The story of R.U. Harby and his uncle.
An uncle of R.U. Harby, from Williamsburg, Maryland went west to Colorado to make his fortune in the gold rush.
Harby’s uncle started digging. Finally, he found a vein of gold ore. He covered it up and hid it. He went home to raise funds. Funds to buy the machinery that would allow him to extract the gold. He begged and borrowed from friends, family and neighbours.
Once they had enough funds, Harby and his uncle return to the site of the gold. They bought the machinery and started digging.
Things started well and they quickly earned enough to pay off their debts. They were excited and dreamed of the wealth they would amass.
Then the supply of gold stopped. The vein disappeared.
They kept on digging but found nothing.
Eventually, in frustration, they quit. They sold the machinery to a junk man for a few hundred dollars.
Harby and his uncle went home in disappointment.
The astute junk man called in a mining engineer. The engineer calculated that the vein of gold lay three feet from where Harby and his uncle stopped digging.
The junk man went on to make millions.
Harby returned home and paid off his debts from his profits. He had very little left afterwards. Harby later heard of the success of the junk man. He vowed to never give up too soon from then on.
Harby went on to become a phenomenally successful insurance salesman.
This story was told in Napoleon Hill’s classic ‘Think and grow rich’.
Failure happens to us
Whatever you do in life, at some point you are going to fail. Unless of course, you are so scared of failing that you don’t do anything. But then you fail by default.
If you go out to do something with your life. If you try, you are going to fail. Not all of the time of course. If you do something you have done before, you are probably not going to fail but you won’t grow.
If you do something you have never done before, you will more than likely fail the first time. It’s fine. You have never done it before. If we could do things the first time, every time, there would be no point in trying.
It is a fact of life. When we try things for the first time, we will inevitably fail.
Failing is not something we choose. It just happens to us. There is nothing we can do.
Accepting failure
When we experience failure, we can choose how we respond though.
We can get angry. We can shout and swear in frustration. We can throw things. Smash things.
We can get depressed. We can say out loud that we can’t do it. We can get upset. We can cry. We can walk around with our head hanging low.
Or we can take a deep breath. We can accept we won’t get it the first time. That we will not get it most of the time. But it is part of the journey. To progress, we must try again. It takes practice.
We calmly and patiently try again. And again. And again.
We can re-evaluate. Try things slightly differently. We can ask for advice. We could get some coaching.
Quitting
The other option is to quit. Now, this is a choice that you have complete control over.
To decide to walk away.
To decide it’s too difficult. It’s not worth it. That you can’t go on. You can’t see a way.
You have tried every which way. It just won’t work.
So you quit. You stop trying. You let that goal, dream or desire go. You resign yourself to the fact that it will never happen.
And it’s fine for a while.
Every now and then though, you kick yourself. You regret quitting. You can visualise yourself succeeding. Overcoming those odds. Achieving that goal, dream or desire.
You see the Facebook posts of those people who have succeeded. Those who have persevered against failure. To go on to succeed.
What if you had kept going?
Takeaways
If you don’t try to grow, do new things or chase goals then you fail in life by default.
If you do this chasing then you are going to fail at some point. It’s not your fault. There is nothing you can do about it. It is a fact of life. It just happens to us.
What we can choose, is how we respond to the failure. Kick, scream or shout. Moan, sulk or mope. Take a deep breath, release the frustration and calmly try again.
We also choose whether to keep going or to quit. This is entirely on you. If you quit, you may end up regretting it. If you keep going, you may just end up achieving what you set out to do.
Footnotes
You can listen to Napoleon Hill’s classic on audible here:
Comments
Post a Comment