The Road Less Travelled

Below is the name list of famous people, please count how many names that you are familiar with. Here you go: Abraham Lincoln, Al Pacino , Albert Einstein, Andrew Carnegie, Anna Beiler, Benjamin Franklin, Bill Gates, Celine Dion, Charles Dickens, Christopher Columbus, Cindy Crawford, Colonel Harlan Sanders, Eminem, Frank Sinatra, Frederick Henry Royce, George Foremen, George Washington, Harry Houdini, Henry Ford, Henry J. Kaiser, Jerry Lewis, Jim Carrey, John Glenn, John D. Rockefeller Sr, John Woo, John Travolta, Madonna, Marilyn Monroe, Michael Dell, Miura Kazuyoshi, Peter Jackson, Princess Diana, Ray Charles, Ray Kroc, Richard Branson, Ronald Reagan, Simon Cowell, Sir Francis Drake, Souchiro Honda, Steve Martin, Steve Jobs, Steven Spielberg, Sydney Poitier, Ted Turner, Thomas Alva Edison, Tom Cruise, Uma Thurman, Vincent Van Gogh, Walt Disney, Whoopie Goldberg, William Shakespeare, and Wright brothers.

Now, my question: "Do you know another SIMILIARITY between those people I listed above except that they are VERY SUCCESSFUL in their life ?" Well, I know you all are smart people and some of you may answer it correctly. The answer is: "They Were School Dropouts". By definition school dropouts means: "people who have very little education background or did not complete highschool/college/university".

Now their names are associated with SUCCESS. They are viewed as highly respected people and even considered as GIANTS in their area of expertise. But do you know that at some point in their life, there was a time that they were considered as failures by moving away from the conventional education system ? So how come failures can rise up to becoming very successful, surpassing the others that have higher qualification, and to some extend playing active roles in shaping history ? Does it mean that there is something wrong with our education systems ? And this may excite some students: "So whats the point of going to school then ?" Those were the thoughts that came through my mind after learning those facts. So I did a small research, focusing on the question "what make these so called failures becoming very successful" and I found out that those extraordinary people took a "different road" to reach their success. It is a road that may not be so popular and definetely not a "comfortable" one to take. And yes, I called it "THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED". Discovering this road is very essential if we want to be successful like them. Anthony Robbins, the world renown life coach and motivational speaker, says "success leaves clues". It means there must be something that the successful people do that differentiate them from the others. By modeling and learning from them, we will understand their success patterns, which if we follow will eventually make us to be successful too.

From seminars and motivational books we know that in order to be successful you need the following qualities: VISION, PASSION, HARD WORK, TRUSTWORTHY, ABILITY TO BRING VALUE, WILLINGNESS TO TAKE RISK, SEIZING OPPORTUNITIES, LEADERSHIP, and PEOPLE SKILL. They all are a MUST to have if we want to be successful. But I will not cover them here today to avoid information congestion. So I highly recommend you to seek the books and attend seminars that cover those topics. What I am going to cover today in my "Road Less Travelled" are the additional 4 qualities. They are: LIFE LONG LEARNING, FAILURE, PRESERVERANCE, and SUPPORT FROM OTHERS.

So lets start with LIFE LONG LEARNING. In the concept of life long learning, it is stated that you can never be too old or too late to learn. Those individuals I stated above may not have enough formal education, but I tell you what... they still LEARNED. Quoted from one of the source I read: "Ultimately, what distinguishes those successful individuals from the rest of us is their passion for learning that transcends the structured environment of the classroom. Instead of limiting their education to formal schooling, they were curious about the world around them. With their fearless spirit of exploration and their desire to experiment, these individuals discovered their true passions and strengths, which they built upon to achieve success later in life." Wow... very well said. So being a school dropouts doesn't give us an excuse to stop from learning. Learning is a fun process only if the topic is interesting to us. And by nature we all love to learn something. So lets have that love again in our life today.

The next wonderful thing in the road less travelled is FAILURE. For most people, after facing failures they become "affraid to try again" and just stay where they are. I also heard from someone that by nature human has ability to conquer failure and learn from it if they are triggerred correctly. Those successful individuals have more failures than most of us have and they have them so many, up to the point where they feel "immune". One of the example of successful people with so many failures is Abraham Lincoln (the greatest US president). What differentiate those outstanding individuals from the rest of us is that they can "MAKE USE" their failures for their own benefits. Failures are there to tell us there are something we need to fix and improve. It is a wrong concept to see failures as barrier to our success. It should be used as a mirror to see who we are and what we are lacking of. We all know that in order to live a victorious life we need to keep on trying and trying. The famous words for this statement are "NEVER GIVE UP". The truth is we can only realize it if we can overcome our failures. So lets accept the fact that our past failures did happen not by chance and lets choose to learn from it. I know that failures brought pain and it is not easy to deal with. So let me quoted what Anthony Robbins said: "There 2 two motivations that drive people to reach success. The first one is the desire for pleasure and the other one is running away from pain" And to be honest... sometimes we need a quite significant amount of pain before we do something about it. So maybe for some of us we just need to "have more failures or painful experiences" as remedy.

The third quality is called PERSEVERANCE. It means "persistent determintation to do/reach something". In the journey of reaching their success those success people faced many obstacles. But instead of being defeated by their circumstances they were persistent in finding the solutions. Some examples are: Collonel Sanders (founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken) was rejected 1008 times before finally convinced someone to invest on his recipe and business ideas. And Thomas Edison tried between 3,000 - 10,000 testings before he succeed inventing the bulb for commercial use. In Chinese proverbs there is a saying "even a mountain can be moved, if we move one stone at a time".

Finally the last point of the day is the SUPPORT FROM OTHERS. For every successful people I listed above, there is someone who support and believe in them. Often these are the people that are very close and always with them through thick and thin. In the case of Thomas Alva Edison, it is his mother that believes in him sincerely, no matter what other people think about him. For Bill Gates, it is his partner Paul Allen that share the same vision with him. One of the pastor in my church said: "Our success is directly associated with the people that surround us". If we are surrounded by negative people who always try to pull us down then most probably we will go nowhere. But if we are surrounded by people that support and believe in us, then we will be motivated to reach our success. Because of these supportive individuals we can be more than what we thought we could be. Because of them we can boost our self esteem. Because of them we feel it is worth to keep on trying. And because of them we know that we are not alone. These supportive people are the treasures God gave us in this life.

So friends... just remember that you too have all what you need to be successful. The only question is whether you want to take action or not. I strongly believe that one day you and I can be very successful like those outstanding individuals, then ultimately becoming world shakers and history makers. If you can imagine the road to success is like a staircase then let me say this to you for now: "I will see you up there" ^^. God bless you and your loved ones !!!

UYMG Malaysia 2008

UMYG Malaysia rocks !!!!

We learned a lot from Stephen Pierce and many other speakers like: Mike Filsaime, Greg Cesar, Dave Lakhani, Chris Guerriero, Inanna Lawton, and Jason Tay. We learnt a lot of techniques to generate LOTS of traffic to our website, and how to make more money through Internet. This is one of the exercise that is used in the seminar. So stay tuned.

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