How to Make Life Work For You

Home	02 The Second Greatest Secret	03 Principles of Success	04 Dreams and Goals	05 Decisions	06 Count the Cost
07 The Plan	08 Right Thinking	09 Subconscious	10 Training	11 Affirmations	12 Attitude
13 Mentor	14 Associations	15 Vehicle	16 Persistence	17 The Sage and the Fool	18 Secrets of Having a Job

Persistence

Face it, you're not going to succeed at anything if you quit before the job is done. You won't go to Hawaii next year if you give up on it this year. You'll never cook a good dinner if you walk away in the middle of cooking.

In his book, Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill tells the story of when he interviewed Andrew Carnegie*, the famous American Scottish millionaire. During that interview, Mr. Carnegie casually let slip what was the secret of his success. He also challenged Mr. Hill to use it and share it with others. Andrew Carnegie was Napoleon Hill's mentor. Mr. Hill went on to say that secret was embedded in every chapter of his book, perhaps even on every page, although he did not specifically identify what it was. The reader was left to study the book and learn for himself what was Andrew Carnegie's secret.

*Andrew Carnegie was the famous millionaire. Dale Carnegie was the Positive Thinking guru.

People sometimes get different messages from the text. One man I know said the great secret was Belief in oneself. Self-confidence. I felt it was Persistence.

Napoleon Hill told the story of a man and his nephew in Maryland around 1850 who sold everything they had and moved to California to mine for gold. They bought a likely mine and went to work. It began to pay off immediately. They followed a vein of gold that they believed would lead them to the mother lode. However to their dismay, it ended. They drilled farther, but found nothing. They got discouraged, sold everything to a junk dealer and moved back to Maryland. The junk dealer brought in a mining engineer, who told him there was a fault at that spot. The land beyond the fault was three feet lower! So the junk man dug in the mine three feet deeper, found the vein again, and followed it to the mother lode. He made millions of dollars!

There are two lessons in that little story. One, DON'T give up on your life's worthwhile dream! Persist! DON'T give up!

The other lesson is this, Get expert advice. Get a mentor! Get help. Don't pretend you can do something worthwhile for the first time by yourself without help. Successful people get help! Successful people are not afraid to ask others for advice, as long as they ask a person who would know the answer.

Never give up on your life's worthwhile dream. Get help when you need it, but never give up.

Go now to The Sage and the Fool.