Successful people are highly motivated to practice what they love until they're great at it. That's their open secret of success.

This is the story of two real-life school-friends with conflicting attitudes to motivation that have led just one of them to success.

As children, they were both creative. Rose loved music, and spent every spare minute learning more about it, finding chords on her guitar, and writing songs. Her great dream was to be a singer.

Lily spent her spare time drawing. She took a sketch-pad everywhere, and every chance she got she'd fill it with her pictures -- horses, mainly, with long, flowing manes, and tails that streamed behind them in the wind. They seemed about to leap out from the page. She dreamed of being an artist some day.

Lily left school and went to work in a bank, bought herself some nice clothes, and went out a lot. When Rose suggested she might like to take a part-time art course, Lily said she didn't have the time.

Rose downloaded singing lessons from the Internet, and studied hard -- hour after hour, shut in her bedroom, doing singing exercises, learning music theory, finding out how chords work, writing songs...

The Church she went to had a choir, and the guy who ran it approached her one day and said, "I need an extra singer, and you seem to have a decent voice -- do you fancy joining us?"

Rose was thrilled, and practiced even harder. She called Lily to tell her the good news. Lily sounded disapproving.

"What on earth did you agree to that for?" she demanded. "All that extra work -- and you aren't even getting paid for it!"

Rose took no notice. Being in the Choir meant she had the chance to sing, and that was what she wanted.

After a while, she got a front-row chance to see a band she much admired. Like the rest of the audience, she joined in the choruses -- and because by now she was used to projecting her voice without even thinking about it, it got her noticed. People round about her turned to stare in admiration... and there was someone else who liked her singing, too.

After the gig, the leader of the band came up to her, and, just like the guy who ran the Choir, he asked if she'd be interested in joining them... only, this time, the offer was for her to sing professionally.

It hasn't stopped there, either. Discovering her songs, he asked her to help him write material for the band.

Finding out she'd studied chord structures, he got her to help him with the band's arrangements, too. When she pointed out they'd need to register their copyrights, he put her in charge of all their royalties, as well.

She suggested they could use a website, and he asked her to design one.

When she convinced him that they needed a proper management structure to make the most of their hard work, his response was immediate.

"I already run the band," he said. "YOU can run the company."

That means the band now actually work for Rose. She earns more than the others, too, but they don't mind -- after all, they earn a lot more since she joined them than they did before.

Lily called Rose to congratulate her. She clearly hadn't learned the lesson, even then.

"You're just SO lucky," Lily said resentfully. "If you fell in the river you'd come up with a fish in every pocket!"

Aislinn O'Connor is a motivational writer and personal development consultant. You can read more of her articles at http://www.access-your-peak-performance-zone.com