“Victories attained by right thought can only be maintained by watchfulness. Many give way when success is assured, and rapidly fall back into failure.”
I think this is one of the most practical ideas we’ve reached in Chapter 5.
“Victories attained by right thought…”
Allen has spent much of this chapter talking about the thinking required to achieve something. Now he makes an important transition:
Getting there and staying there are two different challenges.
Think about almost any meaningful accomplishment. Someone loses 50 pounds. A business finally becomes profitable. A student passes a difficult course. Someone gets out of debt. A person develops discipline after years of inconsistency.
Something changed in the way that person was thinking and behaving to produce that result.
Allen calls the result a victory.
But victory isn’t necessarily permanent.
“…can only be maintained by watchfulness.”
Watchfulness is the word I would underline twice here.
Allen isn’t saying that once you’ve developed yourself enough to accomplish something, you’ve permanently become that person.
You still have to pay attention.
Old habits can return. Standards can slip. Discipline can weaken. Success itself can make you comfortable.
And that’s fascinating because the greatest threat to an achievement may not always be the struggle before success.
Sometimes it’s the comfort after success.
When you’re trying to accomplish something, you’re paying attention to everything. You’re hungry. You’re studying. You’re practicing. You’re watching your money. You’re monitoring your habits.
Then you succeed.
And slowly:
I can skip today.
I’ve got this figured out.
One won’t hurt.
I’ll get serious again next week.
None of those decisions necessarily destroys what you’ve built. But repeated long enough, they can.
“Many give way when success is assured…”
This is probably my favorite part.
Allen is describing complacency without actually using the word.
There’s a psychological trap in reaching a goal: the behaviors that created success can begin to feel unnecessary because success now exists.
But success may exist because those behaviors exist.
That’s a major distinction.
Imagine someone saying, “My blood pressure is finally under control, so I don’t need to exercise and eat well anymore.”
But those behaviors might be part of the reason it improved.
Or a business owner finally becomes successful and stops doing the things that built the reputation in the first place.
Allen is warning against confusing the result of a process with freedom from the process.
“…and rapidly fall back into failure.”
And there’s the consequence.
This doesn’t mean one mistake destroys everything. I actually think that’s an important place to soften Allen’s wording.
Watchfulness shouldn’t become perfectionism.
You don’t have to maintain flawless discipline every day to preserve an accomplishment. People stumble. Circumstances change. Sometimes we deliberately ease up because our priorities change.
The real danger is failing to recognize when an exception is becoming a pattern.
And this passage fits your philosophy particularly well: being healthy isn’t about being perfect. Maintenance doesn’t require perfection; it requires enough awareness to recognize when you’re drifting and enough discipline to correct course.
So I’d boil Allen’s principle down to something like:
Don’t just study what it takes to achieve your goal. Study what it takes to remain the person capable of maintaining it.
Because achievement isn’t only about reaching the mountaintop.
Sometimes the next challenge is learning how to live there.