The only reason some people enjoy success while others fail is because those who succeed persist in holding vision of what they want.

They succeed, in first place, by creating a vision.

Then they persist in that vision. As it sinks deeper into their minds, it becomes a driving obsession. It becomes their most cherished value. And they spend all their time in trying to materialize that value. This drives them to training themselves to achieve their goal.

Most people believe that success is a result of a realized talent. Talent is what people see. They see a bewildering array of skills and conclude—incorrectly—that talent made person brilliant. Others attribute it to motivation. Again, this is effect, not cause that arises from a vision.

I contend that talent is cultivated from vision, and that as vision deepens, as action toward learning and implementation proceeds, skills develop and accumulate. The end result of numerous small skills is a prowess or flair for doing something that we call talent. Personal development happens incrementally, in small quotas, in chunks.

How did Albert Einstein become greatest thinker world has ever known? What is wisdom we can gather from looking at his success story? How did a patent office clerk achieve success as a celebrity? The simple answer is that he was a genius. He had more brain cells. He had more ability to think.

Yet a history of young Albert Einstein showed that he was not a brilliant student. In fact, his teacher once sent a note to his parents suggesting that he was wasting time attending school.

When routine sets in, particularly in relationships, we can’t always see impact it has until we throw a new ingredient into mix. This week, I ventured outside of my regular routine, and performed a very unexpected act of kindness. The results were terrific!

Picture it, Cicely, 1945 … oops, wait, wrong story ...

Picture it, Northern Ontario, Winter 2004. It’s Friday morning, snow is falling, there is a nip in air and neither my husband nor I want to get out of our toasty warm bed to get ready for work.

We go through same exercise every morning. We both wait for other one to get up first to turn up furnace, then he heads to his washroom to get ready and I go into my office to meditate for half an hour.

This morning, however, neither of us would budge. He didn’t want to get up, shower, make breakfast and prepare lunches, and I didn’t want to meditate, go through my agenda for day and start prioritizing my long list of outstanding tasks. We were stuck.

I must have been desperate or temporarily insane because I suddenly blurted out, “Hey! You get up and get ready and I’ll make you breakfast today!” He was stunned at first and didn’t say a word, then started laughing, “Yeah right. What about your meditation?” For anyone who knows me, there are two things I don’t do … cook (unless I’m in a real bind) and deviate from my routine.