Key To Success Lyrics

I'd like to tell you about the strangest secret in the world

Some years ago, the late Nobel Prize winning Dr. Albert Schweitzer was being interviewed in London

And a reporter asked him

Doctor, what's wrong with men today

And the great doctor was silent a moment and then he said

Men simply don't think

It's about this that I want to talk with you

We live today in a golden age

An era that man has looked forward to, dreamed of, and worked toward for thousands of years

But since it's here, we pretty well take it for granted

We in America are particularly fortunate to live in the richest land that ever existed on the face of the earth

A land of abundant opportunity for everyone

But do you know what happens

Let's take a hundred men who start even at the age of 25

Do you have any idea what will happen to those men by the time they're 65

These 100 men who all start even at the age of 25 believe they're going to be successful

If you asked any one of these men if he wanted to be a success, he'd tell you he did

And you'd notice that he was eager toward life, that there was a certain sparkle to his eye

an erectness to his carriage, and life seemed like a pretty interesting adventure to him

But by the time they're 65, one will be rich

Four will be financially independent

Five will still be working

Fifty-four will be broke

Now think a moment, out of the 100, only five make the grade

Now why do so many fail

What has happened to the sparkle that was there when they were 25

What's become of the dreams, the hopes, the plans

And why is there such a large disparity between what these men intended to do and what they actually accomplished

When we say about 5% achieve success, we have to define success

And here's the best definition I've ever been able to find

Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal

If a man is working toward a predetermined goal and knows where he's going, that man is a success

If he's not doing that, he's a failure

Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal

Rollo May, the distinguished psychiatrist, wrote a wonderful book called Man's Search for Himself

And in this book, he says, the opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice

It is conformity

And there you have the trouble today

It's conformity, people acting like everyone else without knowing why, without knowing where they're going

Now think of it

In America right now, there are over 18 million people 65 years of age and older

And most of them are broke

They're dependent on someone else for life necessities

Now we learn to read by the time we're seven

We learn to make a living by the time we're 25

Usually by that time, we're not only making a living, we're supporting a family

And yet by the time we're 65, we haven't learned how to become financially independent in the richest land that has ever been known

Why

We conform

And the trouble is that we're acting like the wrong percentage group, the 95 who don't succeed

Now why do these people conform

Well, they really don't know

These people believe that their lives are shaped by circumstances, by things that happen to them, by exterior forces

They're outer directive people

A survey was made one time that covered a lot of men working men

And these men were asked, why do you work

Why do you get up in the morning

19 out of 20 had no idea

If you ask them, they'll say, well, everyone goes to work in the morning

And that's the reason they do it, because everyone else is doing it

Now let's get back to our definition of success

Who succeeds

Any person who succeeds is the person who is progressively realizing a worthy ideal