Success by Another Measure

About the Book

Historians will look back at the recent history in the United States as paradoxical.  In the country viewed as the land of opportunity, unprecedented wealth was reached.  The stock market, the country’s most glowing example of economic growth, reached historic highs and was bullish for longer than anyone could remember.  Stores shelves brimmed with goods that decades earlier were unimaginable.  Employment levels were never higher.  The number of the country’s youth attending college reached all-time highs.  Airline travel tripled.  For the better part of the recent past, peace was present throughout the land and the country’s military might was unchallenged.  The opportunity for a feeling of national well-being seemed never more available.

And yet in this land, that had so long been the shining example of material wealth, there was an ever-growing feeling of discontent.  Loneliness, fear, insecurity and worry were common themes. To many, life had lost its meaning.  Millions of Americans worried about the country’s social fabric.  Organizations like the Peace Keepers formed, based on the belief that a moral deterioration had swept the land.  Millions sought books on spirituality, prayer, and angels. It was a time when the “haves” became richer, and the “have-nots” were left further behind, when division and isolation seemed more prevalent than closeness.  It was a time when attention devoted to distant celebrities seemed greater than time spent with friends and family, when richness of goods seemed greater than richness of spirit.

Social scientists, in particular, will note that millions of Americans climbing the ladder of success found the ladder to be placed, as Stephen Covey would say, against the wrong wall.  Reaching the top has not brought satisfaction for those Americans, greater wealth has not meant greater well-being.  Improved technology had not brought more time.  Harder work has not brought greater joy and closeness.  The fruits of labor have not been as sweet as expected.

Some will say we have been seeking “fool’s gold”, pursuing success by the wrong measure.  Real success is an internal process -- one in which a person lives up to a set of good moral values.  Such success occurs within the individual.  Success left to external measures is vulnerable to the vagaries of others.

The question of what measure to use and where to place the ladder is critical.   The goals of larger, bigger, faster and more, need to be replaced by goals with greater personal meaning and purpose.  The new measures of success have to be under our own control and not driven by external forces.  It is time to return to the measure that has always been under our own control and the one place that has the most long lasting substance -- our character.

To increase an understanding of our own character takes work.  Success By Another Measure provides a structure for that work.  Chapters one through eight emphasize the importance of character, provides a definition and give extensive examples of wonderful expressions of character.  Character is learned and cultivated.  It is acquired through examples, lessons, models and beliefs passed on from those around us.  Overtly and covertly we are shaped to a set of values that is uniquely our own.  But since this composite of values is learned, and not inherited like eye color, it can be magnified, solidified, cultivated, reinforced or ignored.

The heart of any motivational book is its ability to inspire change.  And the heart of Success By Another Measure is its ability to stimulate change through thought and action.  The action is initially in the form of engaging in the exercises provided.  These exercises increase awareness of personal make-up.  Subsequent action takes the form of carrying over new perceptions to daily life a

About the Author

Robert Pawlicki, Ph.D., a psychologist for 30 years, lectures extensively and conducts workshops on practical means to find inner strength in meeting life’s challenges. Formerly, he was Director of the Behavioral Medicine Center at the Drake Center (a rehabilitation and long-term care hospital) in Cincinnati, Ohio and professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. He is the author of approximately 50 research and scholarly articles and most recently has written a Civil Rights play entitled Mississippi Summer.