An established success, surely merits a strategy for its protection. A long fought-for success, spoiled or interfered with for lack of careful thought, is a sad-case-scenario.

Territory gained in any field of operation, should be fenced in and consolidated, before looking for further expansion. Success quickly gained and then just as quickly lost, implies that the success was perhaps more the result of good fortune than of skill, talent or hard work.

There are many best-selling books that link a positive attitude to success. Napoleon Hill’s, ‘Think and Grow Rich’, sums up in the title, that the thoughts that motivate our actions, will always influence their consequences. He writes 15 Laws of success!

Anyone who takes the trouble to apply the rules, can expect to move towards wealth. The research for the book took twenty years to complete. He met with many hugely successful individuals and analysed their strategies for creating great wealth.

It is just as correct to say that if our thoughts were negative, gloomy and lacking in confidence, the consequences, even of our hard work, would also be negative, gloomy, notably lacking in success.

There may not be a best-selling book about failure, but if 15 Laws of failure were ever written, a prominent theme of the discussion, would be bad attitudes and negative thinking.

We have to acknowledge to ourselves that we hold the keys that unlock the doors of success. Attitudes are powerful. They should be respected, understood and used productively.

As Weapons of Vast Effectiveness, it is very important that our attitudes are used constructively rather than destructively. Keeping them clean, protected and in good working order is good practice for the care of attitudes just as it is for the storage and care of nuclear weapons.  

World Peace will never just happen. It represents an aspiration that challenges nations and peoples to ‘hammer their swords into plough-shares, and their spears into pruning hooks’.

Thus it is with attitudes. We have the both the tools and the power of choice, to work towards success, and better still, towards the kind of success whose benefits can be shared.

Every inch of conquered ground is an advance, worthy of a warriors medal. We should not treat such progress with contempt by letting it slip through our fingers. We should never allow a complacent attitude to lessen our hold on what has been achieved, nor permit any success to be so cheaply interfered with.