See You at the Top summary

Have you ever suffered from a negative self-image? If so, the good news is that there are a number of methods to improve it. 

Remember that your self-image starts and ends with you. Other people can't make you feel bad about yourself unless you allow them to.

So helping others is crucial to boosting your self-image. But what about the people you care for the most? The second step on your journey to success is improving your relationships.

According to the author, you can achieve anything you want if you make the time and effort to help others. That begins with how you perceive and treat the people around you.

Creating goals is a powerful tool for getting what you want out of life. Yet many people fail to harness it, usually because of how they go about it. Setting goals – step number three on your road to success – demands hard work and concentration. Here’s how you do it.

The first thing you have to do is be as specific as possible. Vague or arbitrary goals such as simply wanting to lose weight or earn a lot of money rarely materialize. This is why you need to quantify your goals: How much weight do you want to lose? How much money do you want to make?

Even when you make the effort to reach your goals, life will often bring unexpected obstacles your way. While you can’t stop these situations from arising, you can control your response to them. 

That brings us to the fourth step on the stairway to success: adopting a positive attitude. Unlike your self-image, which is about your view of yourself, your attitude is your approach to the rest of the world.

Have you ever heard of a professional making a name for herself by rushing home as soon as the clock struck five every day? 

Probably not. Going above and beyond what they’re expected to do is what distinguishes successful people from average ones. That’s why the fifth step in our journey is to understand that success takes hard work.

You might be wondering what motivates successful people to become overachievers. Sure, having a good attitude and positive self-image are important. But the most successful people embody the sixth and final step in our journey – a burning desire to excel.

In many cases, desire can give you the ability to win against the worst of odds. That’s what happened to the American boxer Billy Miske. In 1923, after being hospitalized for kidney failure, Miske was diagnosed with Bright’s disease. He knew that he had less than a year to live, and he felt compelled to provide his family with one last merry Christmas.