Expanding Your Vision Of Success

It's always good to expand your vision of success. Sometimes when people become successful they feel as if they have reached the pinnacle and no longer feel the need to grow or change as a person. In life you are either growing or dying, you can not remain at the same level for a long period of time. The rich get richer because they keep growing their financial skills, super star sports athletes get better because they keep practicing.

Today my vision of success became expanded even more. My personal story is this, I grew up on the wrong side of town in a low income area. I struggled as an entrepreneur and finally became successful. After achieving success I did what so many other people who achieve success do. What is that you ask?

I stopped what I was doing. I no longer was reading books, working on new businesses, getting out there to meet new people. I felt as if I had reached the mountain top. I was successful and I no longer needed to grow as a person and learn more. I felt as if I had "made it."

So this attitude I had continued on for about two years after my first major success. Guess what happened? Yep thats right you guessed it. My business didn't grow, my net worth went down and I wasn't even happy. Here I was with all this "stuff" that I used to think would make me happy. Then when I got it, it was not very fulfilling. I was thinking to myself...."is this it." I always used to think that the accumulation of the "stuff" was what made someone happy. This is not the case at all.

I was happiest during the journey, not once I had achieved the "success". Finally after about two years of sitting on the sidelines enjoying my "success and my stuff" I realized that everything I had read about a person either growing or dying is true. I then got off my butt and started back on my next journey toward a greater success. I have been on this journey towards my next big success in life for about two years now and it is amazing how much your perspective changes as your experience grows.

When I first started out in business my idea of success was to make a lot of money. My idea of success is completely different now days. Today my idea of success is to help make the world a better place and positively impact the lives of as many people as I can through my businesses and charitable donations. I'm sure that in 10 years my idea of success will have expanded and changed and will be completely different than what it is today.

Today I spent sometime at the home of Scott Wolstein who is the former CEO of Developers Diversified Realty. Scott has been a very successful businessman. In 2006 he was #76 on Forbes list of total CEO compensation. That year Scott made $17.5 million dollars to round off his last 5 years coming up to 2006 of $69.3 million dollars in compensation.

Now that you know who Scott is let me tell you what it was about my experience at his home today that expanded my vision of success. When I was young before I ever had any financial success at all I always used to drive around all the nice neighborhoods across town and look at all the big homes thinking to myself one day I am going to own a home like this. At the time I was looking at 4000 square ft homes thinking they were really big mansions. At that time for me they were as I grew up in an 800 square foot house.

As I started to achieve a little success I found myself driving by houses that were a little bigger 6000 to 9000 square ft.

Today my vision has expanded even further. Scott's home that I spent time in today is 36,000 square feet and sits on 150 acres. It was the most beautiful home I have ever been in and I have been in a lot of very nice houses.

I want to get the message across that sometimes in order to have a clear vision of your goals you need to put those goals right in front of your eyes. For example if you want a big new home then you should go and call a realtor and have them show you big new homes. I did this when I had $1000 in my bank account. I had a realtor show me million dollar homes, I would go to open houses every weekend for almost a year. I had a goal and I wanted to make the goal vividly clear so I went and put myself in the environment of that goal.

If your goal is to own a Ferrari then you need to to go a luxury car store and sit in that car and picture yourself having it in your garage one day. I did the same thing here, I used to go to the luxury car store an hour away from where I lived at the time and sit in the cars before I could even afford the insurance on a $100,000 + car. The message I want to get across is that whatever your goal is you need to put yourself in proximity of that goal. Picture yourself having it, take action and before you know it you will have accomplished your goal. The only person holding you back from achieving your goals is yourself.

In this post I'm using goals that are material based goals. My major goals in life are not material based goals. Once you accomplish your material based goals you will realize there are much more important goals that are so much more meaningful than any "thing" you can buy. My important goals in life, are family and philanthropy. These are much more important than all the nice homes and cars in the world. But don't get me wrong it feels good to have nice stuff. I have been both well off and poor and I like being well off much better.

I want to end this with one simple message. The more you give the more you get. The people who contribute the most to the world are compensated the most. It really is true the more you give the more you get.