It’s often easy to look at “successful” people and think that it’s all come easily to them. In many cases this is not what happened. Colonel Sanders went to more than 1,000 places trying to sell his chicken recipe before he found an interested buyer. Thomas Edison tried almost 10,000 times before he succeeded in creating the electric light.
The original business plan for what was to become Federal Express was given a failing grade on Fred Smith’s college exam. And, in the early days, their employees would cash their pay checks at retail stores, rather than banks. This meant it would take longer for the money to clear, thereby giving Fed Ex more time to cover their payroll.
Sylvester Stallone had been turned down a thousand times by agents and was down to his last $600 before he found a company that would produce Rocky. The rest is history!
The poet Robert Forst had his first poetry submissions to The Atlantic Monthly returned unwanted.
Ray Kroc, the late founder of McDonalds, knew this too. “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence” he once said. “Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with great talent. Genius will not. Un-rewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not. The world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence, determination and love are omnipotent.”
I want to give you a scenario. You’re 22 years old – it’s already attractive to many of you isn’t it? You do well at school and head off to Uni. You work hard and do so well that even before you finish your uni course you land a plum job in a merchant bank. You work hard in your new job and life is looking pretty good. One day your boss calls you into the office and greets you with the words, “We’ve decided to terminate your employment. Your work isn’t good enough, you’re a bit too different and you don’t fit in with the others.”
That’s what happened to a young Australian by the name of Brett Kelly. Brett’s world came tumbling in on him. This was the first time in his life anything had gone really wrong. He lost his confidence in himself, lost all sense of purpose and direction, and slipped into a routine of getting up late, watching the Midday show and wasting the afternoon.
Then one day Kerrie Ann Kennerly turned Brett’s life around. Sitting there day after day watching the Midday show Brett noticed Kerrie Ann’s passion for her job, the way she so obviously enjoyed what she was doing, and gained so much energy from it. “That’s what I want” he said to himself – “that type of energy, that type of passion.” But how? Where could he find it? How could he learn to have that type of success?
He had no answers but he figured people who were successful in their chosen career probably did. So he made up a list of prominent people he admired – from rock stars like Peter Garrett, to political leaders like Bob Hawke and Jeff Kennett, to entertainers like HG Nelson. The idea was to interview them, discover their secrets, then publish the interviews in a book. When he got through all his interviews Brett was startled at what he learned about success. Brett had always thought that success in work and life would come from skill and talent and so he had chased qualifications, skills, and experience. What he found was that the one thing all the people he interviewed shared was the ability to build high quality relationships.
You want to know the title of his book? Collective Wisdom.
A number of years back the codfish industry on the northeast coast of the US had a problem. The fresher the fish the better. So how could they keep the codfish fresh while they transported them across the country? When they froze the fish they lost too much flavour. When they transported them live in tanks filled with saltwater the fish got soft and mushy.
Finally they found a solution. They placed catfish in the tanks. Catfish are a natural enemy of codfish, so the catfish would chase them around the tanks all the time they were being transported. The cod now arrived in better condition than ever.
Relating this story, Chuck Swindoll points out that we all need catfish in our lives – the difficult people or situations in life that may not be pleasant but keep us healthy and growing.
Have you ever driven by a highly polluted area and wondered what can be done to stop people dumping their rubbish? At the turn of the Millennium Peru city authorities tried a novel approach. Some of the streets in the capital city were scarred by terrible littering – people even stopping to urinate in the streets. The authorities responded by placing pictures of Jesus and Mary on the walls of buildings lining the most polluted streets. Why? Because the people of Peru are, on the whole, committed to Roman Catholicism. The authorities have found that people are far less likely to litter the streets under the gaze of Jesus and the Virgin Mary.
Source: based on Reuters News Story January 2001.
Winston Churchill was one of the great leaders of the twentieth century. Even today his speeches to the British people steeling them for war with the Nazis can send shivers up the spine: ”We shall not flag nor fail. We shall go on to the end. . . . We shall fight on the beaches . . . we shall fight in the fields and in the streets . . . we shall never surrender.” ”Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’…”
Churchill was a man of great vision and determination, and from his story we can learn at least two things about vision:
- Staking out a visionary path is not always a matter of clear cut choices. At the same time Churchill was steeling the resolve the the British with his speeches, many in the governing circles were convinced Hitler could not be beaten and were urging him to abandon the war, surrender Europe to the Nazis, and maintain Britain as a small enclave of freedom.
- Staking out a visionary path often begins with wild and crazy ideas. A former officer of the Home Office, commented: ”Once a week or oftener Mr. Churchill came into the office bringing with him some adventurous or impossible projects; but after half an hour’s discussion something was evolved which was still adventurous, but not impossible.”
Source: Information reported in New York Times review of Roy Jenkins book Churchill, November 11, 2001.
