The Ten Times Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure

Chapter 4
Success Is Your Duty
One of the greatest turning points in my life occurred when I stopped casually
waiting for success and instead started to approach it as a duty, obligation, and
responsibility. I literally began to see success as an ethical issue—a duty to my
family, company, and future—rather than as something that may or may not
happen to me. I spent 17 years getting a formal education that was to prepare me
for the world—and not one course was on success. Not once did anyone talk to
me about the importance of success, much less what I had to do in order to get it.
Amazing! Years of education, information, hundreds of books, time in class, and

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money, yet I was still missing a purpose.
However, I was fortunate enough to have two distinct experiences in my life
that served as major wake-up calls. My existence and survival were being
seriously threatened in both cases. The first occurred when I was 25. My life was
a pitiful mess, caused by years of approaching life aimlessly, drifting with no
real purpose or focus. I had no money, plenty of uncertainty, no direction, too
much free time, and still hadn't made a commitment to approach success as an
obligation. Had I not had this realization and gotten serious about my life, I don't
think I would be alive today. You know, you don't need to grow old to die. I was
dying at the age of 20 as a result of no direction and no purpose. At that time, I
couldn't hold a job, had surrounded myself with losers, was terminally hopeless,
and if that weren't enough, using drugs and alcohol on a daily basis. Had I
continued on without a serious wake-up call, I would have continued to live a
mediocre existence at best and probably much worse. Had I not committed to a
life of success, I would not have identified my purpose and would have merely
spent a lifetime fulfilling everyone else's purpose. Let's face it, there are plenty
of people living mere existences, and I should know. At that time in my life, I
was in sales and treated it with disdain. When I committed to sales as a career
and then decided to do whatever I had to in order to become successful at
selling, my life changed.
My second awakening took place at the age of 50, when the economy was
going through the biggest contraction since the Great Depression. Literally every
aspect of my life was being put at risk—as it was for billions of other
individuals, companies, industries, and even entire economies. It became evident
almost overnight that my company was not powerful enough in its sector, and its
future was now in jeopardy. Additionally, my financial well-being was being put
in jeopardy. What others thought was tremendous financial wealth was now in
danger as well. I remember turning on the TV one day and hearing reports about
how unemployment numbers were increasing, wealth was being destroyed due
to stock market and housing corrections, homes were being foreclosed on, banks
were shutting down, and companies were being bailed out by the government. I
realized then that I had put my family, my companies, and myself in a precarious
situation because I had started to rest on my laurels and had discontinued
approaching success as my duty, obligation, and responsibility. I had lost my
focus and purpose.
At both of these pivotal points in my life, I woke up to the fact that success is
important in order to have a full life. In the second case, I realized that greater
quantities of success are necessary than most people calculate, and the continued

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pursuit of success should be approached not as a choice but as an absolute 
must
.
Most people approach success in the same way that I did when I hadn't
committed to it. They look at it as though it doesn't matter—like it's an option or
perhaps just something that only happens to other people. Others settle for just a
little success, believing if they have a “little,” everything will be all right.
Treating success as an option is one of the major reasons why more people
don't create it for themselves—and why most people don't even get close to
living up to their full potential. Ask yourself how close you are to your full
capability. You might not like the answer very much. If you don't consider it
your duty to live up to your potential, then you simply 
won't
. If it doesn't become
an ethical issue for you, then you won't feel obligated and driven to fulfill your
capacity. People don't approach the creation of success as a must-have
obligation, do-or-die mission, gotta-have-it, “hungry-dog-on-the-back-of-a-meat-
truck” mentality. They then spend the rest of their lives making excuses for why
they didn't get it. And that is what happens when you consider success to be an
alternative rather than an obligation.
In my home, we consider success to be vital to our family's future survival. My
wife and I are on the same page with this; we meet often to talk about why it is
so important and determine exactly what we have to do to keep secondary issues
out of the way. I don't just mean success in monetary terms but in every area—
our marriage, health, religion, contributions to the community, and future—even
long after we are gone. You have to approach the notion of success the way good
parents approach their duty to their children; it's an honor, an obligation, and a
priority. Good parents will do whatever it takes to take care of their children.
They will get up in the middle of the night to feed their baby, work as hard as
they have to in order to clothe and feed their children, fight for them, even put
their lives at risk to protect them. This is the same way you must envision
success.