If you have ever physically built a new home, and I helped build ours, you know it is not very exciting to see the concreate slab or a block foundation in place. However, as the home takes — the driveway and sidewalks are finished and in place, the shrubs are planted, and the grass sown and mowed — you can stand back and admire a thing of beauty. I share this as an analogy for what I am building here, with a step-by-step plan for helping to build greater success for your life. They both take time, but if you ever wake up some fine morning without having goals and a plan for your life, it is the beginning of the end for you and all others who have no real goals, a purpose and excitement for their life.

If you have followed along from the beginning where I asked you to take a pair of scissors and clip out each column and place them in a file folder, you know that I am taking a break, and we need that from time to time, especially when we get very tired. The words I have been sharing for the past several weeks are part of the foundation of our plan. We are more than halfway through with the words, and I will begin next week and share the rest of them. You may already know many of these words (maybe all), but words are the foundation for our language, and they are what we talk with and think with. We literally use words to achieve success. We can’t do without them.

You know, success means different things for different people. When I wrote the book “How To Plan Your Life,” one of my first basic questions was “What really makes a person successful?” In order to discover the real foundation of success, I began to collect information, listen to tapes, do interviews, and read everything I could find on the subject. Slowly but surely some answers began to emerge. After several years, I reached the conclusion that there were two distinct areas to consider: the person and the career, job or activities in which the person wanted to be successful. Obviously, no one person can be successful at everything.

To have some order or framework for this research, I decided to enlist the aid of six open-ended questions. Notice how they lead logically from one to the other. 1. Who Am I? 2. Where Am I? 3. Where Am I Going in Life? 4. How Will I Get There? 5. What Kind of Person Will I Be? 6. What Must I Do to Make Success Happen?

My planning approach has been developed after many years of experience. I am a great believer in “motivation” and know it is an especially important ingredient for success, but if we are not careful, it can be very superficial, shallow and wear off very quickly. Motivation is somewhat like taking a bath, and you know how long a bath lasts, even a great one.

We will begin with our words again next week, but please allow me to tell you what my two major goals are: First, to help turn our nation back to God and, second, to help newspapers regain their most important standing in our communities. You can get things from your local community newspaper that you can’t get anywhere else.

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(Jim Davidson is an author, syndicated columnist, and Founder of the Bookcase for Every Child project. For a personalized copy of Jim’s latest book, “Keep Your Fork” send $25, which includes postage and handling and tax, to Jim Davidson, 2 Bentley Drive, Conway, AR 72034. It is also available on Amazon.)