Defining Your Own Brand of Success

In Og Mandino's book, The University of Success, he uses Howard Whitman's article, "How To Fashion Your Own Brand of Success" to help us define success.

1. Two main criteria of success: Do others think you are a success? Do you think so?
2. Success must be a personal thing.
3. Ghandi's possessions when he died: eye glasses, sandals, few simple garments, spinning wheel and a book.
4. Henry David Thoreau, "A man is rich in the proportions of things he can let alone."
5. Ghandi spoke of reduction of needs.
6. Five Factors of Success:

A. Purpose--whatever you do move toward a goal.

B. Batting Average--there are upturns i success separated by valleys of failure.

C. Price--no success is free. Joy of success must be counter-balanced by the effort to achieve it.

D. Satisfaction--success must be enjoyed. "It may be won with tears but it must be crowned with laughter."

E. Spirituality--can't feel success without also feeling related to the greater purposes of life and to the author of those purposes.