The only one who can make you give up is yourself

“Don’t give up. There are too many nay-sayers out there who will try to discourage you. Don’t listen to them. The only one who can make you give up is yourself.” Sidney Sheldon

As you make your way through life, chances are you’ll come across people who seem to have your best interests in mind. They will appear to be kind hearted and smart. They will appear wise, full of wisdom, and will know the ways of the world. You listen to what they say, desperate for some guidance.

They tell you to forget your foolish dreams, that those dreams will never amount to anything. They tell you to trust their words, for they themselves once had foolish dreams. Dreams they had to give because they were too difficult for them to achieve.

They are your friend, and don’t want to see you making the same mistake they made. They implore you to heed their advice, to drop whatever dreams you have, and to do what you were intended to be, a follower, a worker, a drone.

These people are not your friends. They pretend to be so they can kill your dreams. Deep within their bosom, they have an emptiness that lifts when they spread gloom and doom to others. Seeing others succeed makes that emptiness grow, so they do all they can to make sure others don’t succeed. They are failures themselves, and seeing others succeed magnifies that failure.

So they pretend to be your friend, because they have a better chance of making you give up on your dreams and goals that way. They pretend to have your best interests at heart, but nothing would please them more than to see you give up, to see you fail to reach your goals.

Failures like to encourage others to fail.

The only person who can make you give up is yourself. FAilures can try all they want to make you give up, but it is only when you yourself give up that they succeed in their goal. You control your own destiny. Just because they’re failures doesn’t mean that you’ll fail as well. As long as your heart is beating, and air flows through your lungs, anything in life is possible.

Never let others kill your opportunities before you’ve even had a chance to prove yourself. Never listen to anyone who tells you that you’re a failure, or a loser, a quitter. You’ll only be those things if you listen to them.

Associate yourself with winners. Winners like to see others succeed. Ignore nay-sayers and get them out of your life.

To dream the impossible dream

“To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go
Sunset on Mars

To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far”

“The Impossible Dream (The Quest)”: from
Man of La Mancha lyrics by Joe Darion.

If all that was needed to succeed was an education, we’d all be billionaires. Unfortunately, what’s needed is much more than what you can get from a classroom. The classroom will help you make ends meet, but if you want to be a hero, to become great, them you need much more.

You need to be able to dream, to dream of something which outwardly seems impossible, or extremely difficult to attain. You need to be prepared to fight whatever stands in your way, no matter how many others before you faced it and failed. You must be ready to go into areas where others are afraid to go into. To be willing to face the unknown.

You have to set a high enough goal for yourself, then go after it no matter how difficult it becomes, or how tired you get.

You have to look others in the eye and proclaim loudly that this is your dream. This is what you will accomplish before you die. You have to believe in your heart that you will pursue this quest no matter where it leads you,no matter how hopeless it seems, no matter how far you must go, and no matter who stands in your way. You have to know in your heart that you will attain this goal.

This is what separates the strong from the weak, the determined from the hesitant.

If you believe in yourself, never give up

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Thomas Edison.

The problem with most of us is that we give up too easily. We make a full effort at something and when it doesn’t work, we move onto something else. Persistence is wanting something so much that you continue trying to reach your goal, no matter how many times you fail.

Most of us make two mistakes in trying to achieve some of our goals. The first is that we give up too easily. After one or two failed attempts, we simply give up, either to find an easier goal, or just stop altogether. The second mistake is that when we do make several attempts, we do them exactly the same way each time, so that the effort is guaranteed to fail.

When Thomas Edison tried to perfect the light bulb, he never wavered from his goal. Each time he made another attempt, he made changes in how he was doing it, knowing that the previous effort failed, and would fail again if he tried the same exact thing.

There’s a 69 year old woman in Korea who failed the drivers written test 959 times, before finally passing it on the 960th try. The woman was illiterate, and spent over an hour on buses to get to the testing site, but she was determined. Each time she took the test, her score kept getting higher. Each time she failed, she would study harder, trying to memorize and understand the questions. Hanging up on a wall where she lives, is a hand written sign that reads “Never give up”

Set an achievable goal for yourself. Then pursue that goal with all your passion, until you achieve it. If you fail, change your approach, try something different. With persistence and determination, you’ll achieve your goal, even if you have to try 10,000 times.

Persistence will beat talent and education any day of the week

“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 derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” Calvin Coolidge

Talent is great if you have it, but not the end of the world if you don’t. No amount of talent will get you to the stars if you don’t have the will, the persistence, to keep trying.

Education will open doors for you, but persistence and determination will open the vault for you. Talent and education will tell you which doors to open. Persistence and determination will make you open the next door, and the one after it and the next one, till you reach your star.

Talent and education will get you to the middle class. Persistence and determination will get you to the next level. Education, talent, persistence and determination will get you into the one percent and beyond. Look at those around you. The ones who rely on education and talent alone are easy to spot. They are the ones who give up at the first sign of defeat.

All of us know successful people who are less talented, less educated, and not as smart as others, or as we are, yet they are successful. They don’t give up. They do not accept defeat. They keep trying, one failure after another until they succeed.

If you want to succeed, if you want to reach the stars, keep trying, no matter how many times you fail. Keep the slogan ‘Press On’ rubber stamped in your head. When things look bleakest is when the weak quit, and when you must try even harder.

Keep trying

You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you’re working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success – but only if you persist. Isaac Asimov

What this quote means is that regardless of how many times you tried don’t give up, but keep trying. If you know you have talent, you will eventually succeed, but only if you keep trying.