Pound the Rock

Everybody is looking for the easy way out, for the easy road to success. I call it looking for a silver bullet. Lord knows every huckster in the world is out there, and they are yelling and screaming, “I’ve got the answer you need! I can make you a millionaire overnight! I’ve the secret formula! Buy my tapes, come to my seminar, and I’ll teach you how to do that!”

When you hear somebody saying that, or anything like it, run as fast as you can. It’s not real. It’s a lie. There are no silver bullets.

The only real solution is to pound the rock, and keep on pounding no matter what.

Here’s what I mean. In January I watched the playoff game between the Seattle Seahawks and the Carolina Panthers. At halftime, the score was 31-0, Carolina leading. Now Seattle is a great team, they’ve been to the Super Bowl each of the past two years, but they were just getting ripped apart. When the first half ended, I thought to myself, “It’s over. They can’t do anything today!”

But when head coach Pete Carroll and the Seahawks came out after halftime, they didn’t act like it was over. Down 31-0, they got the ball to start the second half and went down and scored a touchdown in just 4 plays, less than 2 minutes. 31-7. Then they scored another. 31-14. Then another. 31-21. Then a field goal. 31-24. Finally Carolina recovered an onside kick attempt to seal the victory.

They didn’t quit. After getting crushed in the first half, the Seahawks stormed back and came within an eyelash of winning the game! They knew that what got them to that playoff game was work-work-work, believe-believe-believe. It was pounding the rock, and then keep on pounding. They did that, and they turned it all around.

How many times do we get disappointed or knocked down, or things don’t happen as quickly as we want, and we quit? But the ones who make it never quit. Nothing comes easy; you have to work at it and learn from it, and keep on going. You have to keep on pounding the rock.

The most successful people I’ve ever known, in every walk of life from teachers to entrepreneurs to parents to everything you can think of, they have all understood that it’s a journey, and they have to enjoy the journey, the work, the moving forward. The setbacks, defeats, losses, knockdowns, and rejections just make us stronger. To make it work, you have to continue to pound the rock.

Is this a painful, terrible thing? I think it’s the greatest adventure of all. If you could do it overnight, everybody would be rich. Everybody would be successful, have their dream vacation, their dream car, and all that. But that doesn’t happen. It happens to the people that work at it, and they love the work because they’re working at something that’s worthwhile.

This article was originally published at Tarkenton.com