When I began my journey of self evolution I wondered how it was possible that the people I most wanted to be like had attained their success. Were they just lucky? If so, how could I become lucky? Were they born into it? I was out of luck on that one. Or was it the entirety of their path? Maybe it wasn’t any one factor… maybe it was all of them.

I’ve since come to see that no matter what it looks like on the outside, all successful people follow the unwritten rules of success. There are many of these rules and I believe most successful people aren’t even aware of them. Most likely they just picked up their success habit from watching their parents work ethic or aligning themselves with the right kind of friends. There are many principles that lead to success. The one I want to talk about today is the principle of Success builds more Success.

Seems like a no-brainer right? But it’s an often over-looked fact of life. The more you have, the more you’re going to get. Even Jesus said, “To him that has, more will be given.”

Think about it in your own life. Let’s say you are wrongly accused of a crime you didn’t commit. The charges are serious and you are facing some serious jail time. What kind of defense lawyer do you want? The cheapest? The most spiritual? Or is it the one who is most successful at defending his clients?

What about the restaurants you like to eat in? Have you noticed that the majority of the time you go out to eat at busy restaurants? Is the food really that good, that you would wait in line for an hour for a table? Or when you finally get that table, and you have to listen to the entire dining room’s conversation, because everyone is talking at the top of their voice? It’s a nice way to relax and enjoy a meal, isn’t it? Maybe you’re drawn there for the same reason everyone else is… It’s a successful restaurant and people are drawn to success, we can’t help it.

Consider the buzz surrounding new bands, and movies, and television shows. Have you ever seen the trailer for a movie and been really excited to see it, so you stand in line, buy your tickets, and discover that you’ve just wasted thirty dollars of your hard earned money? How does this happen? Because one of the ways that marketing works is they show you the illusion of success, which in turn leads you to buy their product.

So, success builds success. That’s all well and good, but what do you do if you haven’t had any success yet? I mean it seems like a really good deal, the snowball of success, where your previous success ensures future success, like a wheel that keeps turning round, but how do you get success to begin with? Glad you asked.

You start where every successful person who has ever lived has started… At the beginning, with nothing! Not nothing, as in no money or tools or talent, although that may be the case in your particular situation, but nothing, as in no success to build upon. Everyone who is anyone has had to start somewhere. So where do we begin…?

We begin with baby steps. That’s right, just like learning to walk, learning success begins with baby steps. If you’re willing to play a game with me, for the next 30 days, pick a task that you have been putting off. Whether it is chores around the house or writing a paper for school, or just calling up someone who you’ve been putting off talking to. Pick your deed for the day, and then, as Nike has taught you, Just Do It! Don’t think about what else you might have to do that day… focus on getting this one job done. And then when you do, guess what? You’ve just started you’re own success snowball. Pick another task for day two, and do it. Another for day three, and so on and so forth. Build your success snowball a little more every day, and soon enough it will be big enough to roll downhill all by itself, just like in those old cartoons.

There’s no shortcuts to success, and no one else will do it for you. But if you keep building momentum, every day will be that much easier, until your hard-to-break habit in life is success. You won’t be able to help but have it. So get to work, or don’t… it’s all up to you.