Many suggestions have been put forward to remedy the situation. Radicals blame the mainstream environmental movement for failing to take direct action. Mainstream environmentalists blame radical extremists for giving the whole movement a bad name. And just about all progressives blame the capitalist machinery, seemingly out of control, supported by a web of deceit spun by mass-media, fuelled by a mad obsession on consumerism, blind or indifferent to the undermining of the planetary systems that support all life. I have seen many of my activists drift away, some into green businesses to turn a dollar, some pushed into depressive, angry rages and some drawn to spiritualism where they can look on with detachment.

In other words, we cannot avoid the consequences of continued failure. Yet how strange is seems then, that a deep analysis of the tools to be successful has been so much avoided. One reason for this could be that the teaching of how to be successful has become synonymous with the capitalist world that we have rejected. Success literature, which started in earnest in depression-era America, has since been associated in the public mind with justifying get-rich-quick schemes, ruthless capitalism and individualism and other manipulative behaviours. Indeed it is true that much of the success literature appears to be indulging in this: "How to get rich", "Instant Confidence" and even the snappily titled "Make Every Man Want You or Make Yours Want You More: How to Be So Irresistible You'll Barely Keep from Dating Yourself!". It is hardly surprising that some activists have put forward the view that what the world needs is less success, not more.

If we want to learn how to be successful in activism, we need to expand our definition of success beyong being rich, famous or powerful to mean achieving our desired results. Whether we want a more just world, greener taxes or an end to capitalism, we still need to know how to be successful. When we look at the parts of success literature which talk about principles, not cheap practices, we begin to see that there are some very powerful tools that can help us. Most of these tools talk about how to think about problems, and how to relate to people. This marks a clear distinction between success literature which is based on principles, and that which is based on cheap, manipulative, deceitful practice.

Most people, for example, never get beyond the title of Dale Carnegie's famous book, "How to win friends and influence people". Instead of actually reading it, they assume it is a book about how to deceive people, manipulate them, and possibly make a lot of money. But if we do actually read it, we discover that Carnegie is talking about how you can help people, so that one day they will want to help you. That can't be bad. He shows how the harder we struggle against people's will, the less likely they are to change. Similarly, Covey's "Seven habits of highly effective people" shows us how to overcome our powerlessness, how to change our thinking so that we avoid setting ourselves up for repeated failure, and examples of how people throughout history became the seed that sparked great changes. That can't be bad stuff to know, either.

It is not by chance that powerful corporations, governments and the media have become dominant forces in our culture. It is because they apply the principles of success and apply them to to meeting people's basic needs, often in unprincipled ways. If we could see beyond our assumption that effective means ruthless and selfish, we could start to understand how we break our own failure patterns. We could do this if success principles became part of how we think, communicate, plan and strategise. Unless we believe that we can force people to change against their will, we need to start to learn how to use these tools to win the battle for the hearts and minds of others.