HANNIBAL
One of the most important decisions you can make to ensure your long-term happiness is to decide to use whatever life gives you in the moment. The truth of the matter is that there's nothing you can't accomplish if: 1) You clearly decide what it is that you're absolutely committed to achieving, 2) You are willing to take massive action, 3) You notice what's working or not, and 4) You continue to change your approach until you achieve what you want, using whatever life gives you along the way. Anyone who's succeeded on a large scale has taken these four steps and followed the Ultimate Success Formula. One of my favorite "Ultimate Success Stories" is Mr. Soichiro Honda, founder of the corporation that bears his name. Like all companies, no matter how large, Honda Corporation began with a decision and a passionate desire to produce a result.
In 1938, while he was still in school, Mr. Honda took everything he owned and invested it in a little workshop where he began to develop his concept of a piston ring. He wanted to sell his work to Toyota Corporation, so he labored day and night, up to his elbows in grease, sleeping in the machine shop, always believing he could produce the result. He even pawned his wife's jewelry to stay in business. But when he finally completed the piston rings and presented them to Toyota, he was told they didn't meet Toyota's standards. He was sent back to school for two years, where he heard the derisive laughter of his instructors and fellow students as they talked about how absurd his designs were. But rather than focusing on the pain of the experience, he decided to continue to focus on his goal. Finally, after two more years, Toyota gave Mr. Honda the contract he'd dreamed of. His passion and belief paid off because he had known what he wanted, taken action, noticed what was working, and kept changing his approach until he got what he wanted. Then a new problem arose. The Japanese government was gearing up for war, and they refused to give him the concrete that was necessary to build his factory. Did he quit there? No. Did he focus on how unfair this was? Did it mean to him that his dream had died? Absolutely not. Again, he decided to utilize the experience, and developed another strategy. He and his team invented a process for creating their own concrete and then built their factory. During the war, it was bombed twice, destroying major portions of the manufacturing facility. Honda's response? He immediately rallied his team, and they picked up the extra gasoline cans that the U.S. fighters had discarded. He called them "gifts from President Truman" because they provided him with the raw materials he needed for his manufacturing process—materials that were unavailable at the time in Japan. Finally, after surviving all of this, an earthquake leveled his factory. Honda decided to sell his piston operation to Toyota.
Here is a man who clearly made strong decisions to succeed. He had a passion for and belief in what he was doing. He had a great strategy. He took massive action. He kept changing his approach, but still he'd not produced the results that he was committed to. Yet he decided to persevere. After the war, a tremendous gasoline shortage hit Japan, and Mr. Honda couldn't even drive his car to get food for his family. Finally, in desperation, he attached a small motor to his bicycle. The next thing he knew, his neighbors were asking if he could make one of his "motorized bikes" for them. One after another, they jumped on the bandwagon until he ran out of motors. He decided to build a plant that would manufacture motors for his new invention, but unfortunately he didn't have the capital.
As before, he made the decision to find a way no matter what! His solution was to appeal to the 18,000 bicycle shop owners in Japan by writing them each a personal letter. He told them how they could play a role in revitalizing Japan through the mobility that his invention could provide, and convinced 5,000 of them to advance the capital he needed. Still, his motorbike sold to only the most hard-core bicycle fans because it was too big and bulky. So he made one final adjustment, and created a much lighter, scaled-down version of his motorbike. He christened it "The Super Cub," and it became an "overnight" success, earning him the Emperor's award. Later, he began to export his motorbikes to the baby boomers of Europe and the United States, following up in the seventies with the cars that have become so popular. Today, the Honda Corporation employs over 100,000 people in both the United States and Japan and is considered one of the biggest car-making empires in Japan, outselling all but Toyota in the United States. It succeeds because one man understood the power of a truly committed decision that is acted upon, no matter what the conditions, on a continuous basis.
Honda certainly knew that sometimes when you make a decision and take action, in the short term it may look like it's not working. In order to succeed, you must have a long-term focus. Most of the challenges that we have in our personal lives—like indulging constantly in overeating, drinking, or smoking, to feeling overwhelmed and giving up on our dreams—come from a short-term focus. Success and failure are not overnight experiences. It's all the small decisions along the way that cause people to fail. It's failure to follow up. It's failure to take action. It's failure to persist. It's failure to manage our mental and emotional states. It's failure to control what we focus on. Conversely, success is the result of making small decisions: deciding to hold yourself to a higher standard, deciding to contribute, deciding to feed your mind rather than allowing the environment to control you—these small decisions create the life experience we call success. No individual or organization that has become successful has done so with short-term focus.
On a national scale, most of the challenges that we're currently experiencing are the result of not thinking of the potential consequences of the decisions we've made. Our crises—the S&L scandal, the challenge in our balance of trade, the budget deficit, our educational malaise, drug and alcohol problems—all are the result of short-term thinking. This is the Niagara Syndrome at its most potent. While you're raging along the river, focusing on the next rock you might hit, you don't—or can't—see far enough ahead of you to avoid the falls. As a society, we're so focused on instantaneous gratification that our short-term solutions often become long-term problems. Our kids have trouble paying attention in school long enough to think, memorize, and learn partly because they've become addicted to instantaneous gratification from constant exposure to things like video games, TV commercials, and MTV. As a nation, we have the highest number of overweight children in history because of our unrelenting pursuit of the quick fix: fast food, instant pudding, and microwave brownies.
In business, too, this kind of short-term focus can be deadly. The whole controversy surrounding the Exxon Valdez disaster could have been averted by making one small decision. Exxon could have outfitted its tankers with double hulls, a proactive decision that would have prevented oil spills in the event of collision. But the oil company chose not to, looking at the immediate rather than long-range impact on its bottom line. Following the crash and resultant spill, Exxon is responsible for paying a whopping $1.1 billion* as some compensation for the devastating economic damage it has caused, not to mention the immeasurable ecological destruction to Alaska and surrounding areas. Deciding to commit yourself to long-term results, rather than short-term fixes, is as important as any decision you'll make in your lifetime. Failing to do this can cause not only massive financial or societal pain, but sometimes even the ultimate personal pain. One young man you may have heard of dropped out of high school because he decided he wasn't going to wait any longer to follow his dream of becoming a famous musician. But this dream didn't become reality quickly enough. In fact, by the time he was twenty-two, he feared that he had made the wrong decision, and that no one would ever love his music. He'd been playing in piano bars, and he was flat broke, sleeping in laundromats because he no longer had a home. The only thing that had been holding him together was his romantic relationship. Then his girlfriend decided to leave him, and when she did, it pushed him over the edge. He immediately focused on how he could never again find another woman as beautiful as she. What this meant to him was that his life was over, so he decided to commit suicide. Fortunately, before doing so, he reconsidered his options and decided instead to check into a mental institution. Spending time there gave him some new references about what real problems were. He later recalled saying, "Ohh, I'll never get that low again." He now declares, "It was one of the best things I ever did because I've never gotten to feel sorry for myself, no matter what's happened. Any problem since then is nothing compared with what I've seen other people go through."* By renewing his commitment and following his dream long-term, he eventually had all that he wanted. His name? Billy Joel.
Can you imagine that this man, whom millions of fans love and supermodel Christie Brinkley married, was ever worried about the quality of his music or finding a woman as beautiful as his exgirlfriend? The key to remember is that what appeared to be impossible in the short term turned into a phenomenal example of success and happiness in the long term. Billy Joel was able to pull himself out of his depression by directing the three decisions that we all control each moment of our lives: what to focus on, what things mean, and what to do in spite of the challenges that may appear to limit us. He raised his standards, backed them up with new beliefs, and implemented the strategies he knew he must. One belief that I've developed to carry me through extremely tough times is simply this: God's delays are not God's denials. Often, what seems impossible in the short term becomes very possible in the long term if you persist. In order to succeed, we need to discipline ourselves to consistently think long term. A metaphor that I use to remind myself of this is comparing life's ups and downs to the changing of the seasons. No season lasts forever because all of life is a cycle of planting, reaping, resting, and renewal. Winter is not infinite: even if you're having challenges today, you can never give up on the coming of spring. For some people, winter means hibernation; for others, it means bobsledding and downhill skiing! You can always just wait out the season, but why not make it into a time to remember?
Thanks for reading
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