What Is Success?
Before we can discuss the three simple rules to success, we have to define the word.
To most people, "success" means money and the things money can buy — cars, boats, mansions. To others it means marriage, family, health, or any number of worthy areas in which we desire to excel.
The best definition of success I have ever heard comes from the late, great Earl Nightingale:
Success is the progressive realization of a worthwhile goal.
Give that definition some time and thought. It deserves it. Commit it to memory. It will serve you well.
If we adopt that definition — and I encourage you to make it your own — it brings a few things into sharp focus. We have to have goals, they must be worthwhile to us, and we must be making measurable progress toward them. No benchmarks, no goal. No timetable, no progress. If you can't measure it, you can't know if you're succeeding.
Why "Simple"?
The word "simple" in "The Three Simple Rules to Success" is very important.
Back in the garden of Eden, God gave Adam and Eve one simple rule: don't eat of the tree that is in the midst of the garden. He also gave them the consequences for breaking it. You're going to die. You know the story. The rule was broken. They were kicked out of the garden — cut off from a place that provided everything they would ever need, including direct access to God. One strike and they were out.
The Three Simple Rules to Success are equally simple. Follow them and you will begin to succeed. Break them, modify them, test their outer limits — and you're out. Once you know these rules, you'll see them everywhere. You'll notice that everyone who follows them succeeds. Everyone who breaks them falls short, to the exact degree that they break them.
It really is that simple.
