Cross The Line

Have you ever watched a runner stop and decide to sit down a few hundred yards from the finish line?
Would you remember if you did?
Or can you conjure marathon memories, Olympians staggering down the final stretch, falling, struggling to their feet, stumbling, tumbling and willing their bodies upright to somehow finish despite the anguish.

When was the last time you witnessed a racehorse drop out of the pack and decide to search for grazing grass?
Okay, so maybe those examples fall into the extreme category.
Few of us make the Olympics or gallop like champions.

Did you catch the painter packing his brushes after donning half the house with a coat of green?
Does the carpenter hammer only two thirds of a nail?
How would you feel if your coiffeur decided to style the left but not the right side of your mane?

When did we begin to condone the notion that starting without finishing makes the grade?
It doesn’t.
If our forefathers fell into that rut, we’d babble the Queens’ English and fancy fish-n-chips over burgers.

We blossomed as a nation of fighters, gritty women and men who challenged all odds, paid the price and kept moving.
Through thick and thin, mistakes and setbacks, we persevered, endured and flourished.
Looking around today, I’m a little worried.

“It’s okay if young Johnny doesn’t finish his homework. He had a tough day.”
“Don’t make her clean her room now. She’s tired and needs to rest.”
“You can turn in your report next week. I know this quarter has been extra stressful at the office.”

Gimme’ a break.
No, don’t—and that’s the point.

Too many excuses out there.
We expend more effort justifying our failures than mustering the oomph to complete the task at hand.
Too much whining.

Most of life’s defeats happen to people who don’t realize how close they come to tasting success when they quit.
If we could just try one more time, make one more call, give it one more shot.

When we forsake and renounce anything at the mid-point, we miss out in two ways.
First, no completion, no glory.

Second, not as obvious, we abdicate the lesson.
We spurn the chance to learn the very piece we need to succeed next go around.
The road to success runs through the land of failure.

To succeed quickly, double your failure rate, double the speed of your learning curve, suck each lesson dry and plug yourself back into the game.
No one crests any pinnacle without struggles.
Nothing great comes easily.

Nothing at all stems from surrendering in the middle of the battle—except defeat and the nagging question that lingers in the aftermath:

“What if I had kept on fighting?”

Success Quotes

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated failures. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
-Calvin Coolidge, 30th President of the United States

Everyone’s got it in him, if he’ll only make up his mind and stick at it. None of us is born with a stop-valve on his powers or with a set limit to his capacities. There’s no limit possible to the expansion of each one of us.
-Charles M. Schwab

Key Points

As I was continuing the work on the re-write of The Great Ones for the publisher that recently bought the English rights (Wiley Publishing—yeay!) I completed a chapter on Perseverance—a topic that above all others strikes me as the number one key to success at just about anything. From Think and Grow Rich to almost any modern day bestseller on success, this one trait stands head and shoulders above the rest. Over and over we read about individuals who with their refusal to quit and dogged determination, cause the universal forces to bend in their favor with mind-boggling results.
Here’s what I like best about perseverance. You don’t have to be smart. You don’t have to be talented. You don’t have to come from a privileged background or have a great education. Perseverance requires no more than the decision to go after a goal and never quit. With a clear target and the refusal to stop taking action until we get there, the outcome is a foregone conclusion.
So ask yourself—what do you care about enough that you will flat out decide to go get it and not stop until you do? They say that misery loves company. Guess what? Success loves company, too.
I’ll see you at the top.

P.S. these comments were a tad short as we are only DAYS away from launching Modest To Millions online (a massive undertaking)…stay tuned…don’t you want to learn the secrets of the world’s most successful people?