Recipe For Success

By: D. A. Slinkard

My wife is an awesome cook! What she is able to do in the kitchen is absolutely amazing, how she is able to take a little of this and a little of that and before you know it, she has produced a tasty dish. She has a knack for cooking and has even started her own YouTube channel showing others that they, too, can produce delicious meals just as she does. She can take a recipe, gather the ingredients, follow the steps, and produce food for which even the chef Gordon Ramsey would give his approval. My wife has not been to culinary school, but she has perfected her cooking skills thankfully in large part to time she spent in the kitchen with her grandmother.

Growing up in Missouri, my wife saw the passion her grandmother Jesse Urhahn had when it came to preparing meals for her family. If you were to ask my wife for some of her fondest childhood memories, I guarantee she would mention the times she spent preparing meals with her grandmother. Those times taught my wife a lot about how a woman is to love her family and how food can taste so much better when its primary ingredient is a whole lot of love. The success she has had in preparing meals got me to thinking about the world around us.

My wife can take a recipe, follow each step, and she is able to produce the same tasty results her grandmother did so many years ago. What stops us from doing the exact same feat in the world of business? In the world of education? What we need to do is find someone who has achieved success, study to find out how they obtained it (their recipe), and then attempt to recreate it. If I follow the exact same steps as someone else — doing what they did, how they did it — realistically speaking, I should be able to achieve the same results.

How many times do we hear about history repeating itself? Why? The same steps or ingredients are used over and over, and these steps produce the same results. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. The one thing I have turned my focus and attention towards has become autobiographies. Why? If you want the recipes from someone’s life, what better way than reading the words directly penned by the person you are wanting to emulate?

Some people have faced heartache that we would want to avoid; how do you do that? Avoid using the ingredients that lead to the heartache. Sounds simplistic, but why is it some people can cook using a recipe while others burn the food? Those who do well are able to utilize each step while those who miss out do so because they skip or miss a step. If you ask my wife, the recipes are only guidelines for her because I can tell you, she has been able to take some of the recipes her grandmother had and has been able to improve on them. How? She adds her personal touch to each recipe.

Our success in life can be the same way. Find someone you want to emulate, study who they are, study why they are this way, and then learn how to implement their style mixed with who you are. We are all unique individuals and not one person is the same as the other, but we can train ourselves to be more like those we desire. Sound crazy? I just saw a commercial that showed synchronized swimmers, perfectly swimming in unison. They were fluid, they were perfect in their movements, they looked as one unit, but they had to train to be this way.

Our lives and the success we have is no different. Success takes work, and you must be committed to achieving what you want. The problem when it comes to recipes is sometimes people do not want to follow the steps; they tend to want to veer off course. If you have the steps you need to take, so why not follow the course? If achieving success in life was easy then everyone would do it, but the reality is many people fail. You need to start today with the end in mind, find your person of interest to emulate, find out their recipe for success, then work your tail off to be able to take the same steps as they did. Follow the recipe, find success.
By: D. A. Slinkard