Success Comes To Those Who Wait – Will You Wait For It?

Imagine you are on your journey to reaching your goals and living your dreams. However, this journey is tough, full of rejections, with a lot of setbacks, and many challenges, would you give up or would you continue to march forward?

It is said that success comes to those who wait. And when we talk about ‘waiting’ for success to come, it all boils down to the word, ‘perseverance’.

You need to persevere long enough to see the results. You will need to hang in there long enough to see your actions come to fruition.

Successful people simply refuse to quit before they reach their dreams. They refuse to give up on what they want.

Here are some powerful and inspirational examples…

Lionel Messi

During a shooting for an advertisement for Addidas, Lionel Messi, the football star said this:

“It took me 17 years and 114 days to become an overnight success.”

Success certainly does not come easily to Lionel Messi. It took a long time for him to achieve his professional and outstanding football skills.

He trains almost every single day and he dedicates his best effort to improve his skills.

Messi started to play football at the age of 5, and his coach? His father. And by the age of 8, he was playing for his school team.

However, at the age of 11, he was diagnosed with growth hormone deficiency. None of the local clubs wanted to help him with his medical bills, despite that he was very talented.

Luckily, the director of FC Barcelona, Carles Rexach willing to support and help him with his immense medical bills.

Messi then enrolled into the Barcelona youth academy, and the rest was history.

PSY

This is the person who sings the song that breaks most records and the YouTube MV for his song hit a record high of 2 billion views.

His name is PSY, you probably know him through his song, Oppa Gangnam Style.

While most people know his song, but many did not understand his background. Most people thought that PSY is the one that hit the jackpot and made it overnight.

Do you know that his first album was released back in 2001? Back then he was a nobody and he was not famous at all.

Even after the release of his first album, Psy from the Psycho World, did not perform as expected. However, that did not deter his passion for singing and building a successful artist career.

Psy continued to march forward and 11 years later, his hard work paid off through Oppa Gangnam Style.

Would you continue on with your dreams after 10 years?

Soichiro Honda

The great and respected guy behind the huge Honda Corporation, Soichiro Honda, is another example who simply refuses to quit.

Honda started developing engine piston because he loves machines and mechanics. During that time, Toyota was already an established automobile company in Japan and Honda wanted to sell his piston to Toyota.

The first piston he developed was rejected by Toyota and told that it was not up to standard. Honda decided to get back to school and study for another 2 years.

When finally Toyota accepted his design, but war broke loose and the deal went down to the drain.

Honda’s factory was torn down with bombs. He somehow rebuilds the factory, but again, his factory was leveled by an earthquake after that.

Most people would have given up and just do something else. But Soichiro Honda did not lose his focus or jump to other things. He still believed that his engine was good.

Steel was insufficient during that time and you cannot see many cars traveling around after the war. People used bicycles to go to work and places.

That gave an idea to Honda. He attached his engine onto the bicycle and ‘viola’, he developed the first ever motorcycle in Japan.

The story does not end here. Nobody wanted to lend him money to build his business, so he wrote letters and sent to more than a thousand bicycle shops across Japan!

And finally, his materialized his dream as a successful automaker through the life-changing motorbike, ‘Supercup’.

JK Rowling

If you have never heard about JK Rowling, you will definitely have heard about Harry Potter. She was the person behind the best-selling books, Harry Potter series.

She was a tough lady who refuses to give up. And her career was not an easy one.

You can learn more and read about her in my previous article here.

Colonel Sanders

Do you know Kentucky Fried Chicken or also known as KFC? Colonel Sanders was the person who made KFC possible and changed the food industry.

Colonel Sanders was operating a restaurant and business was good. That was until a highway was built to overpass his restaurant.

Nobody stopped by his restaurant anymore and he has to close his business. At the age of 65, he was totally broke.

However, he still has his secret recipe for fried chicken. So what he did was that he went on door-to-door, trying to sell his fried chicken recipe to other restaurant owners.

It is said that he received more than 1,000 rejections before he finally found someone who was interested in his recipe.

The contract was signed and Colonel Sanders will only earn $5 cent for each chicken sold.

After that, everything boomed and he made his fortune through his secret fried chicken recipe.

Refuse To Give Up

You have to refuse to give up when it comes to achieving what you want in life.

It is not an easy path to attain outstanding success. And you must be able to take the hits. There will be setbacks, rejections, challenges and failures. However, you must not quit.

Once, Muhammad Ali was asked about his training and he said…

“I hated every minute of training, but I said to myself, ‘Don’t quit, suffer now, and live the rest of your lives as a champion.’”

And Winston Churchill has a great quote about perseverance too he said:

“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”

The keyword here is ‘without loss of enthusiasm’. Most people go through life and after they faced some difficulties, they lose motivation and enthusiasm.

They don’t feel as passionate as before and they started to lose hope. They think negative and they deviate their focus from their dreams.

Eventually, they give up and they quit.

When the tough times come (and they will definitely come), you must be prepared to go through it. Face tough times and keep marching forward.

It is said that it is darkest before dawn. And you have to understand that it can’t rain all the time.

When the tough time comes, it means that once it was over, great things will arrive.

There will always be sunshine after the rain.

Conclusion

If you think that success will come to you easily, you are absolutely wrong.

When you see other successful people in real life, you may think that they achieved it easily or overnight or they are just lucky, it is not.

You may have seen the results they have achieved, but you have not known how much effort they have poured in at the back.

Success takes time and effort; it will come to those who wait.

So are you going to march forward during tough times? Or are you going to switch plan and chase something else? Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below.