Keys to Success: Don't Quit - Commit!

This is the eighth in my ten part Keys of Success series. A new key will be featured every Monday.

Over half of marriages end in divorce. Almost half of teenagers in the 50 largest cities in the United States fail to graduate. Success 101 – You can’t win if you quit. To put it another way, you can’t quit, you’ve got to commit!

As this series comes to a close, we have talked at length about what success is about. It’s hard work. It requires vision. You have to be prepared. You have to be responsible and accountable. But none of that matters, not talent, not vision, not passion, not preparation, and not even discipline matters when you give up.

Everyone knows that Michael Jordan was cut from his high school team in his sophomore year. What would have happened, if he would have quit? Well, we know what wouldn’t have happened. He would not have become one of the best basketball players ever. No one would be wearing Air Jordans. And none of us would even know who Michael Jordan is.

Steven Spielberg loved playing with is 8mm camera but he didn’t love school. In fact, he dropped out of high school. When his parents persuaded him to go back, he was placed in a class for kids with learning disabilities. Luckily, his parents moved and got him into a decent school. He graduated but was denied entrance into film school. He ended up majoring in English instead. As fate would have it, he met a studio executive who let him hang out on the studio lot. Ten years later, Jaws became his first hit.

Spielberg could have quit at any number of critical junctures. He could have never returned to college. He could have become just another guy with a liberal arts degree but he didn’t. He stayed committed to his dream of film making.

Success is not guaranteed. You might not make a million or become the CEO of a major company. You might not ever be a perfect size 8 or write the Great American Novel. But one thing is guaranteed. If you quit, you’ll never get there (wherever there is).