The Journey Is More Fun If You Know Where You're Going

Several years ago, as I was thumbing through Success magazine, I came across a study that Gallup did on what people thought it meant to be a success. That appealed to me because I've always been interested in helping others to become successful, and I wanted to know what Gallup had gleaned. Their answers fell into twelve categories, but the number one answer was "good health." Fifty-eight percent of the people identified that with success over anything else. I don't know about you, but I value good health — and after my heart attack I value it even more. But if I had only good health and nothing else, I don't know that I would label myself "successful."

I've discovered that people often find it hard to define success. But if you don't know what success is, how will you ever achieve it? That's why I want to help you identify a definition of success that will work for you: success is a journey.

Let me begin to illustrate by telling you a story. Several years ago, I stood before the seventy-four employees of INJOY — the organization I had founded in 1985 to teach leadership and personal development — and prepared to tell them some news that I knew would be exciting to some and discouraging to others. I was going to tell them that in a year's time, we would be moving the company from San Diego, California, to Atlanta, Georgia.

My friend Dick Peterson, INJOY's president at the time, and I had been talking about the possibility of moving the company for about six months. It had begun as a casual "what if ..." conversation, but then we started giving it more serious thought. We weighed the advantages and asked our director of finance to run some numbers. We talked about the opportunities that such a move would bring. And finally, we determined that moving to Atlanta made sense professionally, logistically, and economically. We knew that if we wanted to go to a new level in our growth and development, not only as a company, but as individuals, we needed to make the change.

In many ways, that was a very tough decision. I never expected to leave San Diego. From the day we moved there from Indiana, my wife, Margaret, and I felt that it was home. It was the only home that our kids, Elizabeth and Joel Porter, had ever really known. But as much as we loved living in San Diego, we were willing to make the sacrifice of moving away so that we could achieve greater success.

Our more serious concern was for the people on the INJOY team. We weren't sure how they would react. San Diego is one of the most beautiful cities in the coun