Nobody drifts to success

Posted by Faizel Mohidin on May 8, 2010 in Mind Mapping, Personal Mind Maps | 0 comments

Napoleon Hill, the author of ‘Think and Grow Rich’, stated that you don’t have to be a fortune teller to be able to predict someone’s future. You can do so by asking him or her one simple question: ‘What is your one definite purpose in life – and what plans have you made to attain it?”

He goes on to say that if you asked 100 people this question, 98% will say something like, “I’d like to make a good living and become as successful as I can.”

He believes that while this sounds good on the surface, if you dig a little deeper, you will find a drifter who will never get anything out of life except the leftovers of truly successful people – Those who have a definite purpose and a plan for attaining it.

To be successful, you have to decide exactly what your goal is and lay out the steps by which you intend to reach it.

Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich is attributed by some to be the book that created more millionaires than any other book. While his principles may work if you want to be a millionaire, it also works for the achievement of anything in life. At the core of his principles, is the fact that we are the master of our own destiny, the captain of our ship.

In the movie ‘Invictus‘, Nelson Mandela, the great South African leader and visionary, is portrayed as living by the following mantra:
 ’…I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul…”

This quote comes from the poem ‘Invictus’ by William Ernest Henley, who himself survived tuberculosis of the bone at the age of twelve and had to have a leg amputated when he was 25. In the 1800′s, this was something that many people didn’t survive, but he went on to lead an active life until he died.

It is stated that Nelson Mandela had this poem written on a scrap of paper in his prison cell, while he was incarcerated. Imagine being imprisoned for 27 years because of your principles and still holding on to the belief that you are the captain of your soul!

If you continued with the comparison of human beings to ships, the following analogy may be useful:

Picture a ship without a rudder, drifting wherever the tide may take it. What chance has that ship got in drifting into a rich and prosperous port? If, on the other hand, you were on a ship with a captain on board, went up to him and asked him where he was going, he will be able to answer you in one sentence.

I have in a few articles before, mentioned how valuable Mind Maps can be in charting your course. You could use Mind Maps to firstly build your vision, and then set SMART Goals to achieve them.

Start by visualizing small successes and then move on to bigger and bigger ones. You don’t have to define success in money terms, like Napoleon Hill does, but do go ahead and define what success means to you.

To Nelson Mandela, it meant the freedom of a nation!

In many people the desire for wealth is just not great enough, but they may want spiritual success, or overcome some bad childhood experiences. Whatever your idea of success is, build your vision for the future, set those goals, put your plan in place, and…