What Is The #1 Success Strategy?

Farming and agriculture were central to the ancient Egyptian society and, with the exception of royalty, nobility, and the scribes, most of the population was directly involved with farming in one aspect or another. Members of the nobility were involved on the economic side, as they often owned the farmland and supervised the farming process.

The farmers were quite busy most of the year because the growing season lasted between eight to nine months. However, unless a farmer was called up into army service or public works, he did have a period of respite during the flood season. At the height of the floods, usually around mid-August, each farmer would row a small boat around his land and close the vents in the surrounding dykes. Once the Nile subsided, the water would slowly run off, leaving behind all the fertile mud and silt which then soaked down deep into the soil.

The routine of this ancient way of life was perfectly normal—after all, what else should a country with excellent weather, perfect soil, and the legendary Nile River focus on if not agriculture?

So, what is the lesson here?

Leverage your natural forces! If you leverage your strengths, your weaknesses will dissolve. That means finding a position in life where you can maximize your strengths and thereby minimize your weaknesses.

Imagine a man who was born with a natural gift for writing, but one day he decides he wants to become a public speaker instead. Unfortunately, he has problems with the tone and clarity of his voice, and he stutters. So what does he do? He enrolls in a voice training class to improve his speaking voice and works with a speech therapist to overcome his lifelong stutter—not to mention to overcome his natural shyness!

But the result of all this training is that he ends up being just an average speaker!

If this man had instead followed another strategy in which he developed his natural writing talent and strengthened his expertise in that field, the result would have been completely different. And who knows—if he had leveraged his innate gift for writing, he may have won a Nobel prize some day!

Think about the wise words of Benjamin Franklin: “Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What's a sundial in the shade?”

Each one of us has at least one special talent that corresponds to our true purpose in life. Don’t even think about working on your weaknesses until you master your strengths and position yourself where they can be fully utilized. The moment we try to become someone else just to please others or get attention is the moment we lose our personal power.

Instead, apply the #1 SUCCESS STRATEGY which is to STRENGTHEN YOUR STRENGTHS!

You can do that by putting the 80/20 principle into action. The 80/20 principle states that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. Your VERY SPECIAL talents and innate gifts constitute 20% of your overall personal skills and traits. So the practical application of the 80/20 principle implies that you need to spend 80% of your effort and time on developing and maximizing your 20% special talents and strengths, because from them you’ll achieve maximum results. Leveraging what you already have is the natural and most logical approach to making it BIG in life.

If your weakness is an issue, then try to find someone to help you with it. For example, English is not my native language and I find it difficult to give life to and draw pictures with my writing. Instead of spending thousands of hours trying to develop my writing skills, I focused on strengthening my expertise and writing down my thoughts as they come to me. Then I found an amazing and PASSIONATE editor to work with me and edit every article I write. She gives my writing its solid structure and beautiful rhythm. Together we form a very strong team because each one of us is leveraging his or her own strengths. I have a passion for success wisdom and she has a passion for editing. So we work great together—I get my thoughts on paper and she gives them life and power! And the results speak for themselves.

You can’t be EXCELLENT at everything. You can only be excellent at the few talents that were planted within you to help you fulfill your purpose in life. If you believe that you were born ready to succeed and fulfill your purpose—that you are already VERY WELL equipped with the talents you need to do so—then you will be able to release the ultimate power of YOU.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said, “A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.”

Find your talents and nurture them, then put them to use. Position yourself in a way that allows you to leverage the natural forces of your environment and trends of the time and follow the path of least resistance to get where you want to go. If you execute your talents, you’ll find that you will reap faster and better results, and happiness will follow.

The Pharaohs leveraged the natural forces of their environment to build the longest lasting civilization in history. And that is the key to everlasting success, too.

STRENGTHEN YOUR STRENGTHS!