There are a lot of self-help books and gurus with various methods and ideas of what success in life means.  One thing most all of them agree on, however, is that you have to prepare for what you want.  If you want to be a doctor, you study medicine, not art.   If you want to be a painter, you study art, not biology.  If you are learning to write poetry, you read and study good poetry and take poetry writing classes.  
   Most self-help books and gurus will also tell you that you can't just study the subject, you have to practice it and set goals for achieving it a step at a time.  Otherwise, your like the person who reads diet books, but doesn't loose weight because he doesn't do what the books say, he just reads them.
    So you have to study, practice and set goals if you want to achieve something specific in life.  I think just about everyone understands that and most accept it as true, even if they don't practice it.
    So where did we ever get the backwards idea that if we want to live in a peaceful world we need to train to fight in wars, spend most of our tax money on weapons of war, and spend most of our time preparing for wars?  It just doesn't make sense.  Oh, I'm not naive enough to suggest that we would have world peace if we simply threw away all the weapons of war.  It's definitely not that simple.  The animal nature that is a very real part of us and must be acknowledged will always want to fight.  It's very territorial.  But animals can learn to live together in peace and so can we, but we need to do it by preparing for peace, not war.  
    I think if we spent just ten percent of what we spend on preparing for war on studying peace and how to live together in peace, we would have far fewer wars.  Also far less violent crime and terrorism since they are essentially small-scale wars.  The government, specifically the Defense Department, spends millions each year on war games and on consulting think tanks to help them plan wars.  I think it's time to have some think tanks plan for peace, to have diplomats conduct peace games, and to spend a little of our money on weapons of peace.  Of course, the weapon of peace I most recommend is spiritual development.  Spiritual people are always peaceful people because they control their ego and recognize that we are all one.