Prologue

If you really want to make a habit of success, stop trying to learn from your mistakes. That's the first step!

People do not learn from their mistakes. I have learned that from my research and consultations with over 40,000 men and women over a period of more than twenty years. I have learned, also, that each person has his own way to success and his own kind of success. Your path to greater progress will not be exactly the same as that used by anyone else, even though the principles of achieving success are the same. This book is about the principles, and the Success Factor Analysis techniques based on them.

You can use these principles to build success into your life. They have worked for teen-agers, as well as for retired executives. Age and education are not bars to greater success, nor is the limitation of whatever experience you may have. The basic limitation is your knowledge of your own values, and your willingness to accept the responsibilities of being at your best most of the time.

It was more than twenty years ago that I started my search for these principles. But even in my early teens I was interested in people being happy and enjoying work they could do well, so perhaps my search really started thirty-five years ago. However, since 19401 have trained business executives, government officials, educators and clergymen in the use of these principles for themselves as well as for others. I have taught them to career-puzzled college students—from freshmen to those seeking their doctorates. At the Harvard Business School, these principles were incorporated in a manual recommended to its thousands of alumni. The Society for the Advancement of Management recommended their use to graduating students in over 75 institutions of higher learning throughout the nation. And the American Management Association reported on them to more than 30,000 executive-members in all industries. Every progressive company has started to use these S.F.A. techniques. Most people restrict their own potentialities. Nearly all of us are taught—at home, in our schools, and in most of our religious institutions—certain attitudes that limit our progress. You can see and appreciate these attitudes by taking a trip with me to Wonderland, and listening to a conversation between Alice and the Mad Hatter.

ALICE: Where I come from, people study what they are NOT good at in order to be able to do what they ARE good at.

MAD HATTER: We only go around in circles here in Wonderland; but we always end up where we started. Would you mind explaining yourself?

ALICE: Well, grown-ups tell us to find out what we did wrong, and never to do it again.

MAD HATTER: That's odd! It seems to me that in order to find out about something, you have to study it. And when you study it, you should become better at it. Why should you want to become better at something, and then never do it again? But please continue.

ALICE: Nobody ever tells us to study the right things we do. We're only supposed to learn from the wrong things. But we are permitted to study the right things OTHER people do. And sometimes we're even told to copy them.

MAD HATTER: That's cheating!

ALICE: You're quite right, Mr. Hatter. I do live in a topsy-turvy world. It seems like I have to do something wrong first, in order to learn from that what not to do. And then, by not doing what I'm not supposed to do, perhaps I'll be right. But I'd rather be right the first time wouldn't you?

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