i'll bet that you want to be successful in fact i will also wager that you have spent a lot of times
asking yourself the question how can i be successful what is success how can i achieve
the dreams that i have within myself and i just want to begin this talk by congratulating you
because if those are questions you've asked if those are thoughts that you have gone
through your mind i want you to know that you have probably within you a restlessness and a potential
that says to me that you have not yet achieved your maximum success you have not yet probably
arrived to your greatest potential and that's why we're spending time together
because i have a passion a great passion in my life to help people be successful there's no
greater joy that i have than to walk along beside somebody just like you and find out where you are
and then say okay this is where you are but this is where you could be and you look at me and say
john that's exactly what i want i want to go there i want to be there i want to i want to arrive that
to that destination and together we kind of we kind of work it out and and we make it so let's
talk about success you see the first mistake that people make about success is that they somehow
think that it's a destination so they'll come up to me and they'll say john um how do i become a
success how do i arrive to my dream and i can tell that they look at success as something out there
they're here and success is out there and so somehow they think that uh over
time i suppose that if they do the right things they can get there and i the first
thing i want you to know that success is is not a destination it's a journey
think of success as a process let me let me illustrate it and explain it this way
uh if you go to college you work hard and then four or five years depending on what kind of
degree you're working on and in today's society sometimes six or seven years but but eventually
uh you comes the day of graduation and you're all excited and your family is there and your
friends are there and and you're there with your classmates and you've got your cap and your gown
and you know that there's going to be a time in that ceremony where you're going to walk across
stage in the president provost somebody's going to shake your hand hand you a diploma
congratulate you and and you're going to get off the other side they're going to
have presents waiting for you and they'll be taking pictures and everybody will be shaking
your hands say congratulations today you become a success you're a college graduate now my friend
you did not become a success the day that you got your diploma now what you did have
happened to you in that ceremony is you got recognized for success the diploma is recognition
of what you have done the previous four or five years you see you are a success in your freshman
year when you decided to not drop out of school like some of your other classmates and decided
to stick to it and you were a success every time you studied for a test and you were successful
every time you did a project or or did a writing assignment you see you're a success all through
all through school uh your success every day success is a daily thing not a destination thing
the day you got the diploma you just got recognized for the success that you already
were now that's very essential because so many times people have a have a tendency to devalue
the moment today what they do is they greatly value the destination
and so they kind of talk about well when i get there or if i arrive there or when
i do that or when i accomplish this and they don't understand that success is a daily thing
and i'm here to share with you that the secret of success is determined by your daily agenda
in fact i wrote a book a few years ago called today matters i'm passionate about that book
because what it does is it helps you it helps me to understand that we make decisions and then we
manage decisions and and too often we think i will make a decision for example you're saying
i'm going to make a decision to be a coach or i'm going to make a decision
you know what i'm going to make a decision to be a public speaker i want to be a communicator
well congratulate you congratulations you've made a wonderful decision coach speaking good decisions
but that won't make you a successful coach that will make you a successful communicator
it's not the decision that makes you you've got to make the decision by managing it and you manage
the decision on a daily basis in other words what you want to be tomorrow you've got to do
today you visualize tomorrow that gives you hope and that's your motivation and that's your dream
you nothing wrong with that you visualize tomorrow but you value today what's that mean that means
that what i do every day is either getting me closer to that vision that dream that goal or it's
really driving me farther away from it you see every day we are either repairing
or we're preparing you see if i messed up yesterday guess what i get to do today
fix yesterday in other words if i didn't do the right thing yesterday what i got to do today is
i've got to repair i've got to go back make amends backtrack put the car in reverse put my life in
reverse i've got to go back there i've got to repair now every day i spend repairing i'm not
spending preparing well you see we repair when we fail to manage the decisions that we've made
we prepare when we on a daily basis manage the decisions that we've made so your footprints
to success are really footprints of success because every step that is made and taken
based upon the goals that you have for your life and you're managing those goals correctly every
step is the progressive realization of success in your life and by the way you you'll get the
diploma you'll get the certificate but but when you get that you didn't arrive it just is another
step in preparing you to reach your potential each one of us should live our life as if
we'll never learn everything we never need to learn we'll never be able to accomplish everything
we wanted to accomplish we won't be able to experience everything we wanted to experience
we should live our life every day hungry understanding that we are to live until we die
see i think success can't be summarized in a flippant degree or program or diploma or
arrival i think today if you are learning to coach if you are learning to speak if you're doing the
things that are essential to the decisions and you're managing those decisions well can i say
something to you congratulations you are already a success now guess what over time it shows up
you've heard the expression you maybe even said it yourself you've heard the expression i'm sure
i've worked all my life to become an overnight success that's the way it works all of a sudden
somebody recognizes you all of a sudden somebody congratulates you you didn't get good at that
moment you've been good for a long time it just showed up someday so as i walk alongside of you
the reason we have tools and resources and helps and principles that we teach is because every day
we want you to learn every day we want you to grow every day we want you to absorb every day we want
you to do the things that will help you to someday be the person that you want to become the journey
is a delightful experience the only thing better than taking the journey by yourself
is to take the journey with someone else to learn together to grow together
to develop together to be great together that's what i want for you now if you're interested
in that kind of a life a life that experiences and manages success on a daily basis then
go to johnmaxwellteam.com and you and i will take the journey together
i hope you enjoyed the lesson in the first video footprints to follow on the path towards success
of my that's a four part series of making this your best year ever i'm looking forward
to sharing the second video with you on how does someone add personal value to this economy
where i will teach you on just why difficult times require leaders and how having a strong foundation
is key to being a part to build your dream and how uh help discover you and how your assets your
greatest assets can can be challenged during this time and and yet can be developed it's
it's my pleasure to add value to you please let me know what you think by leaving your comments you
i i want to hear from you please also feel free to share these videos with someone else that you wish
to inspire in other words pass it on if it helped you give it to someone else and by all means enjoy