When The Odds Are Clearly Against You!

There is a time in each of our lives when we question the road we have chosen. Logic and reason arrive as uninvited guests, unsolicited advice pulls us over in a speed trap and that damn inner voice sneaks up on us in the rear view mirror trying to catch our ass at the next rest stop!

Sooner or later, these things corner us, our car stalls out and we begin to question several things:

1) If we are truly deserving of the prize. Study after study tells us that one of the top reasons people do not attain what they deserve is because deep down they feel they are not worthy. I think this is the deadliest of all because of its subtlety.

2) If we could even attain the prize in the first place!

3) If we can reach the destination that seems so damn far away by this point.

Hope appears in the form of roadside assistance who hands us a fresh bag of excuses and a new road map toward the town called mediocrity.

The next time your inner voice hands you a line of crap, I'd like for you to think about some people who decided to defy the odds.

For those of you who believe its the recession:

Half of the companies which comprise the Dow Jones Industrial Average where formed during recessions or depressions!

HP was born during the depression of 1939

Microsoft was born during the recession of 1975 and even survived this photo shoot:

Too old?:


The oldest person to scale Mt Everest was 77 years old. I can tell you, without reservaton, that the thought of falling off a mountain scares the shit out of me!

Too young?:

Michael Dell started Dell Computer from his dorm room at the ripe old age of 19!
Richard Branson (actually Sir Richard Branson) started the mail order business which would later become Virgin Records at 20 years old.

Didn't go to college, finish college, go to the "right" college.

Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Ted Turner, Tom Hanks, Woody Allen never finished college.
H.G. Wells, self made billionaire Jim Clarke, W. Clement Stone and Peter Jennings all dropped out of High School

Yours truly went to a crappy community college and . . .

Like the others I mentioned, totally enjoy the PhD in results I have hanging on my wall!

And for those of you facing rejection, criticism, ridicule and lots of other words I can't think of because of my community college education, I offer you this:

Sylvester Stallone was turned down more than 1400 times on the Rocky Script. The SOB even sold his dog at one point to make ends meet. Note: Hey Rocky WTF???
Chicken Soup for The Soul was rejected by 144 publishers
Colonel Sanders was told "No" 1009 times before the "YES" which launched KFC
The Beatles were turned down by Decca Records because they felt "Guitar music is on the way out" 1 Billion + records later I think somebody made a boo boo!

When the phone was first invented, Bell turned to Western Union for funding. He was quickly rejected with a note that read something along the lines of there not being a need for "an electrical toy" such as the phone. Hmm, can you hear me now?

So here's the deal gang. There will always be a reason for us to back down, back off, step down, hold back and let go of the dreams we have. Doubt, negativity and nay sayers will always show up ready to crash our party but . . .

We control the magical ability to assign meaning to their words or reject them, evict them with a good kick in the ass for good measure!

I will leave you with the words of an African proverb: "If there is no enemy within, the enemy outside can do you no harm"

Rock on and may the road to your success rise up to meet you!

You deserve no less!

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