If there is one characteristic that sets successful people apart, it’s the willingness to hang in there when it comes to pursuing a goal or dream. If you look at successful people throughout history, very few were overnight successes. Instead, they hung in there—they made lots of mistakes and encountered many obstacles, but they didn’t quit. They kept going long after most other people would have given up. Take for example, Ben DeNucci, a college football quarterback who was drafted in 2020 by the Dallas Cowboys of the National Football League. He has since played for seven different teams and has been fired by all seven of them. In an article which appeared in the New York Times, he gives his advice for dealing with failure: “And even when you’re told, no, no, no, you still have to get up, because at some point, somebody is going to tell you yes again.” Thomas Edison, who failed 3,000 times before he invented the first commercially successful light bulb, had this to say about persistence: “Our biggest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” The lesson here is that if you are willing to hang in there, you will succeed. On the other hand, if you decide to quit, you can’t succeed.

One Sentence Wisdom

• “Through perseverance, many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure.” –Benjamin Disraeli
• Success seems largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.” — William Feather

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