"The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand." - Vince Lombardi

This is a great article by Success Magazine publisher, Darren Hardy! I have been thinking about this topic for a while. Thank you Darren for writing about this!

Darren Hardy helps clear up some of the very dangerous illusions our current culture has created about what it takes to be successful.

There is a common reality to the superachievers Darren has interviewed and featured on the cover of SUCCESS, be it Donald Trump, Dr. Oz, Colin Powell, Donny Deutsch, Suze Orman, Richard Branson, etc — they all are hardworking.

A few important points:

1) They LOVE what they do, so in reality, it’s not really “work.” In fact, most of them would rather be working than laying on a beach somewhere.

David said it well, “…if I’m not working on Saturday, somebody else is. I believe that people who don’t work on the weekends are people who don’t like their job.”

2) They don’t just work to be working; they are still only spending time on high-value productivity strategies. They are advancing their dreams.

3) They do value time off, BUT as a necessity for greater productivity, not for time-off sake’s. This is a super-important distinction. Said another way, time off is a means to the end (accomplishing their passion, dreams and ambitions), not an end or the objective itself. Get it?

American Surplus Has Created American Sloth

From Darren:

I spent some time recently with an immigrant from the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan. He told me about his experience the first time he walked into an American supermarket and saw the endless amount of food available. Then he walked into a Wal-Mart, a 99 cent store, an open-air farmer’s market and all-you-can-eat buffets in Vegas. He said it was so surreal to him he said he literally felt like he was on a different planet, in a different era. Then he told me the story of how he grew up never having enough to eat and what he went through to escape communist Uzbekistan to finally arrive in America completely penniless.

Today, he is incredibly wealthy with an incredible home near the famed Pebble Beach golf course in Carmel, California. He said becoming successful in America was easy. All he knew was working hard. He simply outworked everyone else (he is a very successful developer, started out as a simple carpenter).

This is how he explains how he did it, “Outworking Americans is easy. Everything comes too easy for Americans. They have been spoiled by their riches. They lack the hunger. I know what it is like to be hungry, that is my advantage.”

Don’t buy into the genie in a lamp, sit on your couch and wait to attract the checks in your mailbox, rub crystals, walk on fire, channel a 2000-year-old guru, chant affirmations, ad nauseam “secret” to success. That is hocus-pocus commercialism appealing to your weaknesses, particularly laziness, entitlement, greed, something-for-nothing and the lottery mentality. That’s not the way it works.

Here is what it takes to be successful: HARD WORK!

Read this entire article on Darren’s blog:  http://darrenhardy.success.com/2009/06/hardwork/