1. Desire – This must be distinguished from hope, wish, or interest.  This desire must be burning and driving.  This desire feels as if it has taste, feel, and material.  You must want this thing (whatever it is for you that you desire) with passion and as if it will hurt if you don’t get it.  Your feeling must be almost as if there is no other option except to choose this direction.  That is the nature of this requisite desire.

The good news is that if you don’t have this level of desire, if you choose, you can drive the level up by reading motivational books, talking to mentors, joining support groups, affirmations, and other types of behavioral modification techniques.  If you don’t have that level of desire, I highly suggest you seek another goal

2. Belief – Belief is akin to desire. However, it goes beyond desire.  It is an inner knowing that what you want will happen.  It’s looking ahead any number of years and seeing your dream transform from vision to reality.  Belief is more than vision.  Vision is seeing how something will look or how you want it to look in the future.  Belief is a suspension of doubt and disbelief because something does not exist now.  It is feeling it in every fiber of your being that what you desire will definitely happen.  Belief is that degree of certainty.

This kind of belief requires that you do not worry about “what if.”  You dismiss “what if.  “What if” does not exist.  Actual circumstances have no place in, along side, or near this belief nor do they influence your belief. With this kind of belief you find yourself smiling as you put yourself into the accomplished future because you are enjoying the financial and other benefits of your plans and work.  You think it now and you can feel yourself experiencing it in your future.

3.    Resources –  There are two activities involved regarding resources:

a.    Finding resources – You need to be able to find resources.  These are the supplies, sources, aids, assets, people, references, etc. that you need to start, run, or use to successfully operate your career or business.  

As an example, as President of my scrap iron and metal company, early on in my business, I needed to find a certain type of scrap truck.  I had never purchased a truck of any kind before.  I needed to research, talk to others who had knowledge about trucks and scrap metal hauling trucks, visit the truck dealer, etc. – those were my resources so that I could make an educated purchase.  Another example was when I wanted to find an Advisory Board for Optimal Level.  I had to read books, search the internet, talk to people, make calls, etc. to discover how to go about putting together a functioning and effective Advisory Board.

Finding resources is having the courage, the creativity, the energy to find out from someone or   something how to come up with what you don’t have but know you must have to continue   operating a business or fulfilling the responsibilities of a career.

b.   Using resources – Finding the resource is only the first step.  Equally important is using the resource, implementing what you found.  One example might be the implementation of an IT  company.  That requires interest, observation, diligence, measurement, communication, etc. to make certain that your resource is being used to its fullest and successfully.  An example of using a resource in a career is making full use of your team.  Perhaps you built a team of individuals for a project that you are leading.  You must research, plan, observe, measure, communicate, report, etc. and oversee the use of all of your resources.

Finding and using resources requires more work than desire and belief.  You need to toil to find and use resources.  You must be outgoing enough to ask for help from others.  You must be diligent enough to explore as many possibilities as possible.  You must be somewhat analytical to make the right decisions regarding your resources.  Having the talent to find and use resources is a necessary quality to have for achieving success.

4. Persistence –   You can have all three of the above components and never make it to your goal.  At times during the course of one’s journey toward business or career success, everyone fails; everyone errors; everyone has set-backs, faces crushing obstacles, gets discouraged, feels overwhelmed, and experiences doubt.

The key is to keep going anyway.  I distinctly remember the time in both of my businesses and in other   successful endeavors in my life when I realized I had for the most part made it – gotten to my end.  It   was a kind of comeuppance.  I didn’t know it was coming and suddenly it was there.

I have often heard it said that the light comes right after the greatest darkness.  And, that is how it seemed to me.  When circumstances suggested I should close shop, quit, that’s when I landed that big account or suddenly the money I needed was there.

There is one element I have not mentioned which I believe is inherent in persistence, and that is, hard work.  I know the expression about working smart and not hard and that has a lot of truth in it.  I just have never known of great success without hard work and to me that is a part of persistence.

My favorite way to express the rightness, the perfection of persistence is by using Winston Churchill’s example.  The story goes that he was asked to speak at a graduation commencement.  He went to the dais and said simply, “Never give up.”  He left the stage and people protested and prompted him to go back and say more.  So, he went back to the dais, and said, “Never, never give up.”  No matter how much the audience cajoled, his final message was “Never, never, never give up.”

Most agree that Churchill was pretty successful.  To him and to me, no matter what, keep going…you’ll get there.  That, of course, doesn’t mean you won’t have to change course at some time; it means find a way and keep going.  According to Calvin Coolidge, “Nothing in the world will take the place of persistence…Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”