Seven Rules for Achieving Success and Overcoming Challenges

Here are seven rules you can apply to

any challenge that you face in achieving

anything you desire.

Rule number one:

The most important key to achieving great

success is to decide upon your goal and then

launch. Get started. Take action.

Do something.

Move. A 12-year study at Babson College

concluded that the act of taking the first step is what separates the

losers from the winners or the winners from the losers.

We set out at the age of 20

with $300 each to cross three

continents and travel 17,000 miles from Vancouver

on the West Coast

to Johannesburg in Southern Africa,

and we made it in just under 12 months,

but the most

important step was the first one. All the rest followed from that.

Number two: Once you've

launched towards your goal,

never consider the

possibility of failure. The Germans have a saying,

it's immer vorne,

nie zurück, immer vorne, nie zurück, and it means always forward,

never backward. Always

forward, never backward.

Never consider the possibility of failure.

Every person here is here because

they refused to quit when the going got rough.

Your ability to persist in the face of setbacks and disappointment is vital to

all great achievement, and it's always a decision that you make.

It's not the external environment, it's always the internal environment.

Number three: The biggest goal in the world can be

accomplished if you just take it

one oil barrel at a time.

Thomas Carlyle once wrote that, "Our great business is not to see

what lies dimly at a distance, but

to do what lies clearly at

hand." The only time you will ever have is now.

If you live every day, every

hour, the best you can, the rest will take care

of itself. As the Bible says, "Sufficient unto the day are

the cares thereof."

Number four: Watch out for the naysayers.

The negative people around you are always telling you

that you'll die in the

desert. Get around positive people.

Get around winners like people in this room.

Fly with the eagles and refuse to listen to objections of

reasons why you can't

succeed. Someone once said that if

every possible objection must first be

overcome, nothing will ever get done, and truer words were never

spoken. Uh, number five: Welcome obstacles and

difficulties as valuable and inevitable steps on the

ladder of success.

Remember that difficulties come not to obstruct,

but to instruct.

Difficulties come not to obstruct, but to

instruct. Our trip to Africa was one problem after another.

We ran out of money over and over.

We strained every muscle of our bodies

trying to

ride bicycles across France and Spain.

Our Land Rover broke down again and again.

We suffered from dysentery and heat stroke and exhaustion.

But when it was time, we

were ready for the Sahara crossing.

In retrospect, we saw clearly that without the lessons

that we had learned from our

mistakes, we would have surely died in the desert.

And when you look back on any achievement,

you will find it was preceded by many

difficulties and many lessons. They are the price that you pay

for your success,

and no success is possible without them.

Number six: Be clear about your goal, but be flexible about the process of

achieving it.

Be willing to change, to try something new.

Keep your mind open and fluid and flexible.

Be willing to accept feedback from your

environment and correct your course.

This is a key quality of peak performers. They're

not rigid, they're flexible.

Remember, it's not what you have, but what you do with what you have

that separates

winners from losers. It's not what happens to you,

but how you respond to what

happens to you that counts. In the final analysis,

your response to the

adversity of life is the real

measure of who you are and

what you're made of. The Greek philosopher Epictetus once said

that,

"Circumstances do not make the man or woman,

they merely reveal him

to himself."

And you find out who you really are when you face adversity.

And remember number seven, the last rule is

nobody does it alone.

At every step on our journey across Africa,

people helped us with advice

and with

food and with assistance and with money, but especially with warmth

and with kindness and with generosity.

When life is over, it will be the people that we lived

and laughed and loved with

that we remember more than anything else.

So don't be afraid to ask for help from others.

It's a mark of strength and courage

and character. And don't be reluctant to give of yourself

to others

generously. It's the mark of caring and compassion

and personal greatness.

The reason the Sahara story

was so relevant for me was

that because after the

Sahara, I never felt that there was anything I couldn't do.

I felt programmed for success for life, although

it took me many years to

understand it. And the reason

why this story may be of

interest to you is

because I believe that everyone has a Sahara to cross,

perhaps more than one.

Many of you are crossing

your own Saharas right

now.

Everyone eventually goes through periods of great

difficulty, their own private

hells, their dark nights of the soul.

But it is by facing whatever life

gives us with courage and determination

that we grow more surely toward the stars.

Let me leave you with

the last verse of Carry On.

There are some who drift out in the deserts of doubt,

and some who in negativity wallow.

There are others I know who in

piety go because of a heaven to follow.

But to labor with zest and to give of your best for the

sweetness and joy of the giving, to help folks along with a

hand and a song, why, there's the real sunshine of living.

Carry on, carry on. Fight the good fight and true.

There's big work to do.

Believe in your mission. Greet life with a cheer.

There's big work to do, and that's why you're here. Carry on,

carry on.

Let the world be the better for you.

So at last when you die, let this be

your cry: Carry on, my soul,

carry on.

Ladies and gentlemen,

ladies and gentlemen,

if you will

resolve with whatever life hands you

to carry on, there is

nothing that can stop you from achieving the greatness for which

you were created. Thank you.