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Book Review - MASTERS OF SUCCESS :: Persistence and System

MASTERS OF SUCCESS:
Proven Techniques for Achieving Success
In Business and Life
(275 pages)

Ivan R. Misner, Ph.D. and Don Morgan, M.A.
Entrepreneur Press, 2004, printed in Canada

Masters of Success is a compilation of articles brought together by the Founder of BNI, Ivan Misner, and a Canadian and BC BNI member Don Morgan.  

In this Update, we look at Persistance and System.

“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.”
Colin Powell

In most success stories, persistence is a recurring theme. People who achieve what they set out to achieve are usually seen to be steadfast in pursuit of their goals, unwilling to let difficulties stand in their way. Dogged determination is the cornerstone of many successes. This is why the harder people work, the luckier they seem to be.

But persistence alone does not guarantee success. The successful pursuit of a goal also requires following a system or plan. It’s more than just hanging on when everybody else has let go; it’s persistence with purpose.

Success is often the result of the uncommon application of common knowledge. When you hear successful people talk about the “secret” of their success, you rarely hear any real secrets. What you do hear about is their unwavering adherence to some system of approach they believe in and follow with intensity and determination – an uncommon focus on something that less successful people simply take for granted or pay lip service to. Successful people focus on the goal and work through or around everything else. In sports, this is called keeping your eye on the ball.

Even when the ideas are easy to understand, they often don’t get implemented because people think the execution is too difficult. After author Ivan Misner presented a keynote speech in Sweden a while back, an audience member approached him and said, “Everything you said makes so much sense. Much of it was about things that I’ve heard were important to do, but I never did them because they seemed too simple. I thought there had to be more to it than that. So I wasted valuable time looking for some secret.” Then she added, “I don’t understand why people often find it easy to make things so difficult. Myself included.”

It’s been said that success comes in “cans” and failure comes in “can’ts.” You probably know people who are masters of the “yeah, but” approach, who find it easy to make things difficult. They seek out a success model, then spend their time dismissing it because “it’s too simple” or because “we’re different.” They rationalize that “it might have worked in that situation, but this situation (or product, service, business, industry, city, state, country) is different.” This is nothing more than their way of avoiding doing what they don’t want to do. It’s an excuse for nonperformance, and for some, that’s better than results: it’s failure, justified in advance.

The road to success has detours to failure. Nearly every successful person has encountered failure at least once, and usually multiple times. It is, however, these failures that lead to success. Masters of success are those who learn from their mistakes but don’t dwell on them, who pick themselves up, resolve to avoid making the same error again, and keep moving toward their goal. They succeed because they consider each mistake an opportunity to learn – not an excuse to quit. They succeed because that is the only important thing. And success hides a multitude of blunders.

Success comes to those who have not only passion and vision but also persistence and a commitment to performing the fundamentals and who keep working and learning until they can perform them flawlessly. In the end, success is not about being different or having secret knowledge. In the end, everybody knows what the goal is and how to achieve it. This is common knowledge, and it’s been around for a long, long time. Success is about knowing these things and having the will to go after them without giving up, making excuses, or getting sidetracked. It’s about the uncommon application of common knowledge.

Posted by jose Monday Jun 07, 2010 10:35
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