How To Be More Successful Than 95% of Society
The reality in life is that it’s a struggle. There is so much to do on a daily basis, and we all just have to do it. There are nearly 8 billion people on the planet and every day each individual has to get up out of bed in the morning, go to work, and make money to survive. We need to try to get ahead. We need to get time and money, and doing that is really hard. That’s how 95 percent of people do it day in day out. How can you be the other 5% that are successful? The answer is pretty simple. It’s never give up.
Let’s look at some well-known people who have never given up. One of the people is JK Rowling. The interesting story about JK is that, of course, she’s a famous author. She had initially begun her writing career by having just got a divorce and was actually working for the government. With this, she could not afford to eat, she could not afford to live and raise her baby. This is back in 1994, just three years before her very first and famous series of the Harry Potter books. At that time she wasn’t doing so well. Her computer and photocopying were her biggest tools of her trade and she couldn’t even afford these. She couldn’t afford to get this 90,000 word novel off the ground because she couldn’t afford the basic tools of the trade. So she manually typed out every version on some form of old-fashioned typewriter. That meant every single word and every single letter had to be perfect in order for a publisher to even look at it. It was rejected dozens of times. Finally, a small London publisher gave her a second chance because the chief executive officer’s eight-year-old daughter utterly fell in love with it. She saw the potential of what she could do, and she believed in herself. She never ever gave up.
Another writer of this ilk who had a lot of setbacks was Stephen King. King was completely broke. He had nothing, and he was struggling, and he was trying to write. He was actually living in a trailer. He was married, and she too was a writer. They both had to work several jobs each just to be able to support the family. Collectively trying to pursue their own craft of writing, they were dirt poor. King himself he received many rejection letters for the works that he developed, and he even developed a system for collecting these rejection letters. But he kept on writing. He kept going. His first few published stories weren’t hits. He didn’t just get that first story and suddenly make it, he had to keep on grinding. And eventually, he achieved great published stories.
The actor Jim Carrey never gave up. His father lost his job in the comedic entertainment business and the Carreys moved into a Volkswagen van. Worse than the trailer for Stephen King. Jim Carrey was so dedicated to what he wanted to do that he mailed his resume from VTech to the Carol Burnett Show at the age of 10. He also took 8 hours per day to work in a factory job after school to help make ends meet. So Jim Carrey knew from age 10 that he was going to do it. He believed in himself. He wasn’t going to give up, even though his father had them living in a van.
At the age of 15, Jim Carrey performed his comedy routine on stage for the first time, and he was undeterred even though it didn’t go well. By the time he was 16, he decided to leave school and do comedy full time. He went to Los Angeles, visualized that he was going to have success, and he even went so far as writing himself a check for ten million dollars for actors services rendered. This was a backdated check to himself, and it was for him to imagine and him to visualize that he was going to succeed. Fast forward, Dumb and Dumber and the Cable Guy.
So if Jim Carrey can do it living in a van, and if Stephen King can do it, and if JK Rowling couldn’t even afford the tools of her craft and could do it, you can too. All you need to do is never ever give up.