The Greatest Success of All

"Skipper, a special message just came in for you from the admiral," the sailor said to his captain as he saluted. "I have it right here."

 "Read it to me," the captain ordered.

The sailor read, "You are without a doubt, the most conceited, self-absorbed, EGO-MANIAC ever to command a ship in the Navy."

The skipper responded, "Have that communication decoded at once!"

For some people, it's all about them. For others, it's all about you. Like author Leil Lowndes says, "There are two kinds of people in this life. Those who walk into a room and say, 'Well, here I am.' And those who walk in and say, 'Ahh, there you are.'"

Which are you? Are you more focused on getting your own needs met, or on easing the burdens of others? Are you mostly trying to make yourself happy, or are you interested in the happiness of those around you?

Albert Einstein reminded us that "life isn't worth living, unless it is lived for someone else." And toward the end of his life, he removed the portraits of two scientists - Isaac Newton and James Maxwell - from his wall. He replaced them with portraits of Mahatma Gandhi and

Albert Schweitzer. Einstein explained that it was time to replace the image of success with the image of service.

Maybe the greatest success of all is when we realize that it's not all about us. And maybe the greatest happiness to be found is when we share the happiness of others.

The Path To Success Is Not Always A Straight Line

Have you ever felt as if you had taken a wrong turn somewhere because your plans didn't seem to be working as a youth? Everyday you lived with the nagging feeling that you were wasting so much time you would never find your way to success. And maybe you finally gave up and didn't. Or maybe you believed at one time that you were on the right path, and all seemed to be going well, but you had a bothersome feeling that something just wasn't quite right.

You wanted to fix how you felt, but if you did, you believed that you would end up wasting a great deal of time. So you continued on edge, feeling badly instead of satisfied until you lost your success out of fear or doubt that you were in the right place at the right time. We're supposed to enjoy our success right? Emphatically yes! Not only that, we're supposed to enjoy our path to success as well. We're supposed to be enjoying our lives, not lamenting every day that we've taken a wrong turn. But what if we did?

There are two steps to take for redirection. First we diagnose why things are going wrong or why we're not feeling right about things the way they are. Then we stop thinking about time and how we've wasted it. Doing that will only cause us to waste even more time. What one needs to do is understand how success is achieved beyond the hard work and determination to reach our goals in the fastest amount of time possible.

There are times when "time" must be taken out of the equation for attaining our goals. However what we should do quickly is to change the way we think about taking a wrong turn in our careers or goal setting. So you must not look at getting sidetracked as a waste of time, but a valuable lesson in your path to success. Everyone gets redirected that has had success. The greatest scientists and inventors have experienced hundreds of redirections that have all led them to the right path. And without taking what many call, "wrong turns" they may not have ever realized their goals that have helped humanity and the ! world in general.

I've always admired Thomas Edison and I've always looked to him to gain incites for success secrets unknown to many because he was a person who understood that the path to meeting his goals was not always a straight line. He never gave up and never saw failure as error; instead he saw a clearer path to his ultimate goal. To him mistakes were valuable lessons that always lead to the next step, allowing him to press on, while carrying the banner of triumph because he lived his successes one step at a time. We can see that very ideal in his famous quote which encourages us to keep an inner strength and press forward. "Be brave as your fathers before you.

Have faith and go forward." This is what we all need to do in the face of giving up our dreams. I read about Thomas Edison's stalwart determination to live his dreams over and over until I understood that success is not born out of a mere desire to create what we want, it's also a mix of wisdom, knowledge, and experience that all work together to create our dreams beyond a mediocre level. By not rushing to achieve quickly, we'll instead travel the path to our goals by taking little side trips, thereby gaining the development needed to fulfill them at their greatest level and to keep them alive.