The Roads to Personal Success

... seem to run in parallel.

Recently, I've taken to reading books (and listening to audiobooks) on achieving personal success and satisfaction. This stems from some work I'm doing with two of our children trying to help them set goals and develop plans for their own success. In the process of doing it, I've gotten interested in it myself. At work, I recently got the job I've spent years aiming for and now I find myself needing a new set of career goals.

To start, here's my current reading and listening list.

• The Strangest Secret


• Goals : Setting And Achieving Them On Schedule


• Goals! How to Get Everything You Want--Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible


• Better Than Good: Creating a Life You Can't Wait to Live


• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People


• Think and Grow Rich

They all have common themes.

• You need a roadmap for success.


• You need written goals with a written plan to get to your goal.


• Your plan should have dates associated with it.


• Your plan should have lots of small steps to achieve your goal.


• Your goals need to be your own, not someone else's.


• You can't blame other people for your problems. We've all got obstacles to overcome, so overcome them and don't waste time complaining about it.


• You have to have integrity in dealing with other people. Contrary to what you see in popular culture, most successful people are extremely honest and giving.

When I started down this path of reading and listening to these, I didn't realize how much they would have in common. To me, that's another indication that human lives have more similarities than differences. I found that through personal failure - I've come to the conclusion that there really aren't that many ways to screw things up and those ways are pretty well codified in Christianity as sins.

I've skipped many of the steps listed above in my own life, particularly the parts about writing things down. I've got the feeling that if I had done so, I could have achieved the successes I have in a much shorter period of time. It's hard to argue with multiple authors writing conclusions from independent research.

Just thought I'd share.