do the whole trip again, such was her love of sailing. And
indeed, when interviewed on her boat at the finish Ellen said
that the happiest time was the welcome she was experiencing at
that very moment and the saddest would be the next minute
when she had to step off her boat on to the quayside.
Ellen MacArthur is the epitome of all that constitutes successful
outcome thinking. The joy of what we see in her is that we each
have our equivalent achievable success. What we will explore in
this chapter is what success can mean for each of us individually
and how we can think and act in a way that makes that success
possible, not only in the future but also the present.
“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in
the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it
was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for
they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”
T E Lawrence
Let’s consider some contrasting examples, ones that are all too
familiar, to me at least.
Kevin was constantly searching for success. He’d had eight
different jobs in five years. Each had failed to meet his
expectations. Every time he’d fallen out with his manager or the
market conditions for each business had not been “quite right.”
“Customers just aren’t coming through the door,” he stated
frequently. Lack of success certainly wasn’t due to lack of effort.
Kevin tried very hard. He was constantly busy; he rarely had time
to spare for anything else. He regularly talked about it being “a
tough world out there” and yet each new challenge resulted in
the same familiar disappointment. He talked about not wanting
to make the same mistakes again, particularly in terms of his
choice of business and manager, but somehow he always did.
Jim worked for a large organization. He had fulfilled his
particular ambitions by continuing in the family tradition of
ACHIEVE WHAT YOU REALLY WANT: WELL-FORMED OUTCOMES 265