Success Without Compromise

How do you move to the next level? Whether it's George Ryan maintaining his office in the shadow of children burning to death in a van, or a starlet supplementing her celebrity doing "pioneering" magazine covers, or the parade of Hummers and Suburbans lined up outside the daycare center, compromise can offer to move you forward. And refusing it in the type or degree necessary can leave your career languishing in the status quo.

The value of "success" without compromise gives definition to what success is and what a successful person looks like. Encouraging success at any necessary cost leaves it looking hollow in the long run -- "men without chests" in C.S. Lewis' description. Not a politically correct observation; any number of experts and lawyers (or mayors) will be glad to draw up a plan to take things out of the realm of good-or-bad and make them simply "different." Or to offer a sentence that doesn't actually involve real jail time.

But you'll know. Even if you gain the advantage at the moment you'll know. Just a short word of encouragement to stick to your guns and make your successes real ones.