Success Requires Down Payment

At one of my business seminars, I put this question to the audience:

Why is success so difficult to achieve?

A few hands went up. One said it was because the secret of success is hidden. Another said the price of success is high. While the third person observed: “Success demands patience and most people don’t have it.

All three of them are correct; although, I have to point out that the secret of success is not so much hidden as our lack of desire to use it (the secret) when it is pointed out to us.

Let me illustrate the point with a story I was told by a SuccessDigest subscriber.

The subscriber let’s call him Smart, had just received the sixth issue of the magazine. Going through it as usual, he found that many of the topics in this particular issue would be helpful to a friend of his who didn’t have a job and moaned about his lack of opportunity every day.

So he went to a newsstand and bought a copy of the magazine which he presented to his friend. Mr. Friend was so glad about the gift, and within days, he had read every topic in the magazine. So what did he do next? According to Smart, Mr. Friend turned up at his house in the first week of the following month to ask if he had a copy of the new edition of Success Digest.

Smart said to me:

‘Would you believe that? This guy was either expecting to share my copy with me or me buying him the new edition.”

“Perhaps he didn’t have money to buy a copy,” I suggested.

“He does!” Smart exclaimed.”

“This guy buys soft sell magazines regularly. So he can’t claim he doesn’t have money to buy SuccessDigest.“

People like Smart’s friends are all over the place. A solid 80 percent of people in the world are in this category. They have been exposed to the secret of success. They know what steps they need to take to succeed.

But you will never find them taking those steps. Instead, they will moan about how life is dealing them the wrong hand.

Recently, I had a conversation with somebody who claimed that as much as he found SuccessDigest useful, the cover price of N100 was too high. Then, without perhaps thinking deeply about the statement, he blurted out: “I can’t afford it.”

Poor soul, I said to myself I wish he knew that the few people who have ever succeeded have had to pay a heavy price for their success.

You see: Success is an unforgiving taskmaster: you have to pay it upfront before it submits itself to you.

Consider that statement once again: If you are not prepared to make a down payment for success you will NEVER achieve it. If you walk into a restaurant, without putting a kobo on the table, you will have quite a few people running around to satisfy you. Acting like a king, you will order the food you like and a choice of wine to go with it. It is only after you have enjoyed your meal that you are asked to pay for it.

The same thing goes for a taxi ride. You hail a cab, tell the driver your destination and if he feels like taking you there, he ushers you into the car. The ride could take up to one or two hours and the driver will not demand a kobo from you. Even if the tank became empty and needed some gas or there was a flat tyre that needed to be mended, the driver would not turn to you for money. He would fund the journey all the way to your destination. Then he would ask you to pay up.

Success or whatever it is we describe as such does not function that way: You have to have the right price and pay it upfront before you can woo it to your side.

Still wondering why a solid 80% of the people of the world find it difficult to attract success? Most people would prefer the restaurant situation where they can first enjoy their food and then pay later. It would have been a great thing really if success could be attained like that.

But the incontrovertible fact is that we have to toil hard on anything we want to achieve success in before we earn it.

Now that you know, are you willing to pay the price of success up front?

Say yes to that because you have no other option if you really want to succeed.

Quote:

“Success or whatever it is we describe as such does not function that way: You have to have the right price and pay it upfront before you can woo it to your side. Still, wondering why a solid 80% of the people of the world find it difficult to attract success? Most people would prefer the restaurant situation where they can first enjoy their food and then pay later”