What Is Success?

Grant Cardone
5 min readJun 19, 2015

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The 10X Rule — Chapter 3: What Is Success?

I know I’ve already used the term ‘success’ many times, but let’s clarify what it actually is. It probably means something different to you than it does to me. The definition really depends on where a person is in life or what has his or her attention.

Success in early childhood might mean receiving an allowance for the first time or getting to stay up past one’s bedtime. But that would no longer be of interest just a few years later when success in the teen years might mean getting one’s own bedroom, cell phone, or a later curfew. Success in your early 20s might mean furnishing your first apartment and getting your first promotion. Later on, it might be marriage, kids, more promotions, travel, or more money.

As you age and conditions change, the ways in which you define success will transform yet again. When you’re much older, you’re likely to find success in good health, family, grandchildren, your legacy, and how you will be remembered. Where you are in life, the conditions you’re facing, and the situations, events, and people on which your attention is most focused will influence your definition of success.

Success can be found in any number of realms — financial, spiritual, physical, mental, emotional, philanthropic, communal, or familial. However, wherever you find it, the most crucial things to know about success — in order to have it and keep it — are the following:

  1. Success is important.
  2. Success is your duty.
  3. There is no shortage of success.

I will discuss this first point from my book, The 10X Rule, here, and the others in my Strategy of the Week on GrantCardone.com.

Success Is Important

Regardless of their culture, race, religion, economic background, or social group, most people would agree that success is vital to the well-being of the individual, the family unit, and the group — and certainly to the future survival of all of these things. Success provides confidence, security, a sense of comfort, the ability to contribute at a greater level, and hope and leadership for others in terms of what is possible. Without it, you; your group, company, goals and dreams; and even the entire civilization would cease to survive and thrive.

Think of success in terms of expansion.

Without continued growth, any entity — be it a corporation, dream, or even an entire race — would cease to exist. History is full of examples that support the notion that disaster occurs when expansion doesn’t continue. We can include the Vikings, Ancient Rome and Greece, Communist Russia, and an endless list of companies and products. Success is needed in order to perpetuate people, places, and things.

You must never reduce success in your mind or in a conversation to something that doesn’t matter; on the contrary, it is vital! Anyone who minimizes the importance of success to your future has given up on his or her own chances of accomplishment and is spending his or her life trying to convince others to do the same. Individuals and groups must actively accomplish their goals and targets in order to carry on. If not, they will either cease to exist or be consumed and become part of something else. Companies and industries that wish to maintain their status must successfully create products; get those products to the market; keep clients, employees, and investors happy, and repeat that cycle over and over.

There are far too many “cute” sayings that seem to dismiss the importance of success, like “Success is a journey, not a destination.” Please! When terrible economic contractions occur, everyone quickly realizes they can’t eat or make house payments with cute little sayings. The economic events of the past decade should have made it obvious how badly we all underestimated the importance of success — and how essential it actually is to our survival. It is not enough just to play the game; it is vital that you learn to win at it. Winning — over and over again — at everything in which you involve yourself ensures that you will be able to further expand. And it guarantees that both you and your ideas will survive into the future.

Success is equally important to a person’s sense of self. It promotes confidence, imagination, and a sense of security and emphasizes the significance of making a contribution. People who are unable to provide for their families and their future put themselves and their families at risk. People who aren’t successful can’t buy goods and services. This can cause an economy to slow down and taxes to diminish, which will then negatively impact funds for schools, hospitals, and public services.

About this time, some will say, “But success is not everything,” and, of course, it isn’t everything. Yet I always wonder what point people are trying to make with this statement.

When someone in my seminars says this to me, I often respond by asking something along the lines of, “Are you trying to diminish the importance of something you haven’t been able to attain?”

Get real! Regardless of whatever goals you are trying to attain — success is absolutely critical. If you quit caring, then you quit winning; quit winning long enough, and you will just plain quit! Do kids benefit when they see their moms and dads losing or quitting? Does anyone benefit when you can’t get your art sold or that great book published or that great idea that will improve everything across? No one will benefit from your failure. However, if you were able to reverse it and attain the goals and dreams set for yourself — now, that would be something.

Exercise

In the comments below tell me how would being successful be important to you, and how would it improve your life?

Be great, nothing else pays.

GC

Grant Cardone is a New York Times best-selling author, speaker, motivator and sales training expert. His books, sales training programs and seminars provide people of all professional backgrounds with the practical tools necessary to build their own economies towards the path to true freedom.

“Success is your duty, obligation, responsibility.” GC

Grant created Cardone University, a customized sales training program for Fortune 500 companies, small businesses, success-minded individuals, and entrepreneurs.

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Grant Cardone

CEO of Cardone Capital, international speaker, entrepreneur and author of The 10X Rule. Founded the largest business conference in the world, the 10XGrowthCon.