Keep the Oak in Sight

You must have long-range goals to keep you from being frustrated by short-range failures.

—Charles C. Noble,
writer

Not long ago, I met a man who is a multimillionaire. His name is Don Storms. Several years ago, he was a very successful television personality who was fired when new management came into his organization. He went through an agonizing period of depression and an I-just-don't-care-anymore attitude. But he was able to turn himself around and become incredibly successful in an entirely new field.

How did he do it? "It was a sense of purpose," he says, "having a goal, and a new dream to strive toward." It was having this goal—making a success of his new business venture—that enabled Storms to turn his life around. When I met him, I asked him about the secret to his success. He told me it was because he kept his eye on the oak tree.

"The oak tree?" I asked. I had no idea what he was talking about.

"When I was growing up in the country," Storms told me, "we used to plow the fields. We would never look down at the ground we were plowing. We'd look at the oak tree, shoot for that, and plow a straighter furrow. If you look at the adversities—oh, there's a rock, or a tree stump, or a small ravine—you'll be wandering all over the place. But if you've got an oak tree in your sight and you're heading right for it, you'll get past the rocks and stumps and accomplish your goal."

It doesn't matter if you're plowing a field, or plowing a trail to a new business. You want to get to the other side. If your goal is fuzzy and you're not sure where you want to go, you'll bump into every stone and stump in your path. If, however, you have that goal in front of you, firmly planted in your mind, it will act like a magnet and draw you straight to it.

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight but has no vision.

—Helen Keller,
writer and lecturer