This book starts with the premise that success is more than a measure of individual accomplishment; it is an obligation and a duty to do something upon which other people can build their own successes. Individual success is vital to the wellbeing of the individual as much as it is to our society.
For the individual to survive, he or she must continue to grow and reach their targets. For enterprises to survive, they must create products that satisfy market needs and continuously try to enhance and reinvent the quality to keep it going.
Similarly, the absence of success not only affects an individual’s life. It can have far wider repercussions. Continued failure has collapsed entire races and civilizations, let alone the failure of companies and products. Think of the American Indians, Romans, Greeks, and the Vikings. Success, quite simply put, is the highest form of survival. It is vital to the existence and wellbeing of the individual, the community, and the whole species. Wallace D. Wattles, in his classic book The Science of Getting Rich, remarks:
“Since belief is all-important, it behooves you to guard your thoughts, and as your beliefs will be shaped to a very great extent by the things you observe and think about, you must carefully govern what you give your attention. If you want to become rich, you must not make a study of poverty. Things are not brought into being by thinking about their opposites.”