Those who see the end are immovable. They always have a light in the darkness. The hardship is minimized by the joy of the goal. Sometimes the only difference between the incredibly successful and the failure is the ability to endure. Many times we have the right idea, the right plan and the right opportunity. But if we do not see it through, all the way to the end, we never know! We are left in that vague tormenting uncertainty; was the problem me or was the problem the plan? We must always be ready to walk away from a bad plan. We need to know when it is time to quit. A bad plan will never work regardless of how long and hard we work at it. But we should never quit because we lack the character to endure till the end. A person of character does not equate a bad plan with being a bad leader. Great leaders know when to walk away. Their ego is not bound to a particular project. But they never quit just because they lack the personal strength. I enjoy the story of Wally Amos, a man who succeeded late in life. It is said that he lost everything he had, several times but he never lost faith. Late in life he became known as the father of the gourmet cookie industry when he found success with the Famous Amos Cookies. Wally Amos faced and overcame hardship so many times that he embodied the saying, “when life gives you a lemon make lemonade.” He so embraced this philosophy that in his official portrait he holds a pitcher in one hand and a glass of lemonade in the other. He endured until he could turn the lemons of life into lemonade. As one person pointed out, he didn’t just make lemonade; he sold it back to the people who handed him the lemons. Colonel Sanders was another man who continually faced hardship and failure.

As a child he learned to cook by taking care of his siblings while his widowed mother worked to provide an income for the family. Over the course of the next 30 years, Sanders held jobs ranging from streetcar conductor to insurance salesman, but throughout it all his skill as a cook developed. It was actually while operating a gas station that he began to develop the chicken dinner that would eventually become KFC. He kept trying until he found a way to succeed at the thing that he loved. Then there is the story of Og Mandino, a homeless man who found refuge from the cold winter of the streets in libraries. Looking for little more than a warm dry place to survive he was only allowed to stay in the library as long as he was reading. So, he began reading books on success. The self-trained, homeless man overcame what must have been insurmountable obstacles and went from a homeless street dweller to a millionaire.

One of my favorite stories of endurance is about Bob Carlisle who sang and wrote Butterfly Kisses. It is said that everyone had given up on him. His record label had dropped him. Nothing he was doing was working. No one believed he would ever make it.  When he recorded Butterfly Kisses it happened because of an act of kindness by someone who had allowed him the use of a studio. This person had so little hope for the project that he didn’t even want any claim to the royalties. This would be his last shot at any kind of success. Read Entire Article