Want to be more successful? Want to have a better life? Who doesn’t? Fortunately, for those who are interested, there are millions of resources available. Books, audio programs, seminars, and the internet can provide an endless amount of content on “how to be successful.” Experts (and a whole lot of so-called experts) share, and have shared for decades, the keys to success. And they will often present their solution as “the key” to success.
One problem… there is no one single key to success. There are many keys. And one key may be the answer for you, but not the answer for someone else. And to make it even more complicated, one key to success may be the answer for you right now, but may not be the key to your success down the road.
Jack Canfield wrote one of the best books listing many success strategies, with quick and simple explanations of each. It’s called The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. I’ve read it more than once and highly recommend it. *Please note that just reading about the strategies is useless…you must implement the strategies.
One key to success that you do not hear or read about is the one I want to share here in this blog. It is by far the most powerful, most effective, and most efficient strategy you can implement. Drum roll please… Keep things good! Yep, it’s simple, basic, and not very sexy, but keeping things good prevents you from having to scramble, work, and strategize to pull yourself out of a hole.
Most people seek out keys to success when they are in a bad place. They wait until things are bad, when they are struggling, when things are falling apart, then try to do what they have to in order to get things back on track. A much simpler solution is to prevent things from getting bad.
I could show you exactly how to lose the 30-40 pounds you’ve packed on since college, but wouldn’t it have been much easier to have never gained it in the first place? You could see a marriage counselor and work to rebuild the passion, love, and trust that has been lost in your marriage, but doesn’t it make great sense to have done the things necessary to never have lost those along the way? And wouldn’t it be much easier to properly manage your money in a way that you’re not having to scrape by, or frantically grasp at a way to figure out how to retire comfortably as you get close to retirement age?
Keeping things good requires much less energy than trying to regain, rebuild, or fix things once they’re bad. This “key” to success requires a few sub-keys. First, know that if you are not actively and consciously doing things on a regular basis to keep things good, then they are slowly getting bad. This is tricky, because you seldom realize they are getting bad until they are really bad. And by then, a lot of work is required to get thing back to where they were.
Second, doing work to keep things good isn’t super noticeable. It’s not always easy because you don’t get to see a big impact from doing the little things each day, making it less exciting. Keeping a garage neat and organized by continuously putting things back where you found them and regularly straightening and organizing doesn’t have the same impact as seeing it all neat and organized after it had been left to get completely disastrous.
And third, for some reason, it is human nature to let things go until they require attention. We are simply not great at maintaining. It’s more likely that we wait until things get bad and then hustling to make them better again.
Now I know that this key to success is useless in areas that are already bad. For those, I would recommend reading Canfield’s book and get to work on making the bad things better again. But for the things that are good (and hopefully great) in your life, take the time, expend the energy, and make it a priority to do the things you need to do to keep them that way. Sharing this concept with kids is a great idea. As they have their more youthful, fit bodies, as they embark on a new job, as they have yet to experience a financial crisis, and as they still have their life’s hopes and dreams, encourage them to do whatever necessary to keep from losing them.
We have all heard that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. How true that is!