HOW TO ELIMINATE YOUR GREATEST ENEMY: SOMEDAY

THE STORY OF THE FRUSTRATED CARRIER
This story happened to me recently (although it’s the same old story):
 
After my forty minutes of exercise, I bought a newspaper to spend a half hour of quiet time at a nearby coffee shop. (Thanks to my schedule I can work several hours at a stretch and gain a lot of free time afterwards).
 
When I entered the coffee shop there was another person waiting to be served and we started talking.
 
He told me that he worked as a carrier for a local company, but that he hated his job, that what he really liked was writing.
 
He said this pointing to my paper as if he wished he had been the one to write it.
 
“Hmmm… writing, that rings a bell.” But I didn’t tell him about my books. I was more interested in his case, not telling him mine. I selfishly wanted to learn about his.
 
I need to learn about other lives. I need material.
 
The transporter was nice and the kind of person you perceive to be talented.
 
But then he told me the typical story about how his superiors didn’t recognize his qualities and the zero time he had left for his passion, writing. “There are no opportunities these days,” he told me.
 
When he finished I replied, “I know why you’re not a writer.” I don’t shut up about anything lately.
 
“Why?” he asked me quizzically as I ordered two plates of pasta that would have burst the stomachs of many.
 
“Because you don’t try hard enough.” (I’ve been saying I don’t shut up about anything lately).
 
He went white and looked at me as if he’d just burned out of his trucker van, “But you hardly know me!”
 
“I don’t need to know you to know what your case is,” (maybe I was talking too much), but I can tell you that if you’re not where you want to be, it’s because you haven’t tried hard enough.
 
The same thing happened to me. I loved to blame others for my woes.”
 
There I was, singing my heart out to a stranger. If it would make his life better, though….
 
But he didn’t like to hear this. In fact, no one likes to hear that in order to achieve something they have to take hours out of nowhere to train. But I went on (I was already pitched)

 “Why don’t you write on your midday breaks?

Why don’t you write in the evenings?

Why don’t you write in any spare minute?

Why don’t you read up on how to write faster and how to publish a book?

Why don’t you search instead of sitting around waiting?”

 
And I’ll answer for him: the carrier didn’t do it because he didn’t want it that badly.
 
That man, like so many others I meet, had a dream, but did nothing to achieve it.
 
Because his thing was the herd.
 
He hated what he did, but it made him uncomfortable to go out.
 
“Someday I’ll do this and that…” and in the meantime, it was more comfortable to believe he wasn’t succeeding because others wouldn’t let him.
 
I know too many talented people
 
Blue workers, shopkeepers, cab drivers, lawyers, accountants and clerks who hate their job, but don’t take a step to get out.
 
They are charismatic and hardworking, but they don’t go in the right direction. And they waste their lives in a job they hate deluding themselves that they will someday make something of themselves.
 
 
1000 NO’S ARE NOTHING
How many times have you been turned down and said No? I’m sure it’s not even a thousand.
 
But even a thousand is nothing. Those who made it far were turned down as many as ten thousand times. But they never gave up.
 
They knocked on doors until they found the right person or the right tip. They knew that every No, brought them closer to the ultimate Yes.
 
When Michael Dell, the owner of the Dell computer empire, started his business as a nobody, he didn’t give up because he heard No a thousand times every day.
 
He didn’t give up because his business wasn’t moving at the pace he wanted it to. He didn’t give up because people called him crazy.
 
And in the end he built a dizzying multinational and a fortune selling personal computers.
 
Darwin did not give up every time they said no to his theories.
 
Neither did Edison after failing again in his experiments.
 
Nor did the programmer who created that computer empire give up when his parents, his friends, his neighbors and his teachers told him it wasn’t going to work. He didn’t say “Well, I’ll try another day.”
 
He didn’t put off his attempts for someday, even though he was told a thousand times that it was impossible. He believed in something and it would come.
 
.Remember that time you did something great?
 
Don’t you remember how you kept hearing no?
 
You got sick of hearing no. But you achieved your purpose.
 
So repeat that path.
 
As long as you persevere the power is yours.
 
But if you procrastinate for some day, you lose the power.
 
So when you get your share of No’s ask yourself, “Have I tried at least ten thousand times?”