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

7

CROSS YOUR RUBICON

Nothing resists a human will that stakes its very existence upon the achievement of its purpose.

—BENJAMIN DISRAELI

Once you’ve created your vision of the future, you seal the commitment by crossing your Rubicon. You are invading new territory—the territory of the future. You’re no longer going to be bound by the circumstances of the past.

REENGINEER YOUR LIFE

Many successful people have turned their backs on the past by embarking on the individual equivalent of “reengineering the corporation.” When corporate leaders decide to reengineer the corporation, they don’t set out merely to improve the present system. They set out to create an entirely new system.

When you set out to reengineer your life, you’re not just improving your present circumstances. You’re creating a whole new set of circumstances, in keeping with your vision of what life should be.

Creating a whole new set of circumstances is not the same thing as improving your present circumstances, any more than the emergence of a butterfly is an improvement on the caterpillar.

A butterfly is a completely different creature from a caterpillar. The caterpillar crawls, the butterfly flits; the caterpillar is fat and sluggish, the butterfly is light and lissome. Nobody mistakes a butterfly for a caterpillar. Becoming the butterfly you want to be means putting old circumstances in the past and concentrating all your resources on creating new ones.

This can be risky and scary. You’re leaving the comfort ...