The Number One Secret to Success and Happiness

When you find yourself on a planet whose most widespread inhabitants are bacteria, what action do you take to survive? Do you try communicating with the bacteria? When you deplete your food supply, do you avoid confrontation with the majority population (in case the bacteria have large-scale defense mechanisms) and eat some other species besides the bacteria?

How did you figure out the population count and distribution patterns to begin with? Quite possibly, you anticipated the types of organisms you'd encounter and brought surveying instruments with you to measure a sample population, from which you then extrapolated total population data.

No matter how much you analyzed and prepared your approach to the planet, you know you have made decisions that will limit your capabilities.

However, you maintain one important goal -- personal survival.

And so it is in business, also. When you entered a new market, you prepared a set of goals and objectives, made assumptions about the market conditions, including competitors and customers, but inevitably missed some important factor that you couldn't see until you stepped foot in the market.

Question is, if initial results are disappointing or a negative market condition looks too daunting to overcome in a reasonable timeframe, do you just step out of the market and start over later?

The answer is no. You must pretend that you've crash-landed on another planet, with some tools and food for immediate life sustenance. But to ensure long-term survival, you have to study, process and cultivate the surrounding resources. Setbacks will hit you at every moment as you learn about the inert and hostile aspects of an environment not tuned to your existence. You celebrate the smallest iota of success. If you've arrived with a team, then every member reassures the other when solid, thought-out efforts do not lead to success (even if the effort resulted from a hunch rather than analysis), because only through experimentation can we ever achieve success.

Friends, strangers, coworkers and family have expressed their concerns to me about the current economic conditions during this pending U.S. Presidential election. They all look forward to the exit of the current President as if the change in the U.S. political administration will cure the global economic headache, no matter whether they believe McCain or Obama will win the election.

The U.S. economy indeed faces many challenges ahead, tied as it is to the rest of the world and the competition for limited resources. However, we humans share this planet with other species that, though more abundant than us by many magnitudes, have no clue about the temporary ebb-and-flow of money. Their minute-by-minute survival does not directly change from the simple uptick or downtick of the price of a stock, mutual fund or barrel of oil. In fact, their species thrive with no regard to human existence, which points us to a simple secret.

So, what's the number one secret to success and happiness? Well, it's an easy secret to share, one that young wise people know and old wise people have learned:

All problems are insignificant and transitory.

We've crash-landed on this planet together. We depend on each other to survive. The current economic conditions dominate the mass media communications networks but don't forget these conditions, as dreadful as the news organizations play them up to be, are insignificant and transitory. We will survive. And better yet, we will thrive. If a mixed race man and a former prisoner of war can run against each other in a civil contest for U.S. President, then together, WE can accomplish anything. Let's put our minds and bodies to the task of making this planet a better place to live, work and play.