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Reap What You Sow

Ancient Secrets to Sowing Success

By Chris Widener

My name is Chris Widener, and I make my living as a professional speaker. I’m recognized as one of the top motivational speakers, and top leadership experts in the entire world. In fact, I’ve traveled all around the world teaching people how to lead successful lives. I’ve traveled all over the United States, but I’ve also gone to Russia, China, Singapore, Australia, Spain, Egypt, all over the place. Everywhere I go, I encounter people who are looking to be successful. I’ve written for magazines like SUCCESS Magazine. I’ve written books like The Angel Inside: Michelangelo’s Secrets for Following Your Passion and Finding the Work You Love, as well as Live the Life You’ve Always Dreamed Of!

What I’ve realized is that everybody wants to be successful. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, “I wonder how I can fail today.” No. People wake up and they say, “How can I be successful today? How can I not fail today?” In the success world, there are thousands of books and CDs, seminars, coaches, and websites. You can find the ideas and concepts of success almost everywhere; it’s ubiquitous. All you have to do is go down to your local bookstore, and there are whole sections on how to be successful, general books on how to be successful successful in leadership, successful in marriage. All of these books are designed to teach you the ideas, the concepts, the principles.

We have CDs, and of course now, we have downloads. We have seminars you can go to, ranging from $79 seminars for a couple of hours, to seminars that might last a week and cost $10,000. The coaching industry has sprung up in the last 10 or 15 years. Now, you can pay people $75 an hour to $100,000 a year to teach you how to be successful and hold you accountable to the principles they’re helping you learn. There are millions of websites dedicated to teaching people how to be successful.

I find it one of the most interesting dilemmas of modern man that every single person wants to succeed, and yet very few people do. I find it interesting because I’ll go into one of my seminars, and I’ll ask the question, “How many of you would like to be financially independent?” Everybody’s hand goes up. “How many of you would like to have a great long-lasting, loving relationship?” Everybody’s hand goes up. “How many of you, if you have children or you’re going to have children, would like your children to grow up and be successful, productive members of society?” Everybody’s hand goes up. “How many of you would like to live a long life with health and vibrancy?” Of course, you know what I’m about to say. Everybody’s hand goes up.

What’s interesting is that everybody wants success. The likelihood is that you live in a country where you wake up free in the morning, and you can choose where you work, who you marry, what you do, and what career you take. We live in a world where we have control over our lives and we can choose what we want to do. We all want to be successful, and yet some are and some aren’t.

The question of why some people succeed and other people don’t has driven my career. It’s caused me to research and study, and in my own life to try and to fail and to succeed, to find out the so-called secret to success. Of course, everybody wants to teach you that. There’s always some new thing or some new ‘secret sauce’. You see it all the time, don’t you? Here is what I have found in the world of success: The new doesn’t really lead you to success. It’s actually the old that leads you to success. In fact, it’s ancient. The beauty is, as the subtitle of this book tells you, it’s an ancient secret for universal success.

The principle I’m going to teach you is written about in the Bible. It’s been talked about in all sorts of cultures, and it’s been played out in the lives of countless billions of people in their daily lives throughout the history of humankind. The reality is that the real secret is the old secret. That might be why nobody wants to follow it; because it’s not new. It’s not sexy. It’s not “cutting edge.” But it all boils down to one ancient secret for universal success: you reap what you sow. Memorize that. Burn it into your brain. For the next bit of time that we have to talk about you reap what you sow in this audio program or eBook, I want you to extrapolate the principle across all the different areas of your life.

From the very first moment of human life, you reap what you sow has been a principle for success. Here’s another way of putting it: what you put in is what you get out. Think about it.

Modern man, we have technology, and we also reap what we sow technologically. Whatever we put into a computer is what we get out of it. That’s why we have men and women who code computers. They teach the computers how to work, and then the computer turns around and spits it back out, but it’s based on what was put in. What you put in is what you get out. Go back thousands of years to ancient man. How would they think about this principle? They would think about it agriculturally.

Agriculturally, it’s pretty simple, isn’t it? If you put an apple seed into the ground, you don’t get an orange tree, you get an apple tree, and ancient man knew this. Agriculturally, it’s as old as the earth itself. It’s the very first thing that a child learns. Thousands of years ago, in rural societies, dads taught the kids, “What you put into the earth is what you get from the earth.”

How does that affect us in modern life? Everybody wants success in all the different areas of their lives. My question is very simple. What are you sowing? We all know what we want to reap. Would you like to be rich? Yes, I’d love to be rich. Once you’ve decided what you want to reap: health, wellness, love, kindness, relationships, wealth, ask yourself, “Okay, what am I sowing?” Just like if you knew you wanted an apple tree, you’d have to sow an apple seed, you have to do the same thing in every area of your life.

Through audio programs, speeches, and coaching, I’ve worked with and spoken to literally millions of people. I’ve spoken to crowds from 20 high school students to 25,000 people in large arenas, and the commonality is that everybody wants to be successful. I want to break it down into five specific areas for you. I also want to ask you what you are sowing. I want to give you some ideas of what you might be sowing that’s causing you to fail, and what you should sow to be successful.

The Ancient Secret of Love

Love. Let’s talk about the first one: love. At the very core of humankind, everybody wants love. They want to be cherished. They want to be in a relationship with somebody who is concerned for them and dedicated to them. I’m specifically talking about your marriage relationship because the second one we’re going to talk about is relationships in general, which might be family relationships or friendship. The vast majority of people get married, and the vast majority of people want to be happy. Nobody wants to be unhappy in marriage. There’s nothing worse than being unhappy in marriage because the person you’re supposed to have a vibrant relationship with, you actually have a negative relationship with, and it cuts to the very core of who you are.

Let me ask. Do you want to be treated well? Would you like to reap being treated well? Then, you must treat others well. You must treat your spouse well. Now, I used to be a minister. I spent a number of years in the ministry, and I did a lot of counseling with people. I had people who would call me on Thanksgiving Day in raging arguments, screaming and yelling at each other, and I thought, “How horrible on Thanksgiving Day that you’re in this knock-down, drag-out argument that’s taking over one of the days that should be the most gratitude-filled and enjoyable days.” One of the things I would hear people say is, “Well, I’m not going to until she does.” Or she would say, “I’m not going to because he won’t.” What they are all saying, “I want to reap, but I’m unwilling to sow. He’s got to sow. She’s got to sow. I’m not going to sow.”