Secret To Success
Once a man asked Socrates what the secret to success was. Socrates asked the man to meet him the next morning and join him for his usual morning bath in the river.
When the two men met, they got in the river and walked deeper.When the water was up on their neck, Socrates took the young man by surprise and dunked his head into the water. The man struggled to get his head out of water but Socrates kept him steadily until the man’s face started turning blue.
A few moments later Socrates released his head and the man finally got out of water, gasped and took a deep breath of air.“Why did you do that?” the man shouted.
Socrates asked: “When you were in the water, what did you want the most?” “Air,” the boy replied.Socrates said: “You asked me the secret to success. There is only one secret.
When you want success as badly as you wanted the air, then you will get it.” Indeed, if our desire is weak it will not produce great results.
We need to have a burning desire to reach success.
Why are you attributing this to Socrates? He's not really known as a motivational kind of guy, he's more known as the guy who trolled people IRL until the city of Athens had him executed for corrupting the youth. A little googling attributes this anecdote to motivational speaker Eric Thomas, telling a story about some unnamed "guru".
Most likely if you asked Socrates what the secret to success was, he'd respond by asking "so what exactly is this 'success' thing you want to know the secret of?"