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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.