
to reach our goals, continual affirmations and belief-building messages must be
part of our daily routine. That’s why, in addition to practicing positive
self-talk, Ziglar recommends listening to and reading motivational materials
repeatedly and regularly. “You are what you are and where you are because of
what’s gone into your mind,” he says. “You can change what you are, you can
change where you are, by changing what goes into your mind.”
Action → Spare 30 minutes a day (at a minimum) to read or listen to a positive, inspiring
or motivational message. Doing so will help you stay committed to your
goals and bolster your belief in your ability to achieve them.
If helping others get what they want is the true
path to success, sales is the ideal profession. “People buy because they either
need or want something,” Ziglar writes in Ziglar on
Selling. “If we can give persons a reason for buying andan excuse
for buying, the chances that they will buy inprove rather dramatically.” The
key, he explains, is developing an attitude of curiosity and a sincere interest
in your prospect’s needs. With those needs clarified, you can then offer a
solution that satisfies both you and the customer.
At a recent conference, author and keynote
speaker Bob Burg pointed to Ziglar, a fellow panelist for the event, and shared
how this master motivator and successful salesman had impacted his life. Early
in his sales career, Burg attended one of Ziglar’s Secrets of Closing the Sale
seminars. At the end of his presentation, Ziglar pitched his sales training
program, which was available for purchase at the back of the room in cassette
format.
As he made his way down the aisle to the sales table, a few of Burg’s co-workers tried to stop him. “They said, ‘You can’t afford Zig’s program—none of us can.’ And I said, ‘Exactly, that’s why I’m going back there to get Zig’s program… so one day I’ll be able to afford Zig’s program and anything else I want,’ ” Burg says. Burg says he “devoured” the program, listening to it repeatedly. The 16th time he listened to the audio, he heard a key point that he then incorporated into to his sales presentation. Immediately, he began to close more sales. “I’ll tell you what, that product that I couldn’t afford to buy, but bought anyway, made me hundreds of thousands of dollars through the years. I owe so much to this gentleman because he allowed me to provide more value to more people than I would have been able to without being equipped in that way.”
Action → Commit
today to become others-focused. With your spouse, your children, your
prospect and your peers, keep the question, “How can I help you?” as a primary
focus in the relationship.
If you want to be happy, healthy, reasonably
prosperous and secure, and if you want to have friends, peace of mind, good
family relationships and hope, it makes sense to listen to this motivational
master’s positive message of personal responsibility. Millions have and credit
their achievements to what they’ve learned from Ziglar, a man who created a
successful life by helping others do the same.
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Zig Ziglar was an iconic expert on
complete and balanced success, and in "Born
to Win! Find Your Success Code", his last book before his passing, he
shares his winning philosophy—that you have to plan and prepare to win, to
succeed—and the strategies to go with it.
In this excerpt, he shares a short
list of the characteristics that he believes comprise success:
What Success Is:
1. Success is knowing that you did
a great job when you close the door to your office at the end of each workday
and head for home.
2. Success is having a home and people
to love who love you in return.
3. Success is having the financial
security to meet your obligations each month and the knowledge that you
have provided that security for your family in the event of your demise.
4. Success is having the kind of
faith that lets you know where to turn when there seems to be no place to turn.
5. Success is having an interest or
hobby that gives you joy and peace.
6. Success is knowing who you are,
and Whose you are.
7. Success is taking good care of
you and waking
up healthy each day.
8. Success is slipping under the
covers at the end of the day and realizing with gratitude
that, “It just doesn’t get much better than this!”
You see from this list that success
is defined by more than one sentence. Success involves the whole person, and if
you skimp on one area, you will limit your success.
Now, let’s take a look at
what success isn’t :
What Success Isn’t:
1. Success isn’t missing dinner
with the family
several times a week because of working excessively.
2. Success isn’t rushing home from
work and hiding out with the TV thinking, “After the day I’ve had, I need my
space!”
3. Success isn’t about how to make
more money when you already have more money than you can spend.
4. Success isn’t about going to
church and ignoring everything you hear.
5. Success isn’t all work and no
play.
6. Success isn’t about being so
busy that you live on unhealthy fast food, served to you through little
windows.
7. Success isn’t spending mental
energy worrying about late projects, being home on time, your health, missing
your child’s school play, being able to pay your bills, or finding
joy in your life.
8. Success isn’t texting while you drive to
catch up on your overloaded schedule.
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Don’t Skip These 5 Steps on Your Way to the Top
For those who’ve already arrived at
what most people consider success, it’s something a bit more fluid and
ephemeral. You can have all the accouterments of success and still not really
feel it inside—you get the mansion or the corner office and realize it’s not
all that you hoped. It’s also possible to feel success for a moment, and then,
poof, it’s gone again.
Over the years as chairman and CEO
of Rodale, I’ve learned that success is a continual process, not a final
destination, and it requires a Zen-like openness and appreciation
for life and everyone in it to truly feel the effects, both inside and out.
(Although I’ll admit the freedom to travel and stay at nice hotels is my
favorite tangible benefit of success.) Sometimes, success is simple. Today it
was setting a timer for 15 minutes and making cleaning the kitchen a game with
my 8-year-old, which saved me an hour of nagging to help with chores. Yes, it’s
the little things.
True holistic achievement requires
a sense of service, love and passion that come from deep inside of you.
Here
are five steps that can’t be skipped on your way to success—or ignored once you
get there:
1. Find what your passion
is and tap into it. You can do this by meditating or going on a vision
quest. You can seek counseling or hire a consultant. You can fall into it by
accident. Whatever you do, you must find it and keep finding it over
and over again. It’s not a one-time process—it’s like a fractal that keeps
expanding and growing and evolving.
2. Commit to serving
others. Truly, serving others—your customers, employees, fans, the
needy—is one of the most important steps, because no matter what else happens,
if you do this one thing you will find a peace within you that no jewel or
yacht can compare. Success is service.
3. Have faith when you are
most discouraged and keep everyone around you focused and motivated.
Not every day is a good day, and not every year is a good year. What can you learn
from those setbacks, and how can you keep moving forward no matter what?
Finding faith is key and goes right back to the first two steps: If you believe
you are doing something important and know that it’s helping others, well then…
keep going.
4. Take care of yourself.
Take Bruce Springsteen as an example of success. His shows take an incredible
amount of energy—and spread joy and happiness throughout the world. But as an
artist, he also needs to stop and breathe. At 63 years old, he keeps healthy
and fit in order to gather the inspiration to write songs and the spirit to
perform. It’s a cycle that should be respected. Take care of yourself, and
allow yourself to rest and recover to make sure you have the strength and
energy to do it all again, to be your own kind of rock star.
5. Celebrate your success
and generously share it with others. Every time you share your success
and the results of it with others, you’re planting seeds for future success.
Because success isn’t a one-and-done thing. It is like a garden—it has seasons
of brilliance and dormancy and must be cared for and maintained. And shared.
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