Guest Writer: Wemi Opakunle
When I first started experiencing a spiritual awakening and exploring the consciousness within, one of the first books that came into my possession was Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich”. Over the past few years, I’ve found myself still channeling some of the book’s powerful messages and earlier today when I woke up mentally exhausted, emotionally drained and wondering how I could find the strength to take one more step towards building my dreams, a specific chapter came to mind.
“Before success comes in any man’s life, he is sure to meet with much temporary defeat, and, perhaps, some failure. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and most logical thing to do is to quit. That is exactly what the majority of men do. More than five hundred of the most successful men this country has ever known told the author their greatest success came just one step beyond the point at which defeat had overtaken them. Failure is a trickster with a keen sense of irony and cunning. It takes great delight in tripping one when success is almost within reach.”
The story that preceded this quote was that of a man who set out to be successful by digging for gold. He took on a piece of land that was filled with potential and got to digging. After weeks of labor, he was rewarded by the discovery of the precious ore. He invested in machinery and gathered a few family members to join in the dig with high hopes of making a fortune. Unfortunately, after extensive drilling, they found that the vein of gold ore had disappeared. They kept trying but eventually, they gave up –selling the machinery to a junk man for a few hundred dollars. It turns out that this junk man was smarter than most. He brought in a mining engineer to take a look at the mine. The engineer calculated that the dig had failed because the owners were not familiar with “fault lines”. Moreover, his calculations showed that the vein of gold would be found just three feet from where the owners stopped drilling. Needless to say that’s exactly where it was found. The “junk” man made millions from that mine.
When you have done everything that you can and you’ve pushed for so long that you don’t think your mind, body and soul can take it anymore; when you are at a standstill and you feel exhausted and even paralyzed, you owe it to yourself to give it one more shot. Push! Drill! Strike! Give it your all every time and one day, one hour, one minute, the ground will give in to you and you will strike gold. You may have started fifteen businesses and lost each one, invested and failed each time — I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t matter. Learn from those so called “failures” and try again. There is no alternative. In spite of your fear, in spite of your anger, in spite of your doubt, you have to try again.