The Only One Thing You Need To Do And The Sole Secret Of Success

After Liverpool had won the Champions League, I heard the German manager, “I usually get half drunk twenty minutes after any match. Yet, today, I drank nothing but water.”

In fact, leadership experts and football gurus have concurred on Klopp’s charisma, positive energy, boldness of planning and decision making. They have also agreed on his simple way of communication, charming smile, and humbleness. However, during matches, these turn from effective attitudes to lethal weapons. Indeed, the man admits that the pressure incurred on him by responsibility and the results he has to bear impel him to use psychotropics. This is how he faces the harshness of reality, which is a weakness. It seems he does so before his team, not only when he is on his own.

Generally, Europeans-specially Germans-are into strong drinks. However, this is not a customary leadership behavior. At least, it is not something admirable or exemplary about a leader, especially when it comes to his technical and administrative team.

What is, therefore, the lesson we should learn from Klopp’s confessions?

The most significant lesson is that there is no such a thing as an ideal leader. Each and every human being has his own weaknesses and shortcomings. All leaders are shaken by fear. This impels them to fetch means to sever themselves from reality. They look for ways to return to fighting their battles and try to win them or, otherwise, stand the new defeats. There is no such a thing as a perfect person who is wholly balanced. Nobody can withstand all the results alone, despite all his gifts and positivity. Gina Amaro Rudan asserts that, “Genius is not a gift; it’s a choice you make.”

Sustainable success has, therefore, two bases, namely, passion and purpose. When I pondered which one is more important than the other, I discovered that both are but one thing. Indeed, they are. You are also one being. I believe this is the secret behind the twenty minutes that steal half of Klopp’s consciousness, as he strives to live his passion and score his goals.

Thus, the question becomes: what is that sole thing you need to know as a human being, leader, or manager? Another question is: is there one mission which you, only, can and should undertake even if the whole world recoils?

Every human being has his unique disposition that results from blending his own passion with his own purpose. The Japanese use the “IKigai” concept to refer to the “meaning for being” or the drive that makes every person rise and strive to make his life meaningful. Ikigai also lends itself to the title of a book written by Hector Gracia and Francesc Miralles. In this book, they interpret the longevity of the happy and healthy elderly Japanese, especially in Okinawa Island. This means that there is no particular external strategy for discovering how to make our life meaningful. Life is no dilemma. Rather, we only need to maintain one thing that we are passionate about. We need to get engaged in doing the thing we cherish most, not the thing that earns us our living.

There is one secret for success. Each human being owns the keys of his own. What could have driven Nelson Mandela to give up 27 years, spending them in prison? What could be the secret power that pushed Felix Baumganter, an Austrian, to be the first man to jump to earth from the stratosphere in 2012? What could be the secret power that pulled Sir Edmund Percival Hillary, a New Zealand Mountaineer, to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 1953?

The secret was unraveled by Abraham Maslow in the middle of the twentieth century. He said, “Capacities clamor to be used, and cease their clamor only when they are well used .... Not only is it fun to use our capacities, but it is necessary for growth. The unused skill or capacity or organ can become a disease center or else atrophy or disappear, thus diminishing the person…”

In his The Alchemist, Paolo Coelho expresses the secret of the world by saying, “All things are one thing,” and “When you live your passion, you achieve your purpose”. I believe, however, that Og Mandino outshined Coelho in his great book The Greatest Salesman in the World in the Fourth Scroll of the ten secrets of success. In fact, Mandino said, “You are nature’s greatest miracle. This is the statement that one needs to remember in order to perform activities with courage. Since you are unique, it is imperative that you accept that you have differences from other people. Rather than trying in vain to copy what other people do, be yourself and embrace your uniqueness. A rare being is valuable, which makes you valuable…”

In fact, the chance of any human being coming to life would not exceed 1 out of 500 million. In case of In Vitro Fertilization, this chance becomes 1 out of 50 million! So, having been born and coming to life, your world makes it imperative that you be like Klopp, to scream silently that you might be heard in the great uproar!

So, it is clear that the great ideas which transformed the world never started as great ideas, but as crazy ones, after which they changed from a suppressed feeling to loud shouts, brave initiatives, and great results.

Nasim Smadi

Founder of www.edara.com & Chief Editor of www.BestBookBriefings.com