1. Success: Often Discussed, Rarely Defined

Your weekly spike of transformative personal development insights. That’s what you signed up for. I understand it’s a pretty vague statement. In fact, it’s meant to be that way. Personal development is the act of intentionally improving your own ability to achieve something not currently achievable. It looks entirely different for every individual. The process of personal development is entirely subjective, but the goal is quite objective. The goal for everyone looking to better themselves is of course, success, so for everyone’s benefit, we better give that some context.

I’m not here to give you yet another secret to success because the way I see it, there’s no such thing. There are countless books on the topic. I’ve read a lot of them, but personally, I feel most of them miss the mark. Everyone wants it but nobody knows what it is. I once read a book called “Redefining Success”, but I kept thinking well what was the original definition? Success can’t just mean making a lot of money, although that essentially has been the traditional quality of success. Napoleon Hill, author of perhaps the most famous book about success, famously spent over 20 years studying 500 of the most “successful” people of his time. One of the foremost characters mentioned in Hill’s 1937 work, Think and Grow Rich, was Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company. Ford was used as an example of the epitome of success. However, if you dig into his life, you’ll fast discover that Henry Ford was not a good guy, and certainly not someone that would be admired in today’s world. Today, the media loves to tell us that success isn’t about making money, which is a convenient statement for a media that tells us everything is too expensive, but that’s another topic for another day. So, if success isn’t about making money, what is it? And how do you get it?