7-Step Secret of Success

By Roy Williams - Dec 16 , 2009

How to Get Where You Want to Go

1. See your destination in your mind.

“When you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”
– White Rabbit

2. Start walking.

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
– Lao Tzu (604 BC – 531 BC)

3. Think ahead as you walk.

“It’s like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” – E.L. Doctorow

4. Don’t quit walking.

“Don’t wait. Where do you expect to get by waiting? Doing is what teaches you. Doing is what leads to inspiration. Doing is what generates ideas. Nothing else, and nothing less.” – Daniel Quinn

5. Make no deadlines.

“Patience is the best remedy for every trouble.”
- Titus Maccius Plautus (254 BC – 184 BC)

“I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.”
- Margaret Thatcher, April 4, 1989

6. Look back at the progress you made each day.

“God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning – the sixth day.” Genesis 1:31

7. If evening finds you at the same place you were this morning, take a step before you lay down.

The magic isn’t in the size of your actions, but in the relentlessness of them. “It is better to burn the candle at both ends, and in the middle, too, than to put it away in the closet and let the mice eat it.” – Henry Van Dyke

Never let a day pass without making, at the very least, a tiny bit of progress. Do NOT tell yourself you’ll make up for it tomorrow. (That seductive lie is the kiss of death.) Make a phone call. Lick a stamp. Correct a misspelled word. Something. Anything.

You realize I’m talking about business, not hiking, right?

A second common mistake is to get these steps out of order. If you skip Step 1, “See your destination,” and go straight to step 2, “Start walking,” you’ll be a wanderer, a drifter on the ocean of life, sadly on your way to lying beneath a tombstone that says, “He Had Potential.”

Even more dangerous is to go from Step 1, “See your destination,” directly to Step 3, “Think ahead,” without ever doing Step 2, “Start walking.” These are the people who never get started. Analysis paralysis. Lots of anxiety and plans and meetings and revisions and studies and evaluation and research can make you think you’re getting somewhere when you’re not.

Gen. George S. Patton said it best,

“A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.” In other words, there is no perfect plan. Shut up and get started.

Visitors to Tuscan Hall will recall a beautiful stairway that leads into a wall, then does a 180 halfway up to finish in exactly the opposite direction. At the top of those stairs a magnificent catwalk runs the entire length of the building to a gallery of fine art overlooking the floor below.

This is the Journey of Life.

If you find yourself headed in the wrong direction, you can always correct your way.

But only if you know your destination.