Live Sensical: Careers That Matter: How to Find Success By Throwing Out

The secret to the top 5 percent of business leaders is in what they throw out.

95 percent of all employees never master this subject, they are following the wrong model for their job. And also the wrong model for their life.

Most of us have been trained in the old motto’s and credos that only justify our continued failure to succeed.

“The nail that sticks out gets hammered.”
“You have to go along to get along.”
“There is no I in team.”

I prefer Zig Ziglar’s question,

“Do you want to soar with the eagles or flock with the turkeys?”

Consider the difference in those two approaches.

The first are those which defend the common approach. They support conventional “wisdom.” These are the people that advertisers target with their obnoxious ads, in order to get their attention, so they can insert a subliminal command to “buy [insert brand here] now.”

But advertising, like most workers today, are simply following the followers.

Our government-sponsored schools were built on this same concept, which traces back to Otto Von Bismarck. He segregated people by age groups in German schools, so that he could rebuild his military. He needed groups of people that could follow orders.

Look at the top 20 of the Forbes richest people list. The majority are college dropouts, never went, or attended non-elite colleges. This says a lot about our modern education.

The inventor Thomas Edison had only 3 months of structured education in his life. W. Clement Stone dropped out of school several times, but built his businesses into multi-million dollar revenues.

Both Edison and Stone were outrageously successful due to something not taught in schools. If it were taught there, we’d live in a land of millionaires and billionaires.

The difference between the top 5 percent and the bottom 95% is in their decision.

The elite few decided to become successful.

Everyone else decided to just get along.

Success is relative. Earl Nightingale held it as “the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.” Once you decide on your ideal, then you start getting ideas of what you need to do in order to achieve it.

Success is possible for anyone who commits to being successful.

You have to decide to do so – and then stick with it.

The other successful pattern of the top 5 percent is that they study the successful people in their own field and other fields as well.

Most people are familiar with the story of Andrew Carnegie, who commissioned Napoleon Hill to research and publish the common Philosophy of Achievement that Carnegie knew existed. It took Hill 20 years to come out with his first version, and he had to interview over 500 of the top corporate and political leaders of his day.

Many have read “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” Stephen Covey wrote this bestseller after he studied over 200 years of American success literature.

Dale Carnegie had critiqued some 150,000 speeches in his Public Speaking classes. From studying their common themes, he developed his “How to Win Friends and Influence People.”

You’ll find books like these on the shelves of the top 5 percent, as well as many others. In their offices you’ll see framed pictures and quotes by inspirational people, who themselves attained great success.

But for the 95 percent, you’ll find their homes and work places are filled with knick-knacks. Their conversations are also filled with trivia, particularly critical comments.

You might be reminded of the bucket-crab, who actively works to ensure that his fellow crabs do not try to climb out.

What the top 5 percent have done to ensure their success is to listen, but ignore. They are acute observers of the world around them. They listen intensely.

They also winnow the chaff from the grain as they listen and observe. Any harvest of wheat has mountains of straw which are produced for every wagon-load of grain.

The top 5 percent will sift through all they hear and observe to find those tiny grains of truth that hold the real value. For one grain of wheat may give you 50 or more grains in return. A field planted to wheat has the capability of producing 50 bushels or more for every bushel planted.

This is the type of leverage the most successful seek out in their own life.

What can they do which will result in a fifty-times leverage out of what they invested?

This may explain the rise of social media, where 150 characters (or less) can circle the globe in minutes and produce a flood of traffic for any included link.
This is the effective book author, who can self-publish and self-market their books and earn a 6-figure income indefinitely from just a few week’s work.
This is the idea of recording a speech and then profiting from the sales of individual downloads and CD’s for the rest of your life – and then turning that income over to heirs.

The 95 percent just accept the reasons why such can’t be done. Their world is filled with can’t’s. They justify their failure with these. And the world backs them up and supports their indecision, their inaction.

The difference between failure and success lies in a simple decision.

Once you resolutely decide to succeed, once you decide on what success means to you, then you can receive the inspired steps to take that will bring you to that success.

It takes decision.

It takes action.

Anyone can.

It’s your choice.

How to Choose A Successful Career:

Define your own success, a “worthy ideal” worth pursuing.
Write this down on a card and refer to it first thing on waking, and last thing at night.
Look around for people who are routinely successful.
Find out what books and materials they and others like them refer to.
Collect these up and study thoroughly.
Make notes and find the repeating principles in common.
Test these principles in your own life to see how you can apply them successfully.
Narrow these down to the few which have the highest leverage.
Set the few books or materials which explain these principles for routine study.
Surround yourself with symbols of these principles so you keep them in mind daily.
“Clean house” of everything that doesn’t support these principles or are distractions.
Optimize your schedule do deal more with successful people (have defined ideals they pursue) and deal less with the unsuccessful (pursue no defined ideals).
Help people around you to find more success materials and to chose their own ideals.