Chapter 2: I’ve been reading a lot of personal development books recently.

I’ve been reading a lot of personal development books recently. I’ve read some really great books, and I’ve read a few average books, too.

There’s a common thread running through all of these books, though: The authors wrote about the process of becoming successful after they became successful.

That makes sense, of course. You have to put the horse before the cart, surely?

Wrong. I’ve decided to put the cart before the horse. I’m going to write about the process of becoming successful before I become successful. Stephen Covey, in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, defines an upward spiral of success: learn, commit, and do. I have made a commitment to myself to search out the very best books in the field of personal development, and learn and commit to the best principles contained within those books. And I’m going to share the whole process with you so that you’ll get to see what works and what doesn’t work.

So, here’s my first question to you: If you commit to success, do you guarantee success? Is success a predictable outcome?

Chapter 1 "I killed a tree today."

I killed a tree today.

Well, I say killed. You can't really kill something if it's already dead. (You can't kill a steak, for example.) It would be more accurate to say that I sealed its fate. With my weight.

I got locked out of my house and I was trying to swing over my neighbour's fence into my back garden by holding onto one of the branches. And then *CRACK* thirty years of diligent growth snapped under the weight of a thirty year old tree killer.

Well, like I say, it was already dead, anyway.

This feels like an inauspicious way to start a journal about the fundamentals of success. I knew Monday was going to be a bad day to start. That was definitely a predictable outcome.