DO MORE! It was Albert Einstein who observed, ‘Nothing happens until something moves.’ He may have been talking about quantum physics and the movement of energy, but that’s the essence of our next rule, Do More! If there’s one rule all the achievers in this book share, it’s this one: they’re all doers. They do more than the average person. And because this rule is so darned obvious, it’s often overlooked in our quest to discover some hidden recipe for success in life and the secret of other’s success. Here’s the blinding truth that I came face to face with in the making of this book: successful people do more than their less successful counterparts. I know there may be spiritual Masters down the ages who only have to think of their desires and hey presto, they materialise out of the ether for them. For the rest of us, we have to put the work in to get the same results. Look at every single person who impresses you with their accomplishments and you’ll see a man or woman of action. Less talk, far more action. A Woman of Action I’ll never forget an interview I read more than ten years ago with the phenomenonal Tina Brown, dubbed the queen of New York well before she was 40, not bad for an Englishwoman. 1. She turned around Vanity Fair and then The New Yorker magazines, making them essential reading in a country with thousands of magazines. In professional circles she is known as the most formidable editor in the world. This interview was carried out in 1993 when she was editing what was then the smartest magazine in the West, The New Yorker. Take a look at her attitude, ‘I turn from one thing to the next and I work very hard and I think about it all the time: isn’t that what everyone does? In order to sustain a job like mine and make it work you’ve got to be tremendously focused. I don’t have much leisure. I think about the magazine all the time, 24 hours a day, in the car, in the bath: all the time. It’s a very fascinating and consuming and rewarding job. I love my job. I love my life.’ Now look at her normal daily routine, ‘I get up at 5.45 and go to the gym at the end of the street for an hour. I never used to do that, but I really find it gets me through the day and gives me energy. Then I have my shower, wake my children up, walk Isabel (her daughter) to the International Free school and come to work. I try not to leave work after 5.30, and then, between 6 and 9pm it’s bedlam with the children. Finally George (her son) goes to bed and then it’s like The Elves and The Shoemaker, because I do a lot of work in the evenings at home: the faxes begin, and it’s another sort of bedlam. I sleep less than six hours a night which I truly don’t like, but I need that little to spend any time with my children.’ I’m not suggesting you should follow her routine to the letter, but I am emphasising the effort a hugely successful individual such as Tina Brown puts in to produce the results she achieves. You may shy away from a routine like that, but at least you’re in no doubt about the sheer level of activity a super-achiever like this puts into her life. I am reminded of something another great achiever, Thomas Edison, once said, ‘Genius is one per cent inspiration, and 2. ninety-nine percent perspiration.’ How often do you sweat? Courage vs. Confidence At the risk of sounding controversial, one of the biggest problems with self-improvers is that they don’t grasp this basic rule, they just don’t do more. They read, they talk and do too many courses, when all that time and energy, and probably money too, could be better spent in doing the things they know they should be getting on with. My intention with The 7 Rules of Success is that you can pick up valuable information and tips on these pages, crack on and apply what you find useful to your life immediately. Another pitfall to watch out for is that of waiting to feel more confident before making a move, ‘working’ on your self-belief before you feel up to making a call, offering a service, writing your novel, setting up a business or whatever you feel pulled to do. Don’t make this mistake. Forget about confidence for a while and substitute courage instead. Assume with me – because it’s probably true- that everyone feels inadequate and unsure at the outset of a new venture. To use that uncertainty as a reason to hesitate or even abandon your plan would be most unwise. The trick is to accept this state as entirely par for the course and carry on regardless. Attempting to ‘work’ on your confidence before taking action can often be a waste of time, because the confidence you crave can only come from doing the very thing you are terrified of. Shakespeare put it well when he said, ‘Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.’ Slay your doubts and demons with good old-fashioned action. Oftentimes necessity is the mother of inspired action. This was certainly the case with Trisha Mason. Widowed at 29 with two 3. small children, no savings, no earnings and bills to pay, she turned herself into a powerhouse of activity in order to keep a roof over her head and give her kids a good life. Her story is no fairy tale, just an example of one woman making full use of every talent and ability she could find within herself to make life work. It wasn’t even about something as lofty as fulfilling her potential. That would have been a luxury she could ill afford. It was just about doing what had to be done, under the circumstances. Trisha Mason is the founder of one of the most successful estate agencies in France. With a £5-7 million turnover and 10,000 French properties sold to English buyers to date, the company now has around 30 offices across France run by specially trained English staff. Her success, by her own admission, is born partly from tragedy. Back in spring 1975, Trisha was a 29-year old widow, living in a dilapidated East London home with two young children, Kate and Jake, and worried about how she was going to cope as a single mother. Just five months earlier, she and her husband Julian had been preparing for Christmas and making plans for renovating the Victorian terrace house in Leytonstone they had bought for £12,000. But when Julian, a 32-year old university electronics engineer, began to suffer from back pains, medical tests diagnosed a cancer so virulent that he died the next April. Her loss forced her to develop an entrepreneurial spirit that has led to her present success and a company that has been voted Best French Estate Agents three times in the International Property Awards. 4. Trisha Mason When my husband died suddenly of cancer, leaving me with two small children at the age of 29, Gingerbread (single parent action group) sent someone I considered ancient round to talk to me. She said, “I guess you find yourself drinking an awful lot of tea, too many cups of tea isn’t good for you dear.” I thought, I don’t want to be labelled as drinking too much tea. Too much gin, fine but too much tea! And strangely enough, that had an awful lot to do with my desire to achieve. Her comment made me face what my two options were. I could either accept tea and sympathy or aim for the highlife and drink the gin and tonic in the evenings. I was left with my grief, a rotten old house and no income. I’ve always loved challenges and it was a case of needs must that I had to earn money – but I also relished the fight. My husband and I had hippie idealism ingrained within us from the ‘60s and that dream certainly didn’t mean existing on the state. We were never materialistic but we did have a common dream about how we wanted our children’s lives to be. It meant having adequate money to take them travelling and continue those dreams. I guess I owed it to him. I was always driven to do more. When my husband died, I was working in a mental hospital trying to establish a toy library for their adult patients. I used to take my children along with me. We always did everything very much as a family, which was why I felt my only option was to set up my own business so they could be with me. My husband had been working in a low salaried job and we had no savings, no pension, nothing except a big four-bedroom house in 5. East London that was falling down around our ears. So, I had to do something. What I did have was plenty of friends around me. We used to sit around my kitchen table drinking wine, rather than tea I might add, and they actually came up with the first business idea for me.