To me, the acronym of S.U.C.C.E.S.S. to denote success traits as created by Dr Maxwell Maltz, writing in his Psycho-Cybernetics classic is indeed a marvelous piece of work, attesting to the intellectual horsepower and mental bandwidth of the author.

The first letter stands for Sense of Direction.

It resonates pretty well with the intellectual cues of Napoleon Hill (Definiteness of Purpose), Dr Edwards Deming (Constancy of Purpose), Tony Robbins (beginning part of his Ultimate Success Formula) and Joel Arthur Barker (Power of Vision, with corroborating research findings from Dutch social scientist Fred Polak, management consultant Jim Collins, psychologist Martin Seligman, Canadian educational psychologist Dr Benjamin Singer, and not forgetting, Austrian psychologist/psychiatrist Dr Viktor Frankl).

In a nut shell, and putting it in layman terms, it's all about the fact that goals set direction, in tune with Dr Maltz's concept of goal striving.

Other than the myriad aspects of Imagination, Opportunity Sensing, and Theatre of the Mind, this Goal Striving perspective of Dr Maltz actually fascinated me the most, ever since having read his classic for the first time in the late seventies.

It has had also benefitted me the most as a professional working in the corporate world during the ensuing years from the late seventies.

Interestingly, Dr Maltz added in his Prescription for establishing a Sense of Direction:

• Get yourself a goal worth working for. Better still, get yourself a project;
• Decide what you want out of any situation. That means, you must know your principal objective;
• Always have something ahead of you to look forward to - to work for and hope for;
• Always look forward, for the Nostalgia for the Future can keep you youthful;
• When you're not striving, not looking forward, you are really not living;
• Get interested in some projects to help others, not out of a sense of duty, but because you want to;

Bravissimo!