Like most of us, I had been brought up on the popular belief that the secret of success is hard work, but I had seen so many men work hard without succeeding and so many men succeed without working hard that I had become convinced that hard work was not the real secret even though in most cases it might be one of the requirements.
And so I set out on a voyage of discovery which carried me through biographies and autobiographies and all sorts of dissertations on success and the lives of successful men until I finally reached a point at which I realized that the secret I was trying to discover lay not only in what men did, but also in what made them do it.
I realized further that the secret for which I was searching must not only apply to every definition of success, but it must apply to everyone who had ever been successful. In short, I was looking for the common denominator of success.
And because that is exactly what I was looking for, that is exactly what I found.
But this common denominator of success is so big, so powerful, and so vitally important to your future and mine that I'm not going to make a speech about it. I'm just going to "lay it on the line" in words of one syllable, so simple that everyone can understand them.
'The common denominator of success - the secret of success of every man who has ever been successful - lies in the fact that he formed the habit of doing, things that failures don't like to do."
It's just as true as it sounds and it's just as simple as it seems. You can hold it up to the light, you can put it to the acid test, and you can kick it around until it's warn out, but when you are all through with it, it will still be the common denominator of success, whether we like it or not.
If the secret of success lies in forming the habit of doing things that failures don't like to do, let's start the boiling down process by determining what are the things that failures don't like to do.
The things that failures don't like to do are the very things that you and I and other human beings, including successful men, naturally don't like to do. In other words, we've got to realize right from the start that success is something which is achieved by the minority of men, and is therefore unnatural and not to be achieved by following our natural likes and dislikes nor by being guided by our natural preferences and prejudices.
Perhaps you have been discouraged by a feeling that you were born subject to certain dislikes peculiar to you, with which the successful individuals are not afflicted. Perhaps you have wondered why it is that the most successful seem to like to do things that you don't like to do.
They don't! And I think this is the most encouraging statement I have ever offered to a group of individuals.
But if they don't like to do these things, then why do they do them? Because by doing the things don't like to do, they can accomplish the things they want to accomplish. Successful individuals are influenced by the desire for pleasing results. Failures are influenced by the desire for pleasing methods and are inclined to be satisfied with such results as can be obtained by doing things they like to do.
Why are successful individuals able to do things they don't like to do while failures are not? Because successful individuals have a purpose strong enough to make them form the habit of doing things they don't like to do in order to accomplish the purpose they want to accomplish.
*this is not written by me personally*