Success Is A Choice Not An Event

Success Is A Choice Not An Event - this is life
lesson #2 for my 2 1/2 year old son Caeden.

No matter how you define what success means,
these seven words draw a road map for how to
achieve it. Goals in life are not to be strived for.
They are instead objectives to be determined,
planned for, worked upon, and eventually achieved
through a serious of incremental failures.

Events just happen to people through fate.

Success rarely occurs for any other reason
than the application of persistence and ingenuity.

In my personal experiences, I think the absolute
best example of this principal in motion is the
ocean. I'm no "tree hugging environmentalist whacko",
as the godfather would say, but I have noticed that
Mother Nature has a way of teaching us the most
important things in life if we'll just take the
time to sit and watch. Some time long ago it was
decided that the ocean would take on the task of
creating beautiful beaches...

With all its power and might, the ocean wasn't
able to shift each grain of sand into its proper
position in just one wave. Instead, it has had to
create billions and billions of waves over the
centuries to crash the shore each time shifting
a few more grains of sand. Year after year,
the ocean sends waves to the shoreline only to
retract the waters, learn from what is has done,
and prepare changes for the next set of waves.

The ocean never takes time out to worry about
what others might say, make excuses for what man
does in opposition to its endeavor, or falsely blame
others for its own failures and shortcomings.
Instead, the ocean looks solely at its own actions
and makes adjustments to its behavior over and over
again knowing that someday it will succeed.

Contrast this with our society today, it is much
easier to justify our inability to succeed and even
easier to profit from it via our legal system. The
scapegoats themselves are numerous enough to qualify
for their own minority status. The Jews control the
money, the blacks and Hispanics bring crime to our
neighborhoods, the whites try to keep minorities
under their thumb, the Arabs are religious fanatics
hell bent on our destruction, the rich steal from
the poor, etc. I could go on and on.

For some reason, it makes many of us feel just as
good to fail and have someone to blame than it
does to succeed. It is no wonder people feel empty
inside these days. The joy of success, no matter
how small, has no substitute.

For those who haven't achieved as much in life as
they had hoped for, I say "buy a mirror". When I did,
the face I saw was not only the one person to blame
but he also had all the answers I needed to turn
things around. And for those times when your problems
seem insurmountable and are about to consume you,
take a drive over to the ocean. Your problem,
whatever it may be, will seem small compared to what
the ocean is dealing with.

You'll notice that it hasn't quit trying yet and
neither should you.