Success is a Process - don’t waver, don’t give up, don’t leave, persist!!

Great achievers are not born, they are developed. If you want to make more money, have better relationships, and have a greater impact on the world, it starts with you becoming more. Success is not a process that occurs overnight. It is an edifice which is built brick by brick.

Success is the outcome of consistent, persistent, focused working towards the objective. Success is the outcome of the right combination of personal and professional excellence. A child doesn’t just start running after its birth; it crawls before it learns to walk and learns to walk before it can run.

Success takes time, Sachin Tendulkar, Lata Mangeshkar, Amitabh Bachchan or Narendra Modi are not created overnight, these phenomenal individuals worked hard, bit by bit to reach at this level where they have a distinguished place in history in their respective fields. 

Success doesn’t happen all at once. You should get better every year. Knowledge, skills, and prosperity are to be obtained by consistent and determined study and practice. There are no shortcuts to true success.

I millionaire was told by someone that he was very lucky, the millionaire smiled and replied –“I know, and the harder I work, the luckier I get.” Great American inventor Thomas Alva Edison stated, “I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.”

When someone is successful, don’t view them as being lucky. Find out how they did it so you can achieve the same success by duplicating what they did. The quickest way to find the process to success in any field is to find someone who has already achieved this success and learn how they did it. Talk to people who are already where you want to be and then do what they did it.  Easiest way to find such people is in the books that they write, called autobiographies, try reading as much autobiographies of successful people in different fields and in the field of your interest. You will get great insight and keys to their success; of course if you are looking to find any shortcut, you shall be hugely disappointed.

I have mentioned the qualities needed for being successful and one of them was humility and teachability, these two qualities also make a person approachable, accessible and easy to talk to. Successful people are accessible. You simply have to seek them out, get advice from them.

Anyone can be successful because everything it takes to be successful can be learned. The only thing that stands between where you are and where you want to be is time and effort. Thomas Carlyle said – “Persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragement, and impossibilities; it is what in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.”

I have read many biographies, one of my favorite ones is, Virgin Atlantic’s owner Richard Bronson, this man is persistence personified. His book Screw it Lets do it, is very inspirational read, which motivates you to act against all odds. Due to his habit of not leaving his objective, he could create opportunities out of challenges.

Famous author and motivational speakers Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen became the bestselling authors of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, which has now sold over 100 million copies; they were rejected by 140 publishers and told by their agent, “I can’t sell this book- I am giving it back to you guys.”

Stephen R. Covey, author of one of my favorite books The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, created one of the largest leadership development companies in the world. Before the company was worth $160 million, the company endured 11 straight years of negative cash flow. The company had nothing in the bank, they were totally extended on their accounts payable, and their credit lines were maxed out. Their “debt to tangible net worth” ratio was 223 to 1. Over the next two and half years, the company value grew to a worth of $160 million.

All you must be familiar with Rambo and Rocky – Sylvester Stallone, one of the most successful and sought after Hollywood action heroes of all time, he was rejected by over 600 casting agents and was unable to sell his first 8 screenplays. In 1975, Stallone saw a fight between Muhammad Ali and Chuck Wepner in which Wepner was a 30:1 underdog. Inspired by this fight, Stallone began developing the Rocky screenplay. The script was purchased by United Artists and opened in theaters on November 21, 1976. Rocky took in $117 million in US Box office sales at that time, with Stallone making more than $5 million.

Sylvester believed in his dream, he held on to his dream, there is another interesting associated about his role in Rocky. Sylvester wanted to play the character of Rocky, his belief was so strong that, even needing the money badly, he did not compromise and let go his dream, “Dirt-Poor Sylvester Stallone turned down $300,000 In 1976 To Ensure He Could Play 'Rocky'”.

The "Rocky" franchise includes six films and has raked in more than a billion dollars at the box office since the first film premiered in 1976. But it almost didn't happen. Sylvester Stallone was a relative newcomer to Hollywood in the mid-'70s when he pitched his rags-to-riches script about an uneducated debt-collector-turned-champion boxer named Rocky Balboa to producers.

Luckily, producers liked it. Unfortunately for Stallone, they didn't want him to star. "They wanted every celebrated actor at the time," Stallone recalled Monday on the "Today Show." "And big-name directors, when they found out I wanted to be involved, they scattered, ran for the hills." Instead of Stallone - the screenwriter - producers wanted Burt Reynolds, James Caan, or Ryan O'Neal, who were all big stars at the time. So at 30 years old with just $106 in his bank account, Stallone turned down a $300,000 offer - the equivalent of $1 million today - for the rights to "Rocky." He was determined to make the film he wrote on his terms, starring himself.

These are some of the stories, if you randomly pick any successful persons story, the persons may be from any industry or field, but the common thread connecting all these heroes would be persistence.

Keep on working, don’t waver, don’t give up, don’t leave, just hold on to it, just for another moment, another minute, another week, another year, unless you achieve success.