KEY TO SUCCESS

It’s attributed to Bill Cosby to have said, “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is to try to please everyone.” Okay, trying to please everyone may not work or be easy but is it really the key to failure? “Hey, hey, hey” as sure as Bill Cosby is the voice of Fat Albert, trying to please everyone is a key to failure. It’s righteousness that we should seek rather than to please everyone. True, pleasing someone is sometimes the right thing to do but pleasing someone can also be unrighteous, and thus be the wrong thing to do. Our strong instinctual propensity to seek pleasure and avoid pain serves us well a great deal of the time. Even so, that which is pleasurable and avoids pain is not always the right thing to seek. Only when we seek ye first what is right are we aligned with Godliness and true success. Regardless of how much we may want to please someone, it can be in direct opposition to Right. We encounter this paradox many times while interacting with people, especially in raising children or while in other positions of authority. In short, telling someone “no” is rarely pleasant to the recipient or to the person rendering the decision. Nevertheless, we must hold true to Right even if it is isn’t pleasing and remember that there is never a right way to do a wrong thing. That’s a true key to success.