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hope, you’ve got to deal with all facets of life. You’ve got to deal with your personal life, your family life and your career—you cannot separate them. The January 8, 1990, issue of USA TODAY said the number one cause of a productivity decline in America today is marital difficulty at home. You can’t have a knockdown drag-out at home and go to a job and be as productive as you otherwise would be. You cannot get fired or chewed out by the boss on the job and go home with the same attitude as you’d have if you had just been given a significant raise or recognition. You cannot separate all of these things.

      I will attempt to make one thing crystal clear: You go for quality of life first; invariably standard of living goes up. But if you just go for standard of living, there is no assurance that quality of life is going to go up.

      The principles I’m going to teach are the principles that made our country great. Did you ever wonder why it is that in 1776, three million Americans produced Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and Franklin and the whole bit? And why it is that in 1995, two hundred sixty-five million Americans produced….I’ll let you fill in the blank, as you read this. I don’t think you can name one person with the stature of the individuals I have just named. Let me ask you: Could it be what they were taught?

      As you reflect on it, do you believe that what you teach has anything to do with what you believe, and what you believe has anything to do with what you do, and what you do has anything to do with what you have? Well, let me tell you what they were taught. According to the Thomas Jefferson Research Institute, in the 1770s over ninety percent of all the educational thrust was of a moral/ethical/faith basis. Solid foundation stuff. That’s the reason we produced all the people we did in that period of our history. So many times people think, “Well, I’m just a….” and then they say an accountant or a bookkeeper or a salesperson or a household executive or a doctor or a lawyer or whatever. “What can I do?” Let me tell you something which I believe has genuine significance. Now, I’ll precede by saying again, yes, you were designed for accomplishment. You were engineered for success. You were endowed with the seeds of greatness. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. You literally were born to win, but it takes a plan.

      As I conclude this first chapter, I want to do so with a story. I had finished writing my book, Over the Top. My daughter was the editor and we had fun writing that book together. She’s the best editor, by far, I have ever had. We had completed the manuscript, we’d sent it to the publisher, and he promptly packed it up and sent it back and said, “How can you tell people how to go ‘over the top’ when you haven’t identified what ‘the top’ is?” I thought to myself, ‘Well, that will be a snap!’ I worked for two solid months! I would write and, No, that’s not it! I’d write some more, No, that’s not it! I’d try again. I’d get out and take long walks and nothing was happening. I mean, I didn’t have a clue. And then one day the Redhead and I were in Shreveport, Louisiana. We were there visiting her sister who is in a nursing home; she had MS. Many of the people in that home are beyond human help. When we walked in there, somebody said, “Here’s a problem.”

      I said, “Step number one is this, step number two is this, step number three is that.”

      Some of those people, unfortunately, are beyond that human help I spoke of.

      The Redhead is not burdened with the belief that she’s got to solve people’s problems. She just walks in and grabs them and hugs them and tells them how pretty they are, how much she loves them, how glad she is to see them, and they gather around her like bees at a hive. And on that particular day I watched it and I couldn’t handle it. I walked out. And as I walked out I was praying, I said, “Lord, give me that kind of heart. Make me have that kind of compassion for my fellow human being. Touch me so I will have that kind of spirit.” In a few minutes I felt better. I walked back in—they were in the big meeting room. My wife and her sister were seated at the table. I walked in and sat down and all of a sudden it started to come. The only piece of paper I had was the back of the motel bill which I had just paid. I took the sheet of paper out, the bill out, and I started writing. Ninety percent of what this is what I wrote in a few minutes after I’d struggled for two months.

       You are at the top when you clearly understand that failure is an event, not a person; that yesterday ended last night. Today is your brand new day.

       You are at the top when you’ve made friends with your past, are focused on the present and are optimistic about the future.

       You are at the top when you know that success (a win) doesn’t make you, and failure (a loss) doesn’t break you.

       You are at the top when you are filled with faith, hope and love, and live without anger, greed, guilt, envy or thoughts of revenge.

       You are at the top when you are mature enough to delay gratification and shift your focus from your rights to your responsibilities.

       You are at the top when you know that failure to stand for what is morally right is the prelude to being the victim of what is criminally wrong.

       You are at the top when you are secure in who you are, so you are at peace with God and in fellowship with man.

       You are at the top when you make friends of your adversaries and have gained the love and respect of those who know you best.

       You are at the top when you understand that others can give you pleasure, but genuine happiness comes when you do things for others.

       You are at the top when you are pleasant to the grouch, courteous to the rude, and generous to the needy.

       You are at the top when you love the unlovable, give hope to the hopeless, friendship to the friendless, and encouragement to the discouraged.

       You are at the top when you can look back in forgiveness, forward in hope, down in compassion and up with gratitude.

       You are at the top when you know that he who would be the greatest among you must become the servant of all.

       You are at the top when you recognize, confess, develop and use your God-given physical, mental and spiritual abilities to the glory of God and for the benefit of mankind.

       You are at the top when you stand in front of the Creator of the Universe and He says to you, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”

      After I identified the top, I realized what I’d really done. I’d identified the bottom. That’s the base; that’s the foundation upon which you can build any kind of career, whether it’s in education, athletics, business, medicine, law, accounting, computers, or whatever. I believe these are principles that will make a difference.

      What happens to people when they have no hope? I have a good friend, her name is Pam Lontos. Pam was an overweight, depressed housewife. She had been under the care of a psychiatrist for five years, who assured her every time they got together that she would always need him because, You are never going to get any better. I am your only hope. Bottom line is she slept from twelve to eighteen hours every day. She only got up to prepare breakfast for her children and husband, and then she went back to bed. She got up again to prepare their dinner and she went back to bed. That was her daily routine and this had been going on for several years.

      And then one day she heard an advertisement on the radio, and the advertisement was about a health club and it kind of piqued her interest. For the first time in a long time, she caught a glimmer of hope. As a story within a story, General Robinson Risner is a friend of mine. He was a prisoner of war in the Hanoi Hilton for about seven years—five and a half years he was in solitary confinement in a minute cell. The way he kept from losing his mind was that he would jog by the hour right there in place in his cell. And it still, on occasion, was so depressing in there, he would take his underwear and shove it in his mouth and scream at the top of his voice. He did not want the enemy to know they were getting to him. And he said one day, in the depth of his despair, he was down on the floor in this little cinder block

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