10. The Law of Compensation

Under the Laws of Success

You are always fully compensated for whatever you do, positive or negative.

There is perfect justice in the world, at least in the long term. Whatever you put in, you get out. The more you give, the more you receive. If you want to increase the quality and quantity of your rewards, you must increase the quality and quantity of your contribution.

My friend Zig Ziglar, the speaker and motivator, has formulated what we might call Ziglar’s Law, which is a paraphrase of the Law of Compensation. It says, "You can have anything you want in life if you just help enough other people get what they want."

The Law of Compensation is a restatement of the Law of Cause and Effect, or the Law of Sowing and Reaping, which says, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that also shall he reap."

The significance of this law is that you cannot reap something unless you have first sown something. Put another way, whatever you are reaping today is a measure of what you have sown in the past. If you want to reap something more or different in the future, you have to sow something more or different or better in the present.

In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay Compensation, he says, "The longer you put in without getting out, the greater will be your return when it finally comes."

This law or principle runs throughout all of human experience and explains much of success and failure, happiness and unhappiness. This is the basic principle of all business activities, to produce products and services that people want and will buy in sufficient quantities to compensate for the cost of bringing them to the market in the first place.

Successful individuals and organizations are continually looking for ways to improve the quality and quantity of their offerings. They continually seek ways to add value, to serve their customers better than anyone else. So should you. Put yourself on the side of the angels by always asking, What can I do to increase the value of my services to my customers today?

How to apply this law immediately:

1. Decide what it is that you really want and then determine the price you will have to pay to achieve it. For everything you want in life, there is a price you must pay, in full and in advance.

2. Decide upon the new skills and qualities you will need to accomplish your goals. Remember, to achieve something you have never achieved before, you must do something you have never done before. You must become someone you have never been before. Whatever you want, you will have to pay a price measured in terms of sacrifice, time, effort, and personal discipline. Decide what it is and start paying that price today.

Source: Brian Tracy, The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc, (San Francisco, 2000).