Seizing Success

“The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful.” -Henry David Thoreau When I was sixty-eight years old and retired after a long corporate career that my friends and colleagues described as enormously successful, a visit to my childhood home in India provided me a vision both jarring and inspiring. By all external standards I was indeed the embodiment of achievement. Educated as an engineer in India and earning an MBA in management in my adopted United States, for 35 years I had climbed corporate ladders, won promotions and praises, and turned around many struggling businesses around the globe whose solutions have eluded others. Ironic then, that sitting and praying in the modest house where my life began, I discovered the truth about myself, literally plucking it from a pile of dust on the floor. The truth was this: Seen through the eyes of others, I was a remarkable manager and leader. But looking inward that day, I realized I was a lousy manager and leader of myself. On my way back to the USA, I pondered what had happened, and to my astonishment, answers came readily and clearly. I realized that I was like the majority of human beings who see only externally, and want what they see. They spend their lives chasing it, seek to beat others to it, and then feel empty after finding that their “success” was a phantom. The author Eckhart Tolle makes that clear with his parable of a beggar who for years had been sitting on the same box at the side of a road. When a stranger asked him if he had ever looked inside it, the beggar said, "No, but there's nothing in there." The stranger asked him to have a look anyway, and when he pried open the lid the beggar saw that the box was filled with gold. This is what I missed as a younger man, while I carved out my external version of success (but no regrets, as it’s never too late!). I failed to grasp that looking inside melds wisdom of the heart with the power of external learning – a combination in which the sky's the limit for genuine satisfaction and happiness. This book is all about putting the priorities straight or in other words, it is all about putting the horse before the cart so that we can learn to undertake a journey of success which is genuinely fruitful, meaningful, and enjoyable. There are countless books on the subject of success, but with a few exceptions, most approach “success”from the wrong angle. They preach how success can be achieved quickly and retained forever, and are hooked on the methodology and the management of success, not on the most fundamental piece of the puzzle-our mindset of success. Whereas methodology and management of success are essential pieces, the total answer resides in attitude-the mindset that defines the quality of our life and is the architect of our successes and failures. Without the right mindset, methodology and management of success are wasted tools. This book will open the way to solving the mystery of success by focussing on developing a right mindset for success: In the first part of the book, we will seek answers to what success is, where can we find it, and who is going to get us there, and will develop an authentic success mindset model capable of guiding us to our joyful success. In the second part of the book, we will witness our success mindset model in action. This is not a journey we will undertake alone. Accompanying us will be seven great people aroud the globe who will share their personal life stories of discovering and navigating new paths to fulfillment by developing the right mindset. These seven remarkable people represent diverse cultural values and beliefs spanning the Americas, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa. The four men and three women range in age from their 40s to 70-plus, and span a gamut of professionalism, including business, nonprofit organizations, education, leadership, and executive coaching. Their diverse journeys will take us to places where they discovered the true meaning of their personal success. Those places include a refugee camp in the Florida Everglades, the deathbed of a first born in an Australian hospital, the climbing steps of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa, the serenity of Yogaville Ashram in West Virginia, the low-income mill town in northeast Connecticut, the sacred valley of the Incan spirits in Peru, the hospitality management class in Salzburg -Austria, and an elementary school in Trinidad- the West Indies Island. In the third section of the book, we will implant all the learning from the first two sections in contemplating “ten commandments for developing your success mindset,” a step-by-step guide that will help you chart your own path to your success. The goal of this book is simple- to convince you how valuable and indispensable your mindset is to seek, attain, and grow your personal success which is lasting, meaningful, and enjoyable. I want to inspire you to learn putting the horse before the cart in your success journey - not the opposite way I did and spent most of my life chasing phantom success.