> If you stick with it, you'll be successful. It doesn't matter where you come from, who your parents are, what you know, who you know, or how you look. All that is required is a choice
I'm going to present a different picture of the world. I think it's a more accurate one. Not necessarily more useful.
There is no such thing as a guarantee of success -- at least, for a definition of success that includes broad recognition and financial rewards. No choice you can make, no enduring commitment, no talent you develop or have inborn can guarantee that "whatever it takes" will actually be enough in the end.
Determination, focus, talent, and years of effort may make you a success. They will markedly improve your chances, possibly even make them quite good. And shedding them or neglecting to cultivate them will all but guarantee failure.
But they're still no guarantee. And that's why the central message of the article about the intrinsic rewards is so important. Because in the end, the only reward you can keep for sure is the one that you take for yourself in terms of being satisfied with how you spend your time and the work that you've done.
The key thing, he says, about successful people is they quickly and accurately either choose to abandon something very very fast, or to pursue it through the depressing dip to sucess.
The same is true for the lottery, if you don't buy a lottery ticket, you're guaranteed not to win. But that doesn't prove you should spend all your money on lottery tickets.
I would say sometimes qutting is good option. Not absolute quitting, but quitting from current plan. Being open to bending and open to modifications in the 'way to success'.
I remember Bruce Lee said, "Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless - like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend."
If you quit while you still have passion, it's too early. If you spend your life following a passion, and never achieve "success", was that a life wasted? What is the alternative?
There are many great examples, but to take only one consider Larry Page and Sergey Brin who tried and failed to sell PageRank to Yahoo, Altavista etc.
The world does not remember them as two engineers who failed to sell their novel idea to BigCo and make a lot of money, but as the founders of a great company called Google.
You can fail as many times as you like. You only have to win once and the world will remember you for it. Only way to guarantee a defeat is to quit. If you can keep at it, you probably should.
I'm going to present a different picture of the world. I think it's a more accurate one. Not necessarily more useful.
There is no such thing as a guarantee of success -- at least, for a definition of success that includes broad recognition and financial rewards. No choice you can make, no enduring commitment, no talent you develop or have inborn can guarantee that "whatever it takes" will actually be enough in the end.
Determination, focus, talent, and years of effort may make you a success. They will markedly improve your chances, possibly even make them quite good. And shedding them or neglecting to cultivate them will all but guarantee failure.
But they're still no guarantee. And that's why the central message of the article about the intrinsic rewards is so important. Because in the end, the only reward you can keep for sure is the one that you take for yourself in terms of being satisfied with how you spend your time and the work that you've done.