WHAT IS SUCCESS?

(These thoughts are changed three times weekly)

Too many people let their goals ebb and flow. They go from high tide to mud flats. With no persistent consistency they may sparkle in the sun but too often they also stink in the dark. It happens. Therefore, if you want success…don’t be a tide.

Don't believe in the count of ten. Everyone gets knocked down but everyone doesn't lie there and allow themselves to be counted out. Don't settle for stagnation. Refuse to have a love affair with the status quo. Creativity can be dangerous. Indeed it makes some people nervous. But if you settle for worshiping at the altar of Sag you will only reap the rewards of hopelessness and helplessness.

Don't become a futurist until you conquer the present. Plan for tomorrow, but not if in the process you ignore today. To lavish all your attention, enthusiasm and knowledge on what is to come is the stuff New Year's resolutions are made of. And we know what happens to most of them.

If you can't build a castle shine up your cottage. Building the Empire State Building required engineering skills and building materials that just a century earlier didn't exist. It would have been foolish for even that grand old man of inventiveness, Ben Franklin, to have attempted such a project.

So dream your dreams bigger. Think them through and beyond. But don't build dream castles so unrealistic it is a guarantee they will collapse. When I ran track I competed against myself. I could not beat one of my teammates who broke records that had stood for years, but I could beat what I did yesterday.

Read the right books and in the process remember that the best way to tune out trash is to tune in something better. Make the Bible something you read and remember rather than something you allow to become dead and forgotten.

Touch other human beings with acts of kindness and patience so many times it becomes a habit.

What is success? The definition for you and me should always be changing because with time you gain not just more knowledge but more wisdom, and wisdom is, after all where the best answer will always be found.

When I think on success I often bring up the following definition. It has served and serves me well. “He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much; who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has left the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who has never lacked appreciation of earth’s beauty or failed to express it; who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had; whose life was inspiration; whose memory was a benediction. (Bessie Stanley)(1905)