Chris Gardner is the chief executive officer of Gardner Rich & Company, a multimillion-dollar brokerage with offices in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. An avid philanthropist and motivational speaker, Gardner is a recipient of the Father of the Year Award from the National Fatherhood Initiative. He has two children and resides in Chicago and New York. Mim Eichler Rivas is the author of the acclaimed Beautiful Jim Key, as well as the coauthor of more than eighteen books, including The Pursuit of Happyness and Finding Fish with Antwone Fisher.
Author's Note xiii Overture-C'mon In 1 1 Start Where You Are 9 Universal Lessons for Pursuit Lesson #1 Without a Plan, a Dream Is Just a Dream (the C-5 Complex) 14 Lesson #2 We All Have the Power of Choice 24 Lesson #3 The Cavalry Ain't Coming 30 Lesson #4 Start with What You've Got in Your Hand 37 Lesson #5 Baby Steps Count, Too, as Long as You Go Forward 41 Lesson #6 Stop Digging Your Potatoes 46 Lesson #7 What Would the Champ Do? 52 Lesson #8 Say "Peace Be Still" 56 Lesson #9 Even Lewis and Clark Had a Map 62 Lesson #10 Find Your Button 69 2 The Thorny and Golden Past 75 Personal Lessons Drawn from the Past Lesson #11 Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Yesterday? 82 Lesson #12 In Your Library of Resources, Value All Experience 88 Lesson #13 Draw the Line of Your Life 95 Lesson #14 Whose Child Are You? 100 Lesson #15 Check Out Your Own Version of Genesis 104 Lesson #16 Who's Who in Your 'Hood? 107 Lesson #17 The Red or the Yellow Bike? 112 Lesson #18 Sometimes You Gotta Give Up Christmas 116 Lesson #19 No Test, No Testimony 120 3 Hitting the Anvil 127 Marketplace Lessons for Success Lesson #20 The Law of Hard Work Is No Secret 134 Lesson #21 Core Strengths Forged on Your Anvil 142 Lesson #22 Wizards Begin as Blacksmiths 148 Lesson #23 Are You Bold Enough to Go Back to Basics? 155 Lesson #24 Supply and Demand Ain't Rocket Science 164 Lesson #25 Truth Is a Hit 170 Lesson #26 Learn the Ropes First, Then Conquer Rome 175 Lesson #27 Who's Who at the Office and in Your Spheres of Influence? 180 Lesson #28 It Takes as Much Energy to Bag an Elephant as It Does a Mouse 186 Lesson #29 Share the Wealth 190 4 Your Empowerment Zone 195 Life-Changing Lessons for Mastery Lesson #30 Seek the Farthest Star 201 Lesson #31 Seeing Ghosts, Reading Signs 206 Lesson #32 Opportunities, Like Pancakes, Are Best Served Hot, but Sometimes You Gotta Set the Table Before You Can Eat 212 Lesson #33 Stay Open, but Don't Wing It 216 Lesson #34 Mo' Money, Mo' Options, Mo' Problems 223 Lesson #35 Money Is the Least Significant Component of Wealth 229 Lesson #36 Conscious Capitalism: A Personal and Global Primer 234 Lesson #37 Make Your Dream Bigger Than Yourself 238 5 Spiritual Genetics 243 Spiritual Lessons for Connecting to Your Higher Power Lesson #38 Embrace the Best of Your Spiritual Genetics 247 Lesson #39 Breaking Generational Cycles 253 Lesson #40 Your Divine Inheritance 259 Lesson #41 God's in the Details 263 Lesson #42 Passing the Torch, Raising the Bar 268 6 The Good Old Everyday 275 Ordinary Lessons for Happyness Lesson #43 Don't Postpone Joy 277 Lesson #44 Claim Ownership of Your Dreams 282 Finale / Takeaways: Get 'Em and Go 287 Creating Your Own Start Where You Are Notebook 299 Acknowledgments 311
Success is pertaining to acquiring all that you desired to have. It's finding that you have obtained your purpose or attained your strategies and it's getting up in the morning looking the winner rather than becoming defeated.The resulting feelings success brings will make you wander proudly in the roadways with confidence while being content and comfortable. Regardless of prevalent beliefs, there are no successful or failed individuals but on the other hand there are individuals who have the potentiality to succeed and who do things that facilitate them realize this opportunities and there are men and women with the same potential who do not do those things.The only thing you need to do to be successful is to do completely what successful people did. When you go through all of the understanding you will gain the mind-set of a successful man or woman and this will help you attain level of success. If you actually want to be productive then you should certainly have a good insight of certain models that can minimize your potential and that can make you not successful. If you don't have targets or plans then you are going to be a fraction of other some people's programs. If you won't program to be the team leader at your work then some one else in your agency will do so and if you don't plan to get that high status occupation then somebody else who prepared and worked for it will take it from you. If you don't organize you will get swept away by the men and women who do. The initial concern that comes to the mind of most folk with issues is that they begin to consider their crises as constraints to their achievements. The moment you commence to perceive your struggles as stumbling blocks, you start off to have additional struggles because tension sets in, fear begins, and these are other sorts of huge issues on their own. The naked truth is, the means by which you see your concerns determines how they will have an impact on you.