In a Leadership Garden, integrity - your word - is the "golden egg of leadership." It is your most prized possession. When you bring integrity to your unique purpose and aim, your words and actions match and the true success you desire appears.

As I was thinking about what to share in this post, I had the opportunity read an excerpt from What Can a Dentist Teach You about Business, Life and Success? Discover Secrets to Achieving Total Success! by Dr. Joe Capista.

Dr. Capista provides many powerful insights and techniques throughout his book, but the most relevant to this topic was how he came to realize balance and integrity is the key to Total Success. His personal story beautifully illustrates the point I was about to make. And there's a special offer at the end that will make you smile!

To get a taste of Dr. Capista's book and hear the truth about your golden egg, straight from the dentist's mouth read on:

What Can a Dentist Teach You about Business, Life and Success?
By Dr. Joe Capista

Book Excerpt
Chapter 11
Balance — A Requirement for Total Success

By the time I was in my late twenties, I really felt as if I had arrived. I was making great money, driving a fancy car and living in a big house. Everything I based success on, I had. The harsh reality was, my life was in turmoil. Although I had a level of success, I didn't have TOTAL SUCCESS.

It's the same with my friends who make millions and millions of dollars annually. They make more than I'll make in a lifetime and yet they don't have what I now understand to be TOTAL SUCCESS. They only have professional success. Their main focus is business. They have difficulty in relationships, failed marriages, problem children, they misuse their authority and power and they eat and drink to excess. Their life is in turmoil and their lifestyle is killing them.

I don't know how to assess another's spiritual well-being, but I think that it's hard to have inner-peace when your life is in turmoil. My experience has shown me a successful life is more than a successful business. This was a lesson hard learned. By the time I had “arrived” I was working way too much; 60 to 70 hours a week, sometimes more. I'd work until ten o'clock on Friday nights and often be in my office on weekends. I was driven to be successful in my business.

As I mentioned earlier, the first year out of dental school I made $50,000. This was under very poor conditions. Even though this was a lot of money by most people's standards, my goal was to make $100,000 the second year. In 1978, that was a ton of money and I pulled out all the stops in order to reach that goal. By today's standards that would be $300,000 - $400,000 a year.

I was driven to produce. Nothing was going to stop me. I did what I needed to do continually for the next couple of years. I had arrived, so I thought. I was 29 years old. I had a five-bedroom house on a 1-acre lot, a Mercedes-Benz, and my life looked great — from the outside.

What wasn't apparent to a casual observer was I also had a wife and children I never saw, or saw very little. Even though I was doing what I thought a good husband should do, my wife was very upset. She was doing everything with the kids and I was not there to help and support her on that level.

Anne was so upset, I would come home at night and she would scream at me and say, “You're not here; you're not helping. I can't go on like this!” I found myself making many promises like, “I'm only going to do this for a little while, it's going to get better, and I'm going to change.” A year would go by and I wouldn't change; I continued to be driven to make the money to prove I was successful.

Where I grew up, not many of my friends went to college. The fact that I became a dentist was a step above. I was hell-bent on showing people that it doesn't matter where you start, you can make something of yourself. I would constantly affirm, “I came from a working class neighborhood; I am now successful and make enough money to buy whatever I want.”

What was important at the time was to make enough money to show people I was successful. At that point in my life, it was more about showing them I was successful than living a successful life. The one way I could do it was to make a lot of money.

People would say, “Wow. You've made it!” That meant a lot to me! Little did I realize all my focus on business and money was putting my life completely out of balance. I suppose if I would have paid attention to what my wife was saying and how I was feeling I would have known how out of balance I was.

It wasn't until 1983 that I began to recognize the need for balance. Work was a major disruption in my life even though it was giving me my perceived success. Although I had been ignoring it for a long time, there was now no denying that I needed to do what I could to have a balanced life.

First, I took steps to fix my business. As my business improved, I started paying consultants to help me learn how to run my business more efficiently. It was through these business improvements I was able to take more time with my family. This allowed me to be home with my family more and focus on my physical balance. This was pivotal in improving my relationship with my wife and children and my health.

My wife is a great mother and a wonderful spouse for hanging in there until I was present and accounted for on the home front. Most striking to me was that as I came into a kind of physical and professional balance, my marriage came into balance as well. This then opened up the part of my life that was lacking, the spiritual inner component.

It was during that time Charlie introduced me to a way of life that would forever change me. Charlie was an advocate of living a very balanced life and he made no qualms about the importance of this. He said, “The more balanced your life becomes, the more success you can create. The more balance you have the more you will realize what you are capable of and how connected everything is.”

By now I was keenly aware that all aspects of my life were connected at a deep level. I could no longer address one area without addressing another. Once I knew this, I could no longer go back to my old way of thinking, acting and believing. Everything was shifting.

I came to realize my wife and family deserved as much attention as my business. It was during that time I created goals concerning my family relationships. I wanted and needed to be a contributor.

One of my goals was to be the best husband I could be. With this as my focus, a shift began. Just the fact I had a focus on improvement the changes began. I made a conscious effort to say something positive about my wife everyday. Not necessarily big things, but things like, “Honey, you're the best. You look beautiful today. I appreciate all that you do.” The key was to convey my feelings with sincerity, not just to hear myself talk.

By running my business better and having systems in place at work, I had more time to share with my family and enjoy time with my wife. I made a conscious effort to do little things like help around the house. Even though I was running a business, making this kind of a change made a huge difference. I would catch myself saying things like, “Can I help you do anything?” and “Why don't you let me get that for you?”

The most amazing thing began to happen. I found I was feeling more love for my wife than I ever had. I began focusing on what I love and appreciate about my wife. I found the more I focused, the more desire I had to be a contributing husband and the better my life became. It became very apparent positive business changes were having a positive effect on my personal life.

It was the same with my health. As my business improved, I was now putting effort into my physical well-being. The healthier I became, the better my personal relationships became and the better I performed in my business. I was now experiencing what Charlie had often talked about: balance in all areas of my life.

I was gaining an insider's view that what we focus on increases. It is one of the most basic principles of success, yet one that is the most underutilized. Creating balance isn't a big secret. It's really about doing the very basics. Actually, it's more about doing the basic stuff than making massive change all at once  . . . .

Order you own copy of What Can a Dentist Teach You about Business, Life and Success? within the next 24 hours and receive over $2,551 in bonus gifts from experts around the globe. Go to  http://www.joecapista.com/amazon.htm