The Common Denominator of Success by Albert E. N. Gray

Isn’t it curious how you’ve often wondered what sets apart the truly successful from everyone else, and here you are, about to explore Albert E. N. Gray’s concept of ‘The Common Denominator of Success’?

In this insightful piece, Gray posits that the secret ingredient to success isn’t rooted in talent or luck, but rather in the habitual willingness to do what failures won’t.

You’re about to uncover why this simple, yet profound idea continues to resonate with professionals like you, decades after its inception. As you reflect on your own practices and ambitions, consider how embracing Gray’s philosophy might challenge the very way you approach your goals and the actions you’re willing to take to achieve them.

Can you guess what this common denominator is, and more importantly, are you ready to integrate it into your life to transform your own definition of success?

Background

The concept of the common denominator of success originated from a pivotal speech delivered by Albert E.N. Gray in 1940 to the esteemed audience of the National Association of Life Underwriters.

Gray, a distinguished figure within the Prudential Insurance Company, captivated his listeners with a groundbreaking idea: success is not a product of inherent abilities or fortuitous circumstances, but rather a result of cultivating the habit of engaging in tasks that failures tend to avoid.

His profound insight challenged conventional wisdom, asserting that this common denominator of success transcends all fields of endeavor.

Gray’s speech shed light on the fundamental principles that underpin success, emphasizing the importance of discipline, perseverance, and a willingness to embrace challenges outside of one’s comfort zone.

Ultimately, Gray’s message underscored the pivotal role that our habits and actions play in shaping the trajectory of our lives and achieving our goals.

Key Takeaways

Here are 4 key takeaways from ‘The Common Denominator of Success’ by Albert E.N. Gray that encapsulate the essence of persistent efforts in achieving success:

• Success is universally tied to the habit of performing tasks that are naturally disliked.
• The formation of this success habit is driven by a purpose that is stronger than the discomfort of the disliked tasks.
• Every qualification for success is acquired through habit, emphasizing the importance of consciously forming good habits.
• Effective decision-making and control over one’s future are achieved by linking every resolution to a clear, practical, and emotionally driven purpose.

Story

As we pivot to the compelling narrative of Albert E.N. Gray, his remarkable journey to success becomes a testament to the power of undertaking life’s less appealing tasks.

It’s through his story that we understand how a purpose, robust and unwavering, can fuel the drive to overcome any obstacle.

Let us explore this transformative tale, for it has the potential to redefine our perception of success and the path to achieving it.

Gray’s Inspirational Journey

Delving into the inspirational journey of Albert E. N. Gray, we uncover a testament to the power of purpose, discipline, and habitual actions in achieving remarkable success. Gray was not born into privilege, but he rose to become an influential figure in the insurance industry, revered for his insight on success.

His journey is a beacon of hope for those confronting adversity, affirming that with a strong purpose, steadfast discipline, and the right habits, success is attainable. Gray’s profound understanding of the human condition and his ability to translate this into a universal formula for success has left an indelible mark.

His journey inspires us all to cultivate the habits necessary for success, regardless of our circumstances.

Life’s Unliked Tasks

In the tapestry of life, it is the unliked tasks, often seen as the intricate, demanding threads, that weave the most profound patterns of success. Gray posits that the habit of tackling these tasks—those we would rather avoid—ultimately determines our triumphs.

These tasks, steeped in discomfort and challenge, are often the catalysts for growth and improvement. They push us past our comfort zones, demand resilience, and foster a habit of perseverance. In fact, the distinction between success and failure often hinges on our approach to these tasks.

While failures evade them, successful individuals confront these tasks head-on. Therefore, embracing life’s unliked tasks is not merely a strategy, but a transformative habit that unlocks the door to enduring success.

Purpose Drives Success

Embracing life’s unliked tasks is a transformative habit that paves the way to success, but this journey is driven by a powerful force—the purpose that fuels our actions and decisions.

This purpose, strong and unwavering, propels us forward, even when the tasks at hand are challenging or undesirable. It is through this purpose we find the strength to form habits of success.

When the purpose is more significant than the hardships, the path to success becomes clear, and the disliked tasks become stepping stones rather than obstacles. The power of purpose, therefore, is not just to guide our steps but to provide the necessary drive to undertake the unliked tasks that ultimately lead to success.

Learnings

Reflecting on Albert E. N. Gray’s insights, we can distill 3 key learnings: the power of purpose, how habits shape success, and the role of effective decision-making. Let’s delve into each of these learnings:

Power of Purpose

Gray illuminates the critical role of a compelling purpose in driving success:

• Emotional and pragmatic purpose: A strong purpose, imbued with emotion and practicality, inspires individuals to tackle tasks they would naturally avoid, paving the way for success.
• Guidance and resilience: This purpose acts as a guiding light, shaping decisions and actions, while providing the resilience needed to face challenges and persist in the face of adversity.
• Foundation for success: Purpose is not just a vision; it is the fundamental force that moves individuals towards their goals, making it an essential element in the journey to success.

The emphasis on a well-defined purpose highlights its significance in motivating actions and overcoming obstacles, serving as the cornerstone of success.

Habits Shape Success

The formation of success-enabling habits is depicted as a key determinant of achieving one’s goals:

• Transformation through consistency: Persistent adherence to specific habits transforms daily actions into a potent force for success.
• Importance of discomfort: Embracing tasks we dislike, as a habit, is underscored as a common trait among successful individuals, outweighing the influence of personal strength or talent.
• Cultivation of positive habits: It’s crucial to consciously develop habits aligned with our purpose to ensure they guide us towards our desired outcomes, rather than falling into detrimental patterns unconsciously.

Gray’s focus on habit formation underscores its pivotal role in directing our path to success, highlighting the necessity of embracing discomfort as part of this process.

Effective Decision-Making

Effective decision-making emerges as a pivotal tool in navigating the path to success:

• Anchored by purpose: Decisions that are firmly rooted in a clear and practical purpose propel us towards our objectives, guiding our journey and reinforcing our resolve.
• Mastery over preferences: A purpose-driven approach to decision-making empowers individuals to transcend their preferences, aligning actions with goals.
• Strategic habit formation: The consistent making and adherence to purpose-aligned decisions foster habits that are instrumental in achieving success, demonstrating the interplay between decision-making and habit formation.

Gray’s insights into decision-making highlight the necessity of aligning choices with a tangible and emotionally resonant purpose, ensuring that every decision contributes to the overarching goal of success.

The Common Denominator of Success Speech

Several years ago I was brought face to face with the very disturbing realization that I was trying to supervise and direct the efforts of a large number of men and women who were trying to achieve success, without knowing myself what the secret of success really was. And that, naturally, brought me face to face with the further realization that regardless of what other knowledge I might have brought to my job, I was definitely lacking in the most important knowledge of all.

Of course, like most of us. I have been brought up on the popular belief that the secret of success is hard work, but I had seen so many people work hard without succeeding and so many people succeed without working hard that I had become convinced that hard work was not the real secret even though in most cases it might be one of the requirements.

And so I set out on a voyage of discovery which carried me through biographies and autobiographies and all sorts of dissertations on success and the lives of successful individuals until I finally reached the point at which I realized that the secret I was trying to discover lay not only in what individuals did, but also in what made them do it.

I realized further that the secret for which I was searching must not only apply to every definition of success, but since it must apply to everyone to whom it was offered it must also apply to everyone who had ever been successful. In short, I was looking for the common denominator of success.

And because that is exactly what I was looking for, that is exactly what I found.

But this common denominator of success is so big, so powerful, and so vitally important to your future and mine that I’m not going to make a speech about it. I’m just going to “lay it on the line” in words of one syllable, so simple that everyone can understand them.

The common denominator of success – the secret of success of every individual who has ever been successful – lies in the fact that he or she formed the habit of doing things that failures don’t like to do.

It’s just as true as it sounds and it’s just as simple as it seems. You can hold it up to the light, you can put it to the acid test, and you can kick it around until it’s worn out, but when you are all through with it, it will still be the common denominator of success, whether we like it or not.

It will still explain why some individuals have come into this business of ours with every apparent qualification for success and given us our most disappointing failures, while others have come in and achieved outstanding success in spite of many obvious handicaps. And since it will also explain your future, it would seem to be a mighty good idea for you to use it in determining just what sort of a future you are going to have. In other words, let’s take this big, all-embracing secret and boil it down to fit the individual you.

If the secret of success lies in forming the habit of doing things that failures don’t like to do, let’s start the boiling-down process by determining what are the things that failures don’t like to do. The things that failures don’t like to do are the very things that you and I and other human beings, including successful people, naturally don’t like to do. In other words, we’ve got to realize right from the start that success is something which is achieved by the minority of people, and is therefore unnatural and not to be achieved by following our natural likes and dislikes nor by being guided by our natural preferences and prejudices.

The things that failures don’t like to do, in general, are too many and too obvious for us to discuss them here, and so, since our success is to be achieved in the sale of life insurance, let us move on to a discussion of the things that we as life insurance agents don’t like to do. Here, too, the things we don’t like to do are too many to permit of specific discussion, but I think they can all be disposed of by saying that they all emanate from one basic dislike peculiar to our type of selling. We don’t like to call on people who don’t want to see us and talk to them about something they don’t want to talk about. Any reluctance to follow a prospecting program, to use prepared sales talks, to organize time, and to organize effort are all caused by this one basic dislike.

Perhaps you have wondered what is behind this peculiar lack of welcome on the pan of our prospective buyers. Isn’t it due to the fact that our prospects are human too? And isn’t it true that average human beings are not big enough to buy life insurance of their own accord and are therefore prone to escape our efforts to make them bigger or persuade them to do something they don’t want to do by striking at the most important weakness we possess; namely, our desire to be appreciated?

Perhaps you have been discouraged by a feeling that you were born subject to certain dislikes peculiar to you, with which the successful agents in our business are not afflicted. Perhaps you have wondered why it is that our biggest producers seem to like to do the things that you don’t like to do.

They don’t! And I think this is the most encouraging statement I have ever offered to a group of life insurance agents.

But if they don’t like to do these things, then why do they do them? Because by doing the things they don’t like to do, they can accomplish the things they want to accomplish. Successful people are influenced by the desire for pleasing results. Failures are influenced by the desire for pleasing methods and are inclined to be satisfied with such results as can be obtained by doing things they like to do.

Why are successful people able to do things they don’t like to do while failures are not? Because successful people have a purpose strong enough to make them form the habit of doing things they don’t like to do in order to accomplish the purpose they want to accomplish.

Sometimes even our best producers get into a slump. When people go into a slump, it simply means that they have reached a point at which, for the time being, the things they don’t like to do have become more important than their reasons for doing them. And may I pause to suggest to you managers and agents that when one of your good producers goes into a slump, the less you talk about production and the more you talk about purpose, the sooner you will pull that agent out of that slump?

Many people with whom I have discussed this common denominator of success have said at this point, “But I have a family to support and I have to make a living for my family and myself. Isn’t that enough of a purpose?”

No, it isn’t. It isn’t a sufficiently strong purpose to make you form the habit of doing the things you don’t like to do for the very simple reason that it is easier to adjust ourselves to the hardships of a poor living than it is to adjust ourselves to the hardships of making a better one. If you doubt me, just think of all the things you are willing to go without in order to avoid doing the things you don’t like to do. All of which seems to prove that the strength which holds you to your purpose is not your own strength but the strength of the purpose itself.

Now, let’s see why habit belongs so importantly in this common denominator of success.

People are creatures of habit just as machines are creatures of momentum, for habit is nothing more or less than momentum translated from the concrete into the abstract. Can you picture the problem that would face our mechanical engineers if there were no such things as momentum? Speed would be impossible because the highest speed at which any vehicle could be moved would be the first speed at which it could be broken away from a standstill. Elevators could not be made to rise, airplanes could not be made to fly, and the entire world of mechanics would find itself in a total state of helplessness. Then who are you and I to think that we can do with our own human nature, what the finest engineers in the world could not do with the finest machinery that was ever built?

         Every single qualification for success is acquired through habit.

 

People form habits and habits form futures. If you do not deliberately form good habits, then unconsciously you will form bad ones.

You are the kind of person you are because you have formed the habit of being that kind of person, and the only way you can change is through habit.

The success habits in life insurance selling are divided into four main groups:

1. Prospecting habits
2. Calling habits
3. Selling habits
4. Working habits

 

Let’s discuss these habit groups in their order.

Any successful life insurance agent will tell you that it is easier to sell life insurance to people who don’t want it than it is to find people who do want it, but if you have not deliberately formed the habit of prospecting for needs, regardless of wants, then unconsciously you have formed the habit of limiting your prospecting to people who want life insurance, and therein lies the one and the only real reason for lack of prospects.

As to calling habits, unless you have deliberately formed the habit of calling on people who are able to buy but unwilling to listen, then unconsciously you have formed the habit of calling on people who are willing to listen but unable to buy.

As to selling habits, unless you have deliberately formed the habit of calling on prospects determined to make them see their reasons for buying life insurance, then unconsciously you have formed the habit of calling on prospects in a state of mind in which you are willing to let them make you see their reasons for not buying it.

As to working habits, if you will take care of the other three groups, the working habits will generally take care of themselves because under working habits are included study and preparation, organization of time and efforts, records, analyses, etc. Certainly, you’re not going to take the trouble to learn interest arousing approaches and sales talks unless you’re going to use them. You’re not going to plan your day’s work when you know in your heart that you’re not going to carry out your plans. And you’re certainly not going to keep an honest record of things you haven’t done or of results you haven’t achieved. So let’s not worry so much about the fourth group of success habits, for if you are taking care of the first three groups, most of the working habits will take care of themselves and you’ll be able to afford a secretary to take care of the rest of them for you.

But before you decide to adopt these success habits, let me warn you of the importance of habit to your decision. I have attended many sales meetings and sales congresses during the past ten years and have often wondered why, in spite of the fact that there is so much good in them, so many people seem to get so little lasting good out of them. Perhaps you have attended sales meetings in the past and have left these meetings determined to do the things that would make you successful or more successful only to find your decision or determination waning at just the time when it should be put into effect or practice.

Here’s the answer. Any resolution of decision you make is simply a promise to yourself which isn’t worth a tinker’s damn until you have formed the habit of making it and keeping it. And you won’t form the habit of making it and keeping it unless right at the start you link it with a definite purpose that can be accomplished by keeping it, in other words, any resolution or decision you make today has to be made again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, and the next, and so on. And it not only has to be made each day, but it has to be kept each day for if you miss one day in the making or keeping of it, you’ve got to go back and begin all over again. But if you continue the process of making it each morning and keeping it each day, you will finally wake up some morning, a different person in a different world, and you will wonder what has happened to you and the world you used to live in.

Here’s what has happened. Your resolution or decision has become a habit and you won’t have to make it on this particular morning. And the reason for your seeming like a different person living in a different world lies in the fact that for the first time in your life, you have control of yourself and control of your likes and dislikes by surrendering to your purpose in life. That is why behind every success there must be a purpose and that is what makes purpose so important to your future. For in the last analysis, your future is not going to depend on economic conditions or outside influences of circumstances over which you have no control. Your future is going to depend on your purpose in life. So let’s talk about purpose.

First of all, your purpose must be practical and not visionary. Some time ago, I talked with a woman who thought she had a purpose which was more important to her than income. She was interested in people’s suffering and she wanted to be placed in a position to alleviate that suffering. But when we analyzed her real feelings, we discovered, and she admitted it, that what she really wanted was a real nice job dispensing charity with other people’s money and being well paid for it, along with the appreciation and feeling of importance that would naturally go with such a job.

But in making your purpose practical, be careful not to make it logical. Make it a purpose of the sentimental or emotional type. Remember needs are logical while wants and desires are sentimental and emotional. Your needs will push you just so far, but when your needs are satisfied, they will stop pushing you. If, however, your purpose is in terms of wants or desires, then your wants and desires are fulfilled.

Recently I was talking with a young man who long ago discovered the common denominator of success without identifying his discovery. He had a definite purpose in life and it was definitely a sentimental or emotional purpose.

He wanted his children to go through college without having to work their way through as he had done. And he wanted his wife, and mother of his children, to enjoy the luxuries and comforts and even necessities, which had been denied his own mother. And he was willing to form the habit of doing things he didn‘t like to do in order to accomplish this purpose.

Not to discourage him, but rather to have him encourage me, I said to him, “Aren’t you going a little too far with this thing? There’s no logical reason why your children shouldn’t be willing and able to work their way through college just as their father did. Of course, they’ll miss many of the things that you missed in your college life and they’ll probably have heartaches and disappointments. But if they’re any good, they’ll come through in the end just as you did. And there’s no logical reason why you should slave in order that your wife can enjoy comforts and luxuries that your mother never had.”

He looked at me with a rather pitying look and said, “But Mr. Gray, there’s no inspiration in logic. There’s no courage in logic. There’s not even happiness in logic. There’s only satisfaction. The only place logic has in my life is in the realization that the more I am willing to do for my family, the more I shall be able to do for myself.”

I imagine, after hearing that story, you won’t have to be told how to find your purpose or how to identify it or how to surrender to it. If it’s a big purpose, you will be big in its accomplishment. If it’s an unselfish purpose, you will be unselfish in accomplishing it. And if it’s an honest purpose, you will be honest and honorable in the accomplishment of it.

But as long as you live, don’t ever forget that while you may succeed beyond your fondest hopes and your greatest expectations, you will never succeed beyond the purpose to which you are willing to surrender. Furthermore, your surrender will not be complete until you have formed the habit of doing things that failures don’t like to do.

Conclusion

Albert E. N. Gray’s insightful exploration of success emphasizes the indispensable role of habitual task performance, decision-making, and a strong purpose.

The common denominator of success, resonates across a myriad of industries and professions, underlining its universal relevance.

These principles not only demystify the mechanisms of success but also provide a navigational guide for individuals seeking to comprehend and attain success in their respective fields.

Thus, habituation and purpose emerge as pivotal elements in the journey towards achievement.

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