SOURCE: http://fundersandfounders.com
Early today I found myself clicking from one article to another that finally ended up with the one linked above. This resonated with me because it has been so true in my life.
If you are thinking about giving up right now, wait until you read this. Here is why – your worst days come right before success.
What lead to this post was seeing this info-graphic in another article.
Source: Funders and Founders - click to enlarge
I have not only found this to be true in business but also in all areas of life ranging from training to relationships. The original article lists 7 reasons to never give up. Out of the 7 these would be my top three.
Lower your expectations.
Most successes are not overnight successes. It’s the job of every PR company hired by a newly successful startup to make that startup look like an overnight success. You hear things like, “They just hacked this in a couple nights on the weekend, and a week later got a million users” or “it was just a hobby they were doing on the side, but then one day the site crashed because of traffic.”
Some of these stories are true, but for most of them – you will never know the whole story. Guessing how others succeed is wasting your time. Paul Graham warns every batch of founders at Y Combinator that only 1% of them will experience success really fast. What ends up happening is founders all expect they will be that 1%. You can work for it. But you can’t expect it. Lower your expectations.
Remember that you are stronger than you think.
At times, you might privately think to yourself that you can’t handle the pressure. You have to persist. And just doing the same thing is not enough. You must try different things before you learn what works. Let’s say of the 99 things you have tried, nothing works well. Will you try the 100th thing? If you think about it, the 99 failures have almost no bearing on the success of the following one, as long as you trying different things.
Don’t compare yourself to people who already succeeded.
Never give up if Bob is doing great. You never know how he is really doing. Even if you think you know, you don’t.
After you have done all of this, you will fall into the dip. It’s the lowest point in your whole journey, a hopeless-looking place that comes right before success – Seth Godin wrote an entire book about it. If this sounds like baseless motivational talk, think again. When you fall really low, take a bunch of risks and fail people around you, you have nothing to lose – and that is exactly the time you are likely to take you biggest risk and possibly succeed.
To read the full article click HERE