PRELUDE TO STEP ONE
WHAT DO YOU
WANT TO DO?
Decision is the spark that ignites action. Until a decision is made, nothing happens.
—WILFREDM A. PETERSON
The road to success begins with the question: What do you want to do? You’ve heard that question often. You come home Friday evening and your spouse asks, “What do you want to do this weekend?” and you shrug and say, “I don’t know. What do you want to do?”
And since neither of you is willing to make a decision, you end up doing nothing in particular. Before you know it, it’s Monday again and all you’ve accomplished is getting the Sunday paper read.
You heard the question when you were in high school. Maybe you were on summer break and your best friend asked, “Whatta you wanna do?” and you shrugged and said, “I dunno. Whatta you wanna do?” and because neither of you came up with an answer you spent the summer goofing off. Soon it was time to go back to school and you had little to show for the summer, except perhaps a sunburn.
Many people let their early adulthood slip away in just this way. They party through their twenties, drifting from one good time to another, never really answering the question “What do you want to do?” Then suddenly they’re facing their thirtieth birthdays, or their thirty-fifth or their fortieth. They begin to feel the weight of responsibility. They know they can’t keep drifting through life. They have families, mortgages, and orthodontist’s bills. They have to do something with their lives. But what?
The earlier you confront that question, the better, but it’s never too late. At whatever age you find yourself, you can decide what you want to do with the rest of your life, and begin doing it. The first step is making the decision.
If you’re a young person, don’t think that you have to give up the joys of youth for the rigors of work and study. Success is not an either/or proposition: either work or pleasure; either the party or the grindstone. Success consists of finding a happy balance between work and pleasure. In fact, truly successful people make their work a part of their pleasure. They decide what they want from life, and they choose their careers in harmony with those decisions. They base their career choices on what they enjoy doing, not on what they have to do.
What is success? That’s a question you have to answer for yourself. No one else can define success for you. Luciano Pavarotti’s mother wanted him to become a banker. But that wasn’t Pavarotti’s definition of success. He wrote his own definition and became what he wanted to be: a great operatic tenor.
For Donald Trump, success meant making lots of money. For Ted Turner, it meant building a media empire that could challenge the major networks. For Albert Einstein it meant unraveling the secrets of the universe. For Henry Aaron it meant surpassing Babe Ruth’s record of 714 lifetime home runs. For Mother Teresa it meant ministering to the needs of the destitute in India. What will it take to make you feel successful?
You won’t really succeed unless the things you accomplish bring you pleasure and satisfaction. What good would it do you to win an all-expense-paid Caribbean cruise if you hated sunshine and water and were terrified of ships? How satisfying would it be for you to be nominated for a seat in your state legislature if you hated politics? How excited would you be over a promotion to sales manager if your real interests lay in research and development?
So you begin your climb to success by deciding what success means for you. You lay the foundation for that decision by asking three questions:
When you identify something that you do well, that you enjoy doing, and that supports values important to you, you have defined success in your terms.