Greatest Obstacles of Success: Ability and Persistence

To many people, starting a business feels like taking part in a 25 miles marathon race. Before it begins, hundreds and thousands of people gather at the same starting point with dreams and hopes of reaching the finishing line. Most participants are aiming for the top positions by being among the first few to make through the whole journey while a few are happy just to be taking part. It is pretty much almost impossible to determine who will actually make it through just by looking at them, most of them look strikingly identical. The determined look on their faces and and the eagerness to start.

As the horn sounds and the race begins, little by little the gap starts to widen and you will notice that most of the runners start to fall behind because of the lack of determination, experience and stamina required of the race. But few people drop out in the first ten miles of the marathon race, that’s the easy part, getting started.

So when do the majority of runners give up?

It will probably be in the 15-20 mile range, that’s when legs start to ache, bone begin to hurt, the tummy feels strange, your lungs are grasping for air and morale dips sharply. That’s the hard part. The worse part is knowing that you are lagging behind but can’t see anyone else in front of you, that is a great demoralizing factor and common reason to give up. Just like in business when it feels as though you are not getting ahead, the feeling of doubt kicks in.

Beyond the 20th mile, few people give up, these are the people who have endured the pain within their aching bodies (yes, even the best runners feel pain) and can smell the finishing line just ahead, urging each other on to complete the race because they understand what each other is going through. The competition is still there but each other wants the other party to complete the race with them even though most do not want others to finish ahead of them. To quit when you are almost reaching the finishing line is not only a waste of time to have started the race at all, it may also be devastating to the ego in which a person doubts himself whether he will amount to anything at all in his life because of that specific incident.

A Few Metres Short
Hafid did a land survey and was told that was a 70% chance that there were diamonds buried in his backyard, so he sold off all his property and dug for them but gave up just a few metres shy from reaching the diamonds buried just in front of him because there hasn’t been any results. He sold the plot of land eventually for a small amount of money and the guy who bought the land from him found the diamonds and became very rich.

What if Hafid endured and just dug for just a few metres more?
His life might have been turned out to be very different indeed.

Eventually, the marathon ends and only few hundreds remain out of the hundreds of thousands.

Among those who completed the race, there will be the titans, those who finished the race in record time and these are the few who get their faces and names recognized by the majority of the public, the famous bunch. For example, in the business world, the top two richest people in the world, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are the most well known while I would think that not many people can name the rest of the top twenty richest people in the world, even though they are billionaires as well.

So how can we overcome the obstacles regarding the lack of experience, keeping morale up and stamina?
These will be issues we will be discussing about in future.

edited: original photo by Paul Keleher

The online world tends to expose a part of human nature which is less apparent than in face to face conversations. It seems that in the online world, 7 out of 10 times when someone tries to befriend you, they are trying to sell you something which they claim can help you, the most being becoming more successful. I would think that it is actually quite good that they are offering to help people in areas they think might help them but when people step over the line, it sometimes seems distasteful.

This post is likely to offend those who fall into this case, those who try to sell their products about how to achieve a six to seven figure income yearly through their websites which looks like a single digit worth of effort, claiming that they can help you achieve success through building a great website and share all their secret tricks with us. I do not have the privilege of actually buying their products from them because I could not bring myself to believe in them, their target market is quite obviously for those who are just starting out on their journey for the search towards online success. So what is wrong with this picture?

When a website claims that they are able to drive traffic to your website or blog, isn’t it obvious that their website should get lots of traffic as well? To the slightly advanced web user, just a check into the site’s traffic would reveal most of the truth and the truth is in a ratio of almost 4 out of 10 websites I visited, they receive less than 100 visits a day. Another 4 in the range of hundreds and the last 2 actually have some results to show. It is not up to me to judge them but isn’t it suppose to be that people who are trying to be successful should they themselves have achieved some kind of success themselves?

Then who should?

For example, if Mike from Techcrunch or Robert from Scobleizer say something, I am more confident of what they say holds value because of their apparent success which can be clearly researched. If they choose to sell "success" one day, it’s justifiable because they are themselves already successful. They might hold different views at times but they have experienced enough to make their own judgements and have a lower probability of getting a wrong answer compared to those who haven’t achieved success.

That said, I hope that the blind do not attempt to lead the blind. Do not claim to be an expert unless you actually have results to prove. Be fair to others and yourself. The World is based on Trust and Integrity, guard it with your life.

As a number of readers here use Twitter, I would like to bring across this example. There are quite a few people trying to sell their "blueprint" of how to get more twitter followers and such when they themselves have problem crossing the magical 300 followers mark and when the better users have at least 1000 followers. Have you seen any of them lately?

There are opportunities open all around us, all the time, anywhere, anytime but we got to keep a lookout for them while the windows are still open. Always be alert, always be vigilant and restless…Seize the Moment! Even if there are no chances to be seen, don’t give up, stand up and create your chances. Even if you feel you are down on your luck, don’t blink, run towards your fate and create your own luck. For he who cannot motivate himself does not deserve success.

Seek the treasures that the World have hidden for us, all we have to do is to find them and claim it.

Sleep is a privilege, never sleep unless your eyes can open no more, never lay in bed more than you need to, WAKE UP and find those treasures that belong to you!

The seven things that can help you grab the opportunities:

1. Master the System
2. Know thyself
3. Be Dead Serious
4. Stand Out
5. React Fast
6. Attract Success
7. Keep Getting Results

Master the System

Do you dare to live in a high rise building that a novice constructed for you? Would you feel safe seeking the medical attention of an unregistered doctor or dentist? Will you invest in a company with novices with no track record leading them? If you say “No” to the above, then turn the question around, are you willing to make the effort to learn and get accredited to become be a builder, doctor or dentist…are you willing to learn how to build businesses and build construction companies, medical and dental clinics? No matter what you choose, you have to make the choice to master the system which consists of the knowledge and skills needed to be able to prosper for each vocation. Know how it truly works, not just assuming it. Get out there and master the system!

Know thyself

Can you bake a cake? Does it taste nice? How many cakes have you baked before? Can you build a business? Can it actually make a profit? How many businesses have you built before? Baking a cake that tastes good and building businesses that can make good profits works technically on the same law, the law of practice. Practice makes perfect. If the system is the recipe for success in baking cakes and building businesses, then right now, you have to be honest with yourself, how good are you at doing what you do? Do you bake nice tasting cakes or burnt ones, can you build businesses that make profits or does it sap away your capital, is your business worth building…is your cake worth baking? Know yourself, know what you want and where you stand.

Life is like baking a cake, to be the best in it, you have to like baking cakes…but here’s the paradox…just because you can bake great tasting cakes doesn’t mean that you have learnt how to be a great businessman or woman…those are two quite different things.

Be Dead Serious

If the lion gave up hunting after a few failures, it is indirectly sentencing itself to a death sentence. If a person gave up pursing his or her dreams after a few failures, he or she is indirectly sentencing themselves to a life of regret, a life of “what ifs”. Once you know how the system works and after analysing if you know if you are up to the task, you have to decide if that is really what you want…if it is, be dead serious about it. Think about your ambitions day and night, never stopping or taking a break to move towards your goals making every effort to link whatever you are doing to be another step towards your goal. Little by little it will add up and bring you to your goals, to make your dreams come true. Remember this, be dead serious once you have set your mind to it. NEVER GIVE UP YOUR DREAMS HALFWAY unless you are sure that you have made the wrong choice, by then you have a choice if it is valid. Do the right thing.

Stand Out

We are used to sheep that are white in colour, what if one day someone found a blue sheep? News will start to spread and people will travel far and wide to take a peek at the blue sheep. Make news, stand out from the crowd…or something terrible could happen…The curse of Nothing.

Critical Timing

The early bird catches the worm…what if all birds wake up early? By then it becomes the case of the bird with the fastest reactions who will get the worm. In our lives, chances for us to succeed in our field come and go, React too slowly and the opportunity might pass, react too fast and you might ruin your chance for opportunities can turn against you in a jiffy. Just like the bird who reacts too hastily and attempted to grab the worm before enough of its body is out of the soil, it slips from its beak and the bird goes hungry.

Attract Success

The law of attraction goes that “like attracts like and opposites repel” and the saying goes that birds of a feather flock together. Radiate success and success will come to you, radiate otherwise and success might just slip by unnoticed.

Keep Getting Results even if…

Keep moving towards your goals and keep trying, failure is the mother of success and few successes come without first tasting the bitterness of failure. Those who have never tasted failure before but kept moving up the ladder of success smoothly will certainly meet with some failures in their lives, from there, the fall is harder and more painful. Become numb to the bitterness of failure at first but remember it so that you will remember the lessons it have  taught you…keep getting results, even if they are failures…because one day you will attain success as well. Thomas Edison tried hundreds of times before he eventually invented the light bulb, he kept getting results, he did not give up…that is one of the traits he possessed.

The route to success no matter how great it is portrayed, no matter how easy it seems…comes with effort and focus. Remember, things are always difficult at first before they eventually become easy to you. The key is to choose what you really want to do to achieve what you want. Don’t climb up the walls of success only to find out that the ladder have always been on the wrong wall. Climb the right wall, do the right thing. Wake up and grab your dreams with both hands now…using just one is never enough…

Are you climbing the right wall?