The First Law...Also The Most Important!!!

Certainly NOTHING in life is more important than to know: what IS real success-and how to achieve It.

What, then, is the first law of success?

Before stating even the first law, let it be said that I am not considering here such general principles of character as honesty, patience, loyalty, courtesy, dependability, punctuality, etc., except as these are automatically included in the seven rules. We may assume that one cannot become a real success without these principles of right character.

But on the other hand, many are honest who .have never practiced a single one of the seven laws, specifically. Man maybe loyal, have patience, extend courtesy, be punctual, who are unsuccessful because they have not applied a single one of these seven definite, specific rules. Even so, each of these laws covers a vast territory.

Here, then, is the first law of success:

'FIX THE RIGHT GOAL!

Not just any goal. Most of the "successful" men I have mentioned had goals. They drove themselves relentlessly to accomplishment. But making money, gaining STATUS in the eyes of people, enjoying the passing pleasures of the five senses, has literally strewn the pathway of history with fears, worries, heartaches, troubled consciences, sorrows, frustrations, empty lives and death.

These things may be had and enjoyed along with true success. But they alone do not bring success. The right goal includes something more.
In other words, the very first law of success is to be able to define success! Once you have learned what success is, make that your goal in life.
Do you know that most people go on through life without any GOA.L at all? In fact, most people, as I've said before, do not know, and do not apply, a SINGLE ONE of the seven laws of success!

Most people never think of having any PURPOSE in life.

They are not going anywhere, in particular.

If you have saved up money for a trip to Paris, or Rome, or London for your vacation or holiday, you spend a lot of time in excited anticipation PLANNING your trip-but you DO have a definite DESTINATION-and all plans are laid to take you to that particular destination that GOAL. You know where you are planning to go. Otherwise, how would you ever expect you arrive there?

As I said once before, most people have no aim-they are merely the victims of CIRCUMSTANCE. They never planned, purposefully to be in the job or occupation in which they find themselves today. They do not live where they do by CH0ICE that is, because they PLANNED it that way. They have merely been buffeted around by CIRCUMSTANCE! They have allowed themselves to drift. They have made no effort to master and control circumstances.

The first law of success, I repeat, is to fix the RIGHT goal.

Not any goal. One could set a goal in which he had little or no interest, and drift into inaction. The right goal will arouse ambition. Ambition is more than mere desire. -It is desire plus incentive-determination-will to achieve the desire. The right goal will be so intensely desired it will excite vigorous and determined effort. It will fire one with incentive.

There should be an overpowering PURPOSE to life. Few have ever known such purpose. Down through centuries and millenniums thinkers and philosophers have pondered, and sought in vain to learn whether life has a real purpose.

Socrates, Plato, Augustine among others, speculated and reasoned, yet the true meaning of life eluded them. This deepest and most important question in life remained to them a mystery-an unsolvable enigma!

IF one could discover such an overall PURPOSE a definite purpose for which humans were put on earth-IF one could discover' a human potential greater than mere temporary existence, one would thin~ that PURPOSE would be the goal that should excite dynamic ambition! But-alas! Who has ever discovered such an objective as life's aim?

Was there nothing greater to look forward to, for my two prominent banker friends? Nothing greater than to enjoy fleeting status, only to be forgotten by those who succeeded them?

What is there, after all, to live for?

I repeat! The first law of real success is to have the right goal!

The men I have described, rated eminently successful in the world, all had goals. They applied diligently all of the first six of the Success Laws.
But failing the seventh, they misapplied the first. Their success was fleeting.

Acquire The Right Education
"We learn about electricity, laws of physics and chemistry. We learn to use the wheels construct highways, and roll over ground faster than any animal. We learn to fly higher; farther and faster than any bird. We learn how to take nature apart and make it work for us. We discover and utilize nuclear energy”.
- Herbert W Armstrong

A few years back) a reporter came to interview me in my office for his newspaper. And one of the questions he asked me was: "Since you're not well educated, how are you able to do all these things?"

Apparently this reporter had heard, or read, somewhere that I stopped my formal education in primary six. And he had erroneously believed that that was where I stopped my education. He was grossly mistaken!

From the time I read The Seven Laws of Success until this day, I have never stopped studying. I'm constantly Iearning something new. And most of the time, it's usually studying by myself and at home by "burning the midnight oil", as one sage calls it.

I acquired the discipline to study by myself because of my circumstances. In 1974, I had already lost both of my parents.

My mother died in 1966 while my father passed on in 1971.

And I had three children by then, aged four, three and one.

Being the eldest child of my parents, there was no one that I could saddle with the responsibility of taking care of my wife and little children while I went to formal school. I had an aunt and uncles who did their best for me within their modest means when I asked them. But I would be totally irresponsible and insensitive to their own needs if I were to look up to them to share this burden with me. So, I didn't even bother to ask them. The only option opened to me, therefore, was to embrace home-study.

And this has become a part of me. Today, I'm in love with it. I enjoy the freedom of studying at night and doing other things during the day. It's been so exciting. And highly rewarding, too.

But getting started wasn't easy. I had to first overcome the fear of feeling inadequate. How was I going to proceed from my lowly education and tackle GCE? GCE? I had heard a lot of horror stories about how people repeatedly attempted to pass the examinations and flunked them time and time again.

But because there was no alternation to my having at least a GCE 0' Level Credit in English Language; and because my mind was already fixed on sports writing as a future career, I  decided that I had to go for it. And I set a goal to have the all-important certificate by the end of 1976.

What further boosted my confidence was what happened towards the end of 1975. I had been posted as a combatant engineering instructor to the Nigerian Army School of Military Engineering (NASME), New Bussa, in Borgu Local Government Area of Kwara State and I met with some new group of soldiers from other divisions of the Nigerian Army there.

Among them were Ombo Wokoma and Philip Ojugoh. This duo sat for GCE examinations in 1975 and when the result came, they did extremely well. Their good result served as an inspiration for me and others. They had at least proved that it could be done.

So around February 1976, when my friend and colleague, Oludare Onasegun, was travelling to Lagos, I gave him money to enroll for four subjects for me with Exam Success Correspondence College, Palmgrove, Yaba, Lagos. The subjects were: English Language, Government, Economics and Religious Knowledge.

With my sight firmly fixed on my goal to pass my GCE 0' Level examination in English Language before the end of that year, I brushed aside all the challenges that faced me on the way to that milestone and concentrated on my studies.

Whatever spare time I had, which wasn't much considering the kind of assignment that we undertook that year at NASME, I invested it on my studies.

In the end, it paid off. I flunked two of the papers:

Government and Religious Knowledge. But I made an 'A' in English, the only person in Borgu LGA that got that distinction that year, and got credit in Economics.

With that result, I know nothing could stop me from becoming a sports writer. It was a dream come true for me. My English result turned me to an overnight celebrity in the barracks.

As was to be expected, many more of my colleagues case aside their fears the following year to enroll for GCE. And quite a good number of them also made it.

For me, this was just the beginning of my application of the second law of success which, according to Herbert W. Armstrong, was getting the right type of education. The author had made it clear that specialized knowledge was superior to general knowledge. And I saw the wisdom in his argument.

So from that time forward, I always placed more value on specialized knowledge and what I now teach my self- development students The Know-how.
The in-depth knowledge of anything I wanted to get involved in, made me to master sports writing, to the point that I became the first Nigerian Sports writer to successfully graduate from writing sports to publishing it.

It is this same love for know-how that enabled me to go into business without any previous experience but kept learning what makes businesses work. Today, I teach others how they could run their businesses successfully.

What else, but the strict adherence to Herbert W. Armstrong's second law of success, could I attribute my mastery of how the Internet works and how anyone could use it to create wealth?

I could go on and on. Herbert W Armstrong's second law of success works. There can be no argument about it. I'm a living testimony. If anyone is truly desiring to be successful, then he must embrace this law.

This is the law that will open the door of success for you. The law is so vital because it empowers you. It helps you to take away guesswork from what you're doing. It puts you in control. People can't cheat you because they know that you know what you're doing.

Best of "all, you will gain the respect of people, especially the people paying you for the service you are rendering to them as a result of the specialized knowledge which you have mastered.

By Dr Sunny Obazu Ojeagbase