Thinking About Success

      To become successful there are four key components needed.  The first, and the most important is hard work.  Hard work is the most important because it is the one thing that you can control 100% of the the time.  In order to become a great ping pong player I spent hours upon hours playing against my brother, learning new ways to play, why I was losing, and what I could do to fix my problems.  This process only happens when you work as hard as you possibly can, otherwise there is no chance of being successful.  The second criteria is opportunities that are given to you.  A person cannot be successful if they have no opportunities to be successful, or if they have those opportunities and do not take the chance.  If you are tentative about taking an opportunity that has been served on a silver platter, then you will not be successful.  The third most important thing is skill.  You may have worked incredibly hard and taken an amazing opportunity to be successful, but if you do not have the skill to maintain that status, then you will fall flat out of the system.  It's like taking an amazing job, that pays very well, but you get fired within a month because you could hardly do a single job right.  Without skill, you are practically worthless in the world of business and will not be able to help yourself or anybody else.  The final key to success is luck.  You can work harder than anybody else around you, have had an amazing opportunity to raise yourself in the ranks of the business world, and be one of the most skilled people around, but without even the smallest amount of luck, you will not raise any higher.  As horrible as it sounds, your future is determined by the approval or disapproval of either your bosses, or the general public.  To persuade them to be on your side and help you get to where you want to be is mostly based out of shear luck, hoping that they will help you.  Once you have these four qualities, then you are ready to be successful.