Stairway to Success: The Complete Blueprint for Personal and Professional Achievement

PRELUDE TO STEP THREE

GETTING FROM HERE TO THERE

You can never plan the future by the past.

—EDMUND BURKE

You’ve created your future by forming a vision and expressing it through a mission statement. Your dream now glitters on the horizon of the future. But you are standing in the reality of the here and now. How do you close the gap between where you are now and where you want to be?

You can’t dream your way into the future. You have to have a plan. You have to know where you want to go and decide how you’re going to get there. The important word here is how. The word if won’t take you there. To achieve your vision, you must approach it with a positive attitude—a sense of certainty that your dream is achievable. You must adopt the attitude of Hannibal, the great general from ancient Carthage, who asserted, “We will either find a way or make one.”

A plan will establish a route to your destination. It will also provide for the elimination of roadblocks and the blazing of new trails across uncharted territory. It will prevent you from drifting aimlessly through life. A good plan will have these characteristics:

• It will specify actions. A good plan is proactive. It specifies what actions you will take to bring your vision to reality. It puts you in control of events instead of forcing you to respond to events.
• It will set a timetable. Without a specific timetable, your plan loses cohesion and never gains momentum. Nothing gets accomplished “sooner or later.” It gets accomplished ...