Three Feet From Gold

To make better use of my time, I've recently begun listening to audio books while driving. I've started on Think and Grow Rich and I've just listened to something that may help you achieve success in your fitness or business goal. Here's the excerpt:

"One of the most common causes of failure is the habit of quitting when one is overtaken by temporary defeat. Every person is guilty of this mistake at one time or another.

An uncle of R.U. Darby was caught by the “gold fever” in the gold-rush days, and went out West to dig and grow rich. He had never heard that more gold has been mined from the brains of men than has ever been taken from the Earth. He staked a claim and went to work with pick and shovel. The going was hard, but his lust for gold was definite. After weeks of labor, he was rewarded by the discovery of the shining ore. He needed machinery to bring the ore to the surface. Quietly, he covered up the mine, retraced his footsteps to his home in Williamsburg, Maryland, and then told his relatives and a few neighbors of the “strike.” They got together money for the needed machinery, and had it shipped to location. The uncle and Darby went back to work the mine.

The first car of ore was mined, and shipped to a smelter. The returns proved they had one of the richest mines in Colorado!! A few more cars of that ore would clear the debts. Then would come the big killing in profits.

Down went the drills! Up went the hopes of Darby and Uncle! Then something happened! The vein of gold ore disappeared! They had come to the end of the rainbow, and the pot of gold was no longer there! They drilled on, desperately trying to pick up the vein again - all to no avail. Finally, they decided to QUIT!!!!

They sold the machinery to a junk man for a few hundred dollars, and took the train back home. Some “junk” men are dumb, but not this one! He called in a mining engineer to look at the mine and do a little calculating. The engineer advised that the project had failed, because the owners were not familiar with “fault lines.” His calculations showed that the vein would be found just THREE FEET from where the Darbys had stopped drilling! That is exactly where it was found!!!

The “junk” man took millions of dollars in ore from the mine, because he knew enough to seek expert counsel before giving up.

Long afterward, Mr. Darby recouped his loss many times over, when he made the discovery that DESIRE can be transmuted into gold. The discovery came after he went into the business of selling life insurance.

Remembering that he lost a huge fortune because he stopped three feet from gold, Darby profited by the experience in his chosen work, by the simple method of saying to himself, “I stopped three feet from gold, but I will never stop because men say ‘no’ when I ask them to buy insurance.”

Darby is one of a small group of fewer than fifty men who sell more than a million dollars in life insurance annually. He owes his "stickability" to the lesson he learned from his "quitability" in the gold mining business."

Many people give up or want to quit when the going gets tough. Maybe their weight isn't dropping as fast as they want it to. Or their bench press isn't increasing at all. Quitting is the easy way out!!! The funny thing is, is that they are probably closer to achieving their goal than they think. That "THREE FEET" could just mean buckling down and having a little more discipline when it comes to making proper food choices. Or, just working on strengthening the triceps to increase the bench press.

It all boils down to having a NO QUIT mindset!! It's alright to fail, just learn from it and improve. If something's not working, figure out the cause and take some action to change it. When you hit a rough stretch, keep pushing forward because you're probably only "THREE FEET" from success!!