Overnight Success – How Realistic is that Assumption?

I sometimes wished one fine morning I will get the results I always wanted; I will get the solution to my problems. But alas it never happened that easily!  My grandma used to say, our luck is buried under a rock, and it requires lots of effort to get it out; whereas “others” have it under a leaf, a wind blows and they find their fortune! For many years I felt less fortunate as nothing came easy for me.

As I grew older and learned a thing or two, I realized many of the cases of those “fortunate others” actually took plenty of failures, sacrifices, and extra efforts to get to where they are today. As a coach, I get to hear from people that things won’t turn out as easily as they are not as smart as Steve Jobs or Thomas Edison.

It takes quite a bit of maturity get out of the notion of “others are simply smarter or luckier”.

Today I found this article “The Dirty Little Secret of Overnight Successes” supporting my knowing. It gives the examples of early failures of today’s successful people and their ventures. Do you know that the popular game Angry bird is the 52^nd attempt of its creator? It took them eight years and near bankruptcy experience before seeing its success. James Dyson failed in 5126 prototypes before perfecting his revolutionary vacuum cleaner. Not to mention the legendary Steve Jobs and Oprah Winfrey were labeled as misguided dreamers in their early years. There is no shortage of examples like this.

Even today, despite all my coach training and years of wisdom I have been feeling so down because of a recent failure. This article reminded me of the greatest virtue of mankind, who can learn from their failures and grow. As long as I honor myself, one such failure is just taking me closer to hitting my target!  Thanks, Josh Linker to help me feel better already :).

Link: The Dirty Little Secret Of Overnight Successes