Helen’s sister Louise used to work for us, and one day she brought her “little sister” into the office to help out for a few weeks. Helen typed some of my research and interviews about success and we discussed them as she did office chores. She loved athletics, but was still trying to figure out what to do with her life. After she left, Louise kept telling us what she was up to, and one day exclaimed, “Helen is going to try bobsled racing.” She had stumbled into it when a friend suggested it, not even realizing that women participated in the sport. She discovered she loved it, but it has been a long haul with many disappointments. In the last Olympics she came fourth and missed getting a medal by 5 one-hundredths of a second. Imagine! Here’s part of an email Helen sent out at the time, four years ago:

“Helen Upperton”
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2006
Subject: Sigh!!!! It’s over…

Hi everyone,

Well, It’s done. It came and went in a whirlwind of emotion, adrenaline, excitement, fear, disappointment, joy…basically everything you could imagine. At first I was so happy. We just came 4th at the Olympic games. This is so amazing. And then it started to dawn on me…I missed a medal by 5 one-hundredths of a second…I couldn’t believe it. I was so sad. I stood and watched the other teams get their flowers and stand on the podium, and thought that it was almost me. So close… Sigh.

Hels

Well, Hels, now it is you. You persisted through the downtimes, worked hard, practiced like crazy, stood on the podium and made history. Wow!  A big congratulations!

I’d like to thank Tony Donnes for an idea. He sent me an email saying he’s a lecturer at a community college in Hawaii and he shows my TED talk video to his students. He also said, “I took the last slide of your TED lecture, turned it into a JPG image, and made it the wallpaper of my iPod touch, which I use as my ‘external brain.’”

That got us thinking, why should people have to go to all the trouble of putting together wallpaper images themselves. Let’s just provide free wallpaper downloads of the top 8 factors that lead to success. (Sound of trumpets) Da dum! And here they are. Now you can easily put the 8 To Be Great on your mobile device or computer – little reminders to help guide you on your own journey to success. Thanks again, Tony!

We have designed and formatted our 8 To Be Great graphics into four popular sizes for your computer and/or mobile devices. Select the one that’s most suitable. We also have posted two designs of the 8 To Be Great poster for you to print out. Use the share button to forward them to your friends. Send us photos of your device with 8 To Be Great wallpaper on the screen, or the poster on a wall, and we’ll post some of them on this blog.

WALLPAPER

A) iPod Touch/iPhone

B) BlackBerry Bold 9700/Tour/Curve 8900

C) Mac/PC

D) Twitter background

POSTER

E) Mac/PC

  DOWNLOAD INSTRUCTIONS:

A) For iPod Touch/iPhone

1) Download and right click on the image and select “Save Image As.”

2) Go to iTunes and sync the image to your device in the Photos section.

3) On your device, go to “Settings” > “Wallpaper” and save as wallpaper.

B) For BlackBerry Bold 9700/Tour/Curve 8900

1) Download and right click on the image and select “Save Image As.”

2) Connect your BlackBerry to your computer, go to “My Computer” and save the image to the memory card.

3) On your BlackBerry, go to “Media” > “Pictures” > “Set As Wallpaper.”

C) For Mac/PC

1) Download wallpaper of your choice: (A) 1280 x 800 (MacBook/MacBook Pro 13″) screen size or (B) 1024 x 768 screen size.

2) Right click and select “Set As Desktop Background.”

D) For Twitter

1) Download wallpaper. Right click and select “Save Image As.”

2) Go to your Twitter profile and then select “Settings” > “Design” > “Change Background Image.”

E) Posters

1) Download poster of your choice: (A) Poster with white background in JPEG or PDF format or (B) Poster with black background in JPEG or PDF format. For JPEG, right click and select “Save Image As.”

2) Select "File" > "Print" and print to your colour printer.

There’s an old saying: “If pigs could fly.”
Well, it has finally happened. A swine flu.

Last year, I spoke at one of their IIA regional conferences in Atlanta, and even though the audience was terrific, I was very nervous. I mean, an auditor’s job is to analyze and evaluate, so I felt like everything I said was being scrutinized and judged by a room full of experts.

When the evaluations came back, I was relieved to see that I not only passed the audit, they rated my presentation 3.93 out of 4 – one of the highest rankings of all the talks at their conferences. And they invited me back to give an encore presentation at last week’s “Best of the Best” event. Thank you again IIA, for the opportunity, the high marks, and the nice comments afterwards.

I usually do a crossword puzzle during the opening speeches, but this time I never had a chance because Richard St. John’s talk was the best I’ve ever heard.
Robert M. Abisla, VP, Director of Internal Audit, Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston

The debate in the book signing line was whether Richard’s talk should be first or last. I said first, because he woke me up. It was really great. I wouldn’t want to be the speaker following him.
Joseph P. Lynch, Director of Internal Audit, Tetra Technologies

She was panicking to get to relaxation class.

I just found another example of how following your passions pays off, and it was right under my nose. Thom Rockliff and Elliot Ng, two of my colleagues at The St. John Group, just won a big international award – the Summit Marketing Effectiveness award – and it happened just because they followed their passion for technology.

A couple of years ago Thom and Elliot became interested in RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology. I didn’t have a clue what it was, but they explained, “When you pull up to a gas pump and use your speed pass, RFID reads your card and tells the pump to give you gas.” I said, “So what? We do marketing for products like BlackBerry, not gas pumps. Is there a client paying you to work on this stuff?” They said, “No, we’re just curious and interested in RFID, so we’re messing around with it in our spare time.”

I watched as they built some gizmos in the back room and made the RFID technology do cool things. To be honest, I wondered if all the effort was worth it, but I’d worked in Nortel Networks research labs long enough to know that if someone is passionate and excited about doing something, it might pay off someday. That day came a year later when we were working with our Research in Motion clients on a BlackBerry booth for a Las Vegas trade show. One of the clients said, “I wish there was a better way to track what interests visitors to our booth, so we could get them the information they need faster.” Bing! Thom and Elliot immediately saw how RFID could solve the problem and they soon developed a powerful solution.

So, now when you go to the BlackBerry booth you get a card, and when you want the scoop on a product you just touch the card to a tag next to it and the system quickly sends you information on everything that interests you. Customers visiting the booth get information FAST that’s targeted to their needs and BlackBerry staff receive up to the minute data on customers’ interests. The icing on the cake is the solution just won a top international award, and it all happened just because two guys followed their passions and interests. As Joseph Campbell once said, “Follow your bliss and doors will open where there were no doors before.”

Well Jackie, a big congratulations for pushing yourself and becoming President of your Rotary club. When we’re thinking of doing something that takes us to the next level, suddenly there are fears and voices in our heads that try to stop us. There’s the voice of self-doubt, “What if I’m not good enough to do this?” There’s the fear of failure, “What if I fall flat on my face?” There’s the voice of shyness, “I’m afraid to speak in front of all those people.” At the same time, there’s the dream in our heads that says, “I want to do this. I think I can do it.” So there’s this constant battle between the fears and the dream. The easiest route is to give in to the fears, because that’s life as usual. No going out on a limb. No effort required. We just stay in our safe little comfort zone and talk ourselves out of the dream.

The other route is to push through the fears, take action, and start to move towards the dream. And it’s never easy. Sure, at first we feel great. It’s like those first few days on vacation when we’re going down a different road and it’s new and exciting. But then the car breaks down, or we hit a dead-end, and the fears start to win again: “Why am I doing this? I could just stop! This is too much work!” And rest assured, those fears will always return. It’s not easy to continually make the effort to push through and keep going, but it’s the only way to reach the dream, and it’s always worth it in the end. That’s why I have great respect for anybody who pushes themselves to the next level. So, here’s to you, Jackie. Keep on pushing.

Click here to see Nick Vujicic video

Yes, Katie, those issues, or “adversities,” could have contributed to Michael’s downfall. But it’s interesting that many other big stars have suffered through similar adversities and still achieved continued success – because, unlike Michael, they didn’t abandon the success principles. Oprah had terrible adversity. She was born poor and abused as a child. She continually struggles with her body image and weight. Yet she continues to succeed because she hasn’t stopped doing what she loves, working hard, serving her fans, persisting and following the other principles.

When I interviewed Quincy Jones he said, “Oprah and I were talking about our backgrounds, and she had a terrible childhood. I mean, triple-A dysfunctional! And man, I don’t know how I made it. I really don’t. I’ve forgotten a lot about my life. I’ve blanked it out because it was too painful. Every day, a major accomplishment was just getting to school and back home alive. I watched my mother being carried away in a straitjacket when I was five-years old. Back when I was growing up, there were no such words as nurturing, or cholesterol, or non-fat. I mean, what’s non-fat? We used to call it skinny. And that’s because we were starving to death.”

Then Quincy paused, looked into the distance, and put the adversity in a different perspective: “It’s sad, but it does give you a certain ability. Sometimes your biggest disadvantage can be your biggest advantage.” I began to see a similar pattern in my research, where the adversity, as bad as it is, propels people forward in some way. It could be, “I’ll escape this” or, “I’ll prove myself.” So they find something they love to do, they work hard at it, focus on it, have fun, and suddenly there’s joy in their lives instead of pain. The success principles become their refuge from the adversity.

Quincy discovered his refuge when he found a piano and started playing. In his autobiography, he writes, “For the first time in my life, I felt no loneliness, no pain, no fear, but rather joy, relief, and even understanding…When I played music, my nightmares ended. My family problems disappeared.” Music became Quincy’s passion and that, along with the other success principles, carried him through the adversity and on to incredible success. Even after winning 26 Grammy Awards, he still stays true to those principles. He didn’t abandon them or become distracted by the fame, like Michael Jackson.

So, Katie, that’s a long way of saying I don’t know if the adversity suffered by Michael Jackson had anything to do with his downfall. I do know that when he stopped following the success principles, his success also stopped. On the other hand, people like Quincy and Oprah also experienced terrible adversity, but they continued to follow the success principles and they continue to succeed. So the good news is, adversity doesn’t have to stop success. As long as we keep following the eight principles, we can keep moving forward.

Reference: Quincy Jones, Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones, Doubleday, 2001

On hearing the news, I was shocked and saddened, and I had a flashback to the first time I heard Michael sing. It was back in the ‘80s and I had just started my own company. Driving home at about five in the morning, after working all night, suddenly the radio lit up with Michael singing “Billie Jean.” I was blown away, became an instant fan, and even met him once at the music awards.

Over the years, we all watched Michael reach the stars and then come crashing down in his career and personal life. And one of the big reasons is he stopped following the eight success principles. Just a few examples:

IMPROVE: Reaching the top Michael kept trying to improve, and get better and better at singing and dancing. In his autobiography, Quincy Jones writes that Michael  “…would watch tapes of gazelles and cheetahs and panthers to imitate the natural grace of their movements. He wanted to be the best of everything – to take it all in.” Improvement is all about practice and Quincy says Michael was “Completely dedicated. He practiced his dancing for hours.”

PUSH: I’ve found that many successful people are very shy and have to keep pushing themselves through it, and Michael was no exception. Quincy writes, “He was so shy he’d sit down and sing behind the couch with his back to me while I sat there with my hands over my eyes with the lights off.” Now, that’s shy! But Michael kept pushing himself to perform in front of thousands of people.

WORK & FOCUS: Reaching success, Michael worked hard, was focused, and always super-prepared. Quincy says, “He showed up at 5 a.m. for his makeup call and had every detail of what he needed to do memorized and ready for every shooting. He also knew every dance step, every word of dialogue, and all the lyrics of every song by everyone in the entire production.”

PERSIST: My research shows it often takes ten years to succeed at anything significant, and Michael is another good example. He started singing at the age of four, but it wasn’t until ten years later that he had his first major solo hit, “Got To Be There,” and it was another ten years before he released “Thriller,” one of the most commercially successful albums of all time. So, he persisted through a 20-year climb to the top.

Michael Jackson became the “King of Pop” because he followed those fundamental success principles, but once he reached the top, he stopped. He no longer tried to IMPROVE and WORK hard. After all, when the world is telling you you’re great, why bother? He lost his FOCUS and became distracted by the trappings of success, so instead of spending hours singing, he was spending hours shopping. He would no longer PUSH himself through his shyness. Instead, he sunk back into it and became a recluse. And instead of PERSISTING, he seemed to just pack it in and live on past glories. We all watched as he continued to slide downhill both professionally and personally.

It’s interesting that with his upcoming London shows, Michael started to work harder and go back to the eight principles that might have helped him return to success in his career and his life. But sadly, it was too late. So, if you’re the next “King of Pop,” when you reach the top, don’t stop. Keep doing what got you there. Success is a continuous journey.

Reference: Quincy Jones, Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones, Doubleday, 2001