success is a numbers game

This a timeless truth. It has been true for the people who have lived before us, it’s true for us and will certainly be true for people who come after us.

We need to master the art of failing and getting rejected in order to become successful, there’s no other way. The more attempts you make, the more you inch closer to the realm of success.

If you want to be successful in your chosen field, you need to take action every day. Whatever outcome you get, whether pleasant or unpleasant, you just need to keep on going.

We can’t let failures and rejections dictate our destiny. They are a part and parcel of life that we need to go through to attract success.

There’s no definite timeline and we have no control when we will attain resounding success, fame or money. The only way we can take control is showing up every day and doing our part.

There are many examples around us that support this truth.

Michael Jordan, considered by countless people as the greatest basketball player of all time, has missed more than 9,000 shots in his career and lost close to 300 games.

Pablo Picasso, one of the most revered painters in the world, created around 50,000 artworks in his lifetime, out of which only 100 turned out to be masterpieces.

Colonel Sanders, founder of KFC, was rejected 1009 times before he found a taker for his chicken recipe.

Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to receive a medical degree in the US, was rejected from 29 medical schools before she finally got accepted.

Thomas Edison made thousands of unsuccessful attempts before he was finally able to develop the light bulb.

Walt Disney was turned down 302 times before his dream of creating Walt Disney World finally got financed.

James Dyson created 5,126 failed prototypes over the span of 5 years, to develop world’s first bagless vacuum cleaner.

“Chicken Soup for the Soul” written by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen got rejected 144 times before they found a publisher willing to give them a chance. The same happened with Tim Ferriss. The manuscript of his first book The 4-Hour Workweek  was rejected by 25 publishers. It was the 26th one that offered him a contract. They told him that they were not betting on the book, they were betting on him; they believed he would do anything and everything to make the book successful. We all know how massively successful both these books turned out to be.

Success is a numbers game — the more attempts you make, the more artworks you create, the more experiments you participate in, the more likely you’ll succeed.

All we truly need is patience, grit and consistency to keep walking on the path of success. Once you’re aligned to the core of your being towards the work that you do and muster up the resolve and courage inside yourself to keep going at it and taking action every single day no matter what, success will be inevitable.