Free Think Like a Champion: An Informal Education in Business and Life by Donald Trump Page A

quality of life.
    A hungry man will realize something immediately. If he had money, he wouldn’t be hungry. That’s a very basic visual, but it applies. In other words, pay attention to your financial literacy.

Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important, in some respect, whether he chooses to be so or not.
    —NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

    Destiny
    W hen I was going through my mail one day, I came across a stack of letters from students in middle school about The Apprentice and the business lessons they’ve learned from watching it. There must have been forty letters, so I skimmed through them, and a couple questions stood out because they were asked repeatedly. One was about how to achieve success, and the other one was how to deal with obstacles on the way to success.
    My first thought was how important planning ahead is to success, and how equally important it is to remain flexible with those plans. How do you tell students about the importance of plans and sticking to them while still emphasizing the necessity for flexibility? It would seem to be a contradiction.
    There’s a quote I like by an anonymous thinker: “The bend in the road is not the end of the road unless you refuse to take the turn.” That’s a valuable thought for business skills as well as life skills. Very rarely does everything work out the way we hope or think it will. In fact, sometimes it works out better when you’ve
had to take a few detours along the way, but what will help you the most is to be prepared for them. Interesting things have happened to people when they’ve taken side trips, planned or otherwise.
    I was scheduled to make a short appearance on a boat in New York City and then to get off before it took an evening long cruise around Manhattan. The boat was full of happy and excited people, and the festivities were just starting to begin, but I had other plans in midtown, and I was getting ready to leave when I noticed that the boat had already left the dock and was in the middle of the river. I wasn’t too happy about this turn of events, but there wasn’t much I could do about it except to adjust my mood and accept a cruise around my favorite city as an unexpected adventure. What happened is that I had the opportunity to talk with a variety of people while having some great ideas at the same time. New York City is beautiful when it’s lit up at night and it turned out to be a very pleasant evening for everyone. If I had perceived the situation as a misadventure, I don’t think I would have had some of the creative ideas that came to me, or as much fun.
    This is a simple example of an unanticipated event that turned into a positive memory. I had plans that were business related that had to be changed, but it wasn’t the end of the world. It was a blip, not a catastrophe. When these things happen to you, whether they be big or small events, remember that your perception of their magnitude will play a big part in what you can reap from them. We’ve all heard the term “go with the flow,” and in my case, that’s what I had to do unless I wanted to jump overboard and attempt to swim the Hudson River at night. Sometimes common sense will intervene, too.
    Carefully planning your way to success is a sure way to achieve your goals, and that approach should never be underestimated. Just remember that you need to be patient and persevering and to
know that there can be delays and detours along the way. I’ve waited twenty years to see some things happen, but it was worth the wait and I had to change course a few times until the pieces finally fell into place. Destiny has a part to play in your life and in your business—so give it a chance to work.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
    —RALPH WALDO EMERSON

    Each Success Is the Beginning of the Next One
    T hat thought by Ralph Waldo Emerson has always been an inspiration to me. It gives me energy to