Today we are surrounded with books and seminars and workshops aimed at making us more successful. Many of these are great men with great advice that is worthy of our attention. I myself read much of the self-help success material that is published which I ascribe to and promote their ideas. But before you begin your journey through the maze of self-help literature and expensive workshops out there I would ask you to consider the words of Albert Einstein who said. “Try not to become a person of success, but rather a person of value.” You see in our race to becoming a success type we have learned all the markings of a successful person on the outside and have learned them well enough to fool a great many people into believing we are what we are selling. We even get to believing it our selves. We know how to dress like a successful person would dress; we learn how to talk like success, and even walk like success. For some of us, we have set our eyes on the goal of being a success so much that we have forgotten the most important and deeply intrinsic parts of being a real success; that is first to become a person of value. Albert Einstein was a student his entire life. From high school age he was a teacher himself of math and physics. He worked diligently writing papers that astounded scientists and physics teachers alike. He was never a stranger to hard work. In his spare time he produced papers for the patent office he worked at.. In 1909 at age 30 he became Professor Extraordinary at Zurich, in 1911 Professor of Theoretical Physics at Prague. A Nobel Prize winner, Einstein kept busy writing theories and papers receiving doctorates from practically every university he was associated with. He was surrounded by socialites who dragged him away from his work but he always found ways to excuse himself and he would be back off to work doing something productive with his life again. You see Einstein understood more than physics. He understood the worth of a man. He understood that character is built one stone upon another stone of good works and righteous living. Einstein was focused on his work so much he gave no thought to being a “successful” person. He had a unique philosophy about life, but one not so unique idea was that a person’s value was what was important in life. Improve upon your value than success comes to you as a by-product of your hard work. Indeed it was true for Einstein as it is for us all; the value of a person is what is important. It is the work ethic of a person that counts; their desire to grow and be more valuable is what makes things happen. To day as you go out to conquer the world, don’t strive for success as so many success gurus would have you do. There are no short cuts in life. You must become a person of character- of true value, and then success will follow just as it did with Einstein and the many other successful people before and after his time.