If you have spent some time reading modern self-improvement books, it’s almost for sure that you came across the name Zig Ziglar and his book called See You At The Top.
Ziglar after dropping out of college started to work as a salesman of some cookware company in the US. According to his book, later even one of his brothers followed him to his career. And Ziglar had some decent successes as a cookware salesman, but we don’t remember him because he helped thousands of American families to eat dinner cooked in some nice pans.
Over the years, Ziglar got more and more interested in self-help and motivational speaking and eventually, he started to give speeches, and later he founded his own business to help even more people getting better.
The book, I write about in this post was published in 1975 and it’s still relevant, it’s still in print. Later he wrote more than 30 books. It’s already worth mentioning that See You At The Top was rejected almost 40 times before it got published. It was so important to Ziglar, he believed in it so much, that he didn’t give up. Even if you don’t read the book, this is already an important motivational lesson.
So how does he think we can get to the top? By hard work. In fact, the point where I don’t really agree with him is where he emphasizes the need for hard work by putting in so many hours. I simply think that focus and good time organization is more important than putting in extra hours. But probably if you’re well organized and we put in extra hours as well, we’ll be better off. But we need some rest as well, right?
Anyways. He writes about the six necessary steps you need to go up to reach the happiness, freedom and wealth of tomorrow.
I won’t go into details on the steps, for that you can read the book, but I’m going to mention them one by one.
First, you have to fix your self-image, with a poor self-image, you won’t be able to achieve much. Or you can’t even form healthy relationships with others which is the second step.
While there are psychologists who claim that you don’t need goals, you should just surf through life and wait for opportunities to appear and then seize them, he is clearly devoted to setting goals for yourself that will motivate you, your growth. That’s the third step.
We are halfway to the top, if we have a good self-image, healthy relationship with the others and motivating, stretching goals! All these are the prior steps to form the right attitude. So what does belong to there? Among others, it’s important to feed your brain with the right inputs. “Your input determines your outlook. Your outlook determines your output, and your output determines your future.” Consuming the daily madness from news channels and social media will not result in high-quality outputs, just stress, and depression. Instead, you should take educational and motivational content on a daily basis. If I just take my example, I know that I grew the most when I started to read motivational articles every day, when I started to read IT books every day and cut myself from Facebook and news sites. These good habits have the utmost importance.
Only after these steps can come the hard work. What is hard work might be different for you, for Ziglar, for me, but after all, it’s inevitable that you work instead of spending the time browsing the Internet or sipping coffee with your colleagues in the -nowadays virtual- coffee rooms.
If you follow these steps, it will not be difficult at all to take the last one. Desire. You’ll form that desire not to be mediocre, but exceptional.
That’s it. Self-image, good relationships, goals, attitude work, and desire - these are the steps according to Ziglar to have a happier tomorrow. Probably it’s not the only one, but definitely a valid one!
Happy reading and See you at the top!
