The pursuit of success is not glamorous, requires an enormous amount of patience and is fraught with pitfalls, obstacles, mistakes and failures. It requires persistence to achieve success. Those very few who succeed, do so because they do not quit. There is an 80:20 Rule that applies to pursuing success. This rule states that the first 80% of your efforts will only move you 20% closer toward achieving your goal or life dream. The remaining 20% of your efforts, however, is what makes the difference in getting you the rest of the way; the remaining 80%. Those who succeed, do so because they persist where others quit. That’s how success happens. You only find out how amazing you are when your back is up against the wall and your dream feels like it’s collapsing under the weight of all of your failures and mistakes. When you are about ready to quit, but don’t, that is when success happens.

Achieving success in any field is a long, slow process of continuous self-improvement. It is the byproduct of incremental, almost imperceptible, daily improvement that, over time, enables you to grow into the person you need to become in order to realize success. This slow and steady process is very much like the accumulation of snowflakes on a mountainside, which build and build, eventually leading to an avalanche…. an avalanche of success.

As crazy as it may sound, you want success to take a long time. The longer you pursue success, the more you will learn from your mistakes and failures. Those who pursue success for a long time, build a very deep foundation upon which their success is built. Thus, the longer success takes, the higher and greater will your success be. Those who seek instant success realize little success because the foundation upon which their success was build is shallow.

When you are in pursuit of a big goal, life dream or following your main purpose in life, you will fail if you do not believe in yourself to such a degree that nothing will stop you. You must be willing to walk through hell to achieve the end you desire. You must be persistent to such a degree that no obstacle, no person, no failure or mistake will stop you. You must reach the point where you are simply unstoppable.

There’s no such thing as an easy path to success. Success take time; years, decades sometimes. Successful people understand this. Instead of diet pills, the easier, less effective path to weight loss, they take the harder, more effective path to weight loss by carefully tracking what they eat and spending many hours a week exercising aerobically. Instead of playing the lottery, the easier, highly improbable path to wealth, they take the harder, more effective path to wealth creation by pursuing goals and dreams that require a great deal of time, effort and sacrifice. Successful people know one simple fact of life that most everybody else does not seem to know: success requires that you consistently do the little things you don’t want to do.

Which path will you choose?

Successful people subscribe to the Can Do ideology. This ideology believes in individual responsibility, self-sufficiency, the notion that we shape our life circumstances and the American Dream. Those who subscribe to this ideology believe they are entitled to the wealth they create.

People who struggle financially in life believe in the Can’t Do ideology. This ideology believes we are all victims. Victims of the circumstances we were born into, victims of Wall Street, government, the rich, the bad economy, bad luck etc. Those who subscribe to this ideology advocate for a redistribution of wealth.

Can Do or Can’t Do? Which ideology do you subscribe to?

Success requires that you take well-thought-out risks. There is a world of difference, however, between well-thought-out risks and gambling. Well-thought-out risks require sacrifice, persistence, hard work and focus. Gamblers are looking for the fast track to success. Gamblers seek the easy path to success. They want something for nothing.

The willingness to take well-thought-out risks, with no guarantees of success, takes courage. Courage is the opposite of fear. It is the act of moving forward toward a goal, purpose or life dream knowing you might fail. Successful people, on their journey towards achieving success, are willing to take well-thought-out risks. The risks are usually an enormous amount of time and money.

Those who are unwilling to take well-thought-out risks will never achieve success in life. Fortune favors the brave souls who, despite their fears of failure, march onward toward success.