Perhaps the greatest enemy of personal success is explained by the Law of Least Resistance. Just as water flows downhill, most people continually seek the fastest and easiest way to get what they want, with very little thought or concern for the long-term consequences of their behavior. This natural tendency of people to take the easy way explains most underachievement and failure in adult life.

If you want to become physically fit, there is only one way. You must exercise two hundred minutes or more per week. For all-around fitness, you must engage in stretching exercises, strength-building exercises, and aerobic exercises. You must exercise your upper body and your lower body. And just like brushing your teeth or bathing, you have to do it throughout your life.118

If you want to become mentally fit to maintain and increase your earning ability, you have to work out mentally as well. You have to read and study in your field each day. You have to keep current with what is going on in your industry. You have to listen to educational CDs rather than the radio in your car. You have to turn off the television and use your time to improve yourself personally and professionally. You have to resist the pull of the path of least resistance every single day.

Something for Nothing

One of the most powerful desires in humans is to get something for nothing or for as little as possible. It is tragic to see how many people are misled because of their hope or fantasy about somehow acquiring money quickly and easily. Tragically, the get-rich-quick and something-for-nothing people go from one easy-money scheme to another and ultimately end up with empty pockets and holes in their shoes.

Malcolm Forbes once wrote, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

Be Prepared to Pay the Price

Nothing is as easy as it looks at the start. Nothing worthwhile is simple. Every great accomplishment is the result of hundreds and thousands of small efforts that nobody ever sees or appreciates. Every great fortune is the result of many years of hard work and experience; of sixty, seventy- and eighty-hour weeks; of years without vacations and with countless setbacks, disappointments, unexpected turbulence, and headwinds.

Every so often, you read in the newspaper about people who start a high-tech company, or a dot-com like Google or YouTube, and become fabulously wealthy in a short period of time. But out of the twenty-six million businesses in America alone, these people represent a tiny fraction of 1 percent. They are written about in newspapers because they are so rare. Most enduring wealth is made up of serious money, accumulated slowly and carefully over a long period of time.

Practice the Four Cs of Flying

When you learn to fly a small plane, you are taught the “four Cs” to use if you get lost. These are “confess,” “climb,” “confirm,” and “comply.”

Face the Truth

The first C is “confess.” As soon as you realize that you are lost, that you no longer know where you are flying by visual flight rules, you should contact the nearest tower and confess that you have a problem. In some situations, pilots of small planes, rather than admitting that they were lost, continued to fly in ever-widening circles until they ran out of gas and crashed.120

Whenever you have a problem in your business or financial life, be prepared to confess this to someone who can help you. If you have a financial problem in your business, immediately tell your banker what is going on. Your banker has seen this type of situation hundreds of times and will be flexible with you. But bankers hate surprises.

They don’t want to learn too late that you cannot make your agreed-upon payments.

If your business is in trouble, don’t be reluctant to find someone else in your same type of business and ask for advice. Most problems in business have been experienced countless times. Most of these problems have been solved countless times as well. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Ask an experienced person for advice and counsel. Keep your ego out of the way.

Develop Proper Perspective

The second C is “climb.” In an airplane, this means that you climb as high as you can so that you can see more of the landscape and maybe even find your bearings once more.

In your personal and business life, the equivalent of climbing is standing back from what you are doing and being completely honest with yourself regarding your situation and your problems. Act as your own consultant. Ask objective questions, such as the ones we have already discussed. Practice zero-based thinking. Refuse to get emotionally involved when things go sideways, as they always will.121

Your ability to remain calm, cool, and confident will enable you to deal with any problem with a clear head and a focused mind.

Be Honest and Straightforward

The third C is “confirm.” Tell the nearest radio tower who you are and what you can see. Answer the operator’s questions honestly and objectively and to the best of your ability. Leave nothing out. The more information the operator has, the more likely it is that he or she will be able to help you get back on course.

In life, when you find yourself driven off course for whatever reason, immediately tell all the people who are involved. If you have a business problem, tell your staff exactly what it is and what you are doing to solve it. If you have a delivery or production problem, immediately call your customers and let them know what is going on. Don’t be secretive. Don’t keep vital information to yourself.

One of the most important truths in life and business is that everybody knows everything. There are no secrets. As soon as something happens, people begin talking about it, from one person to another. Rumors spread at incredible speed and get to the worst possible person who can hear them. Tell people before they hear it from someone else.122

When you were a child playing in the neighborhood and you broke a neighbor’s window, the rule was this: “Beat the news home.” You had to be sure that you got home and told your father or mother what had happened before the neighbor did. Parents don’t like surprises either.

In your work and personal life, you should also beat the news home. Practice a “no surprises” policy. This insistence on your part of being open, honest, and direct will earn you a reputation for honesty and integrity. People will trust you and believe you and be willing to support you much more than if they find out the bad news on their own. Remember, if you want people to trust you, the first requirement is that you must be trustworthy.

Take the Advice of the Experts

The last C is “comply.” You do whatever the tower operator tells you to do if you are lost in a small plane. You don’t argue, debate, or attempt to second-guess the expert. You follow his or her instructions to the letter. The operator has only one goal, and that is to help you to get safely back to the ground. In your business and personal life, the situation is very much the same. When you ask for advice from your bankers, lawyers, accountants, or business advisors, you should be prepared to follow their advice immediately to deal with your current situation. This doesn’t mean that you should follow their advice blindly, but it does mean that you should act immediately to apply the advice if it makes sense to you and will help you solve your problem.123

Be prepared to pay the full price of success in advance. Resist the natural temptation to get rich quick or get something for nothing. In the final analysis, the only way for you to achieve your goals is to make a valuable contribution, to add value of some kind. Never try to get rewards without working or to get anything that you are not entitled to by virtue of hard, hard work.