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    A Truly Successful Life: Ten Principles for a Life of Meaning and Purpose
    A Truly Successful Life: Ten Principles for a Life of Meaning and Purpose
    A Truly Successful Life: Ten Principles for a Life of Meaning and Purpose
    Ebook138 pages1 hour

    A Truly Successful Life: Ten Principles for a Life of Meaning and Purpose

    By Douglas Tanner

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    About this ebook

    "The book increases awareness and is a thought-provoking and insightful read that will take readers deeper into the heart of humanity." - Reader's Favorite

    What is success?

    Is it really just material abundance? Or reaching the pinnacle of your career?

    Or is there something more?

    In A Truly Successful Life: Ten Principles for a Life of Meaning and Purpose, author Douglas Tanner writes, "A truly successful life is one that is purposely lived, moment by moment, in the grip of unconditional love, with values and priorities ordered from the perspective of eternity."

    With straightforward nonfiction prose, interspersing dramatic anecdotes, the author lays out the essential ingredients for a truly successful life in three parts and ten succinct chapters:

    Faith
    Love: The Moral Law of the Universe
    Live Your Life from the Perspective of Eternity
    Surviving the Darkness
    The Family of Mankind: Loving Your Neighbors
    Romance: Loving Your Spouse
    Parenting: Loving Your Children
    Taking Responsibility for Your Own Life
    Work: Pursuing Your Calling
    Enjoy Your Life

    A Truly Successful Life: Ten Principles for a Life of Meaning and Purpose will help you live your life from the perspective of eternity.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAlaban Press
    Release dateNov 22, 2014
    ISBN9781386267584
    A Truly Successful Life: Ten Principles for a Life of Meaning and Purpose

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      Book preview

      A Truly Successful Life - Douglas Tanner

      Preface

      He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much; who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has left the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who has never lacked appreciation of earth’s beauty or failed to express it; who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had; whose life was an inspiration; whose memory a benediction.

      – Bessie Stanley (Lincoln [KS] Sentinel, Nov. 30, 1905)

      The second hand on my watch keeps tick-tick-ticking around its face, the golden-colored pin hopping across the large black numerals. Over and over, around and around, I watch the second hand go, past the thicker black hour and minute hands which, by contrast, creep around the dial of the watch ever so slowly, barely noticeable, as if they are sneaking up on me unawares… stalking me.

      They are, you know. Time marches on, as they say, stopping for no one. And as the hands circle around the face of my watch, my hair thins, my skin wrinkles, and the world around me races by as if in high speed: moving, moving, constantly moving, with me in its midst but watching as if from a distance.

      Our lives are so brief. What is a person’s life — seventy, eighty years? More or less for some. Within the context of eternity, our lives are like the sudden flashes of light from fireflies on a warm summer evening: briefly bright, then gone. In this context, does money really matter? My grandfather always used to repeat the popular phrase, You can’t take it with you. It’s true.

      Think of all the people throughout history who have lived in abject poverty, like the peasants of the Dark Ages. Were their lives meaningless because they never realized anything resembling worldly success? They lived maybe forty or fifty years in dirty squalor, married, had children, scraped to survive, then died. And that’s it — gone. Where was the meaning of a life like that?

      Throughout the many generations of humanity… thousands of years… what is important? What truly matters? Career success? A nest egg for retirement? Wealth? Or maybe technology or science or politics or an education?

      Generations of humanity come and go; all that truly matter are faith and love.

      We are here, in our little space within eternity, like a brief vapor. In a moment we are gone. What makes our lives worthwhile and meaningful are our cognizance of God, our relationship to Him, and love; showing love to others, and receiving the same.

      We must view our lives from the perspective of eternity and prioritize our values accordingly. Faith in God is our key to understanding eternity. Living lives of love matters incalculably more than having worldly success. This life lasts only for a moment; eternity with God is our true life, our true destination, our true citizenship.

      mini tree logo - section break

      This book consists of my musings from the trenches of life. It presents a redefinition of success as something more than material abundance or professional accomplishments. I have broken it down to ten principles that are essential for an effective, meaningful and successful life.

      Don’t try to look at my life to find a perfect example of the truths presented in this book. You won’t find it. I am the chief of sinners, as Saul of Tarsus said. My personal life is filled with imperfections and mistakes.

      But the funny thing about mistakes is, if you’re willing, you can learn from them.

      I believe that the truths contained in these pages are eternal truths, the kind that a person builds a life on and uses to prepare for eternity. Taken to heart and put into practice, these truths are the recipe for a life of richness, of quality, of joy, and meaning. They are universal and readily available, buried within the conscience of every human being.

      I have merely collected them, like a lover picking daisies in the sunshine to make a beautiful bouquet for someone special. This book is my bouquet to you.

      pinstripe vignetteA Truly Successful LifeTree

      Part One

      The Foundation

      This is the secret of fulfillment: Align your life to eternal principles and order your values and priorities accordingly.

      Chapter One

      Faith

      You will know that the Divine is so great and of such a nature that it sees and hears everything at once, is present everywhere, and is concerned with everything.

      – Socrates

      God is, even though the whole world deny him. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained.

      – Mahatma Gandhi

      Faith is the basis of the path, the mother of virtue; it nourishes all roots of goodness.

      – Wu-chen

      Haarlem, Holland, the Netherlands

      February 28, 1944

      The Ten Boom family had been assisting and harboring fugitives of Jewish descent (and others) for nearly two years in Nazi-occupied Holland. Jews were being persecuted merely for their lineage in every country that the Nazis invaded, and unfortunately, most citizens either joined with the Nazis in the persecutions or simply remained silent while the black wave of hatred and atrocities flowed across the land.

      In the midst of this, Corrie ten Boom, a fifty-two-year-old woman who had never married, her older sister Betsie, and their eighty-four-year-old father whom they lived with and cared for, had begun taking in anyone who needed help. They allowed these people to live with them, fed and cared for them, and hid them from the Nazi troops who prowled the streets.

      Then, on this fateful day, a man came to their home to meet with Corrie and begged her for money. He claimed that he and his wife had also been harboring Jews, but his wife had been arrested. He said he needed the money because there was a policeman he knew who could be bribed to let his wife go for the right price. It’s a matter of life and death! he exclaimed.

      Of course, Corrie agreed to help. How could she not? She had devoted her life to caring for people. Come back in thirty minutes, she said. I’ll have the money for you.

      It was a set-up. With solid evidence that the Ten Booms were assisting fugitives, the Nazis invaded the Ten Boom home soon after the man left. Six Jews hid behind a secret compartment that was in Corrie’s bedroom (the hiding place), escaping detection by the Germans, but Corrie, Betsie, their father and others who were at the home at the time, including their sister Nollie, brother Willem, and nephew Peter, were arrested and taken to concentration camps.

      In the end, the fugitives in the hiding place escaped. Nollie, Willem, and Peter were released from prison almost immediately, but Corrie’s father, Casper, died after only ten days in custody. Corrie and her sister Betsie suffered in three different prisons for ten months. One day, before Betsie died in the concentration camp, Betsie and Corrie talked about God. Betsie said, There is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still.

      Despite these events, Corrie’s faith, upon leaving Ravensbrück, the horrific women’s concentration camp, was deeper and stronger than ever before. She forgave her captors and began traveling the world in a ministry to share the truth that she had heard from her beloved sister Betsie, that no pit is so deep that God is not deeper still. Her life and experiences under the German rule became the subject of the moving book The Hiding Place, along with a feature film by the same name.

      mini tree logo - section break

      I’ve always considered Corrie ten Boom to be one of my heroes. Such love, such kindness, such caring, so much like my own grandmother. What is it that enables people like her to prioritize their highest ideals even above their temporal well-being? To risk their lives, to be willing to die for what they know to be the right thing to do? I believe it is the conviction that universal principles of right and wrong exist, and the conviction that, at our core, we are spiritual beings made to live forever; there is life after death.

      It is broken down in a person’s mind something like this: God exists, and God wants us to live a life of love. My own conscience tells me it is the right thing to do. And I believe that when I live my life in accordance with love, Heaven smiles. My soul is everlasting; if my body dies here, I will join God in eternity. Therefore, I’m not afraid to live out what I know to be right in my heart.

      Throughout history, what have people always had no matter what difficulties in life they had to face? A sense of the eternal. A sense that love and goodness and truth are divine and reverberate throughout eternity. A sense that, even if we die in a horrific squalor of a situation, God still believes that we, as individuals, have worth — even if no one else does. A sense that Heaven applauds when we do something good — that our good deeds and sacrifices reflect the love of God, matter for eternity in the lives of our fellow human beings, and that they haven’t been in vain. And if we give our life

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