Use Your Head to Get Your Foot in the Door by Harvey Mackay Read Free Book Online
Authors: Harvey Mackay
facts.
One of the greatest novels in American literature was the result of a very discouraging day for the author. Nathaniel Hawthorne had lost his job at a customhouse, and went home to break the news to his wife, Sophia. Rather than the reaction he expected, she was joyous. “Now you can write your book,” she told him.
Unconvinced, Hawthorne asked her, “And what shall we live on while I am writing it?”
Sophia opened a drawer that contained a substantial amount of money and told him, “I have always known that you were a man of genius. I knew that someday you would write a masterpiece.” She went on to explain that she had saved some of the household money each week, and had accumulated enough to last for a year. And with that, Hawthorne set to work on The Scarlet Letter , required reading for many of us in our high school English classes. And all because Sophia Hawthorne refused to let her husband be discouraged.
In her book The Right Words at the Right Time , Marlo Thomas tells the story of Shaquille O’Neal, the NBA superstar center. When he was fourteen, he attended a basketball camp expecting to astound the coaches with his brilliance. He was in for a rude shock. He had been a star in his San Antonio high school, but at the camp he was just one of many star athletes. Not getting the attention he was accustomed to from the coaches, he began to worry that perhaps he wasn’t good enough to make the grade. His self-confidence took a nosedive.
Discouraged, he turned to his parents for advice. I’ve had some conversations with Shaq’s mother, Lucille, about that advice. She told him, “You must fulfill your dreams while there’s still room for you to do so. Attack them with a full head of steam. There’s no opportunity like now. This is the time you can show people.”
His confidence almost gone, Shaq told his mother, “I can’t do that right now. Maybe later.” Then, says Shaq, his mother said the words that he remembers changed his life: “Later doesn’t always come to everybody.”
Mackay’s Moral: You aren’t finished when you are defeated;
you are finished when you quit.
“By god, you’re not a man who’s afraid to fail.”
© 2009 The New Yorker collection Charles Barsotti from cartoonbank.com . All Rights Reserved.
Chapter 14
Being Your Best with
Things at Their Worst
If at first you don’t succeed . . . you’re doing about average.
Rebounding from rejection is an essential skill to acquire, especially in job hunting. Here are five tips for beating rejection:
• Ten setbacks are the going price for any worthwhile win. If you look at the major league baseball standings at the end of any season, you’ll find that, out of thirty teams, only eight make the playoffs, and only one of those winds up winning the World Series. Are those annual standings the end of the world for the twenty-nine losers? Hardly.
• Analyze every failure, but never wallow in one. President Harry Truman once said, “As soon as I realize I’ve made one damned fool mistake, I rush out and make another one.” Failure is a condition all of us experience. It’s our reaction to our failures that distinguishes winners from losers. What makes a great racehorse as compared to a cheap claimer is not just speed, it’s heart. A claimer usually makes just one run. Once the horse is passed, that’s it, the animal quits and the race is over. But stakes horses, the best of the breed, are different. Even if they fall behind, they’ll come back and try to regain the lead. There’s no quit in them. Like National Football League (NFL) coaching legend Vince Lombardi’s teams, they never lose, they just run out of time. Defeats are temporary. Heart and class are permanent.
• Don’t rationalize away the hurt. You didn’t get the job? Turned down for a raise? Denied admission to the college of your choice? Don’t kid yourself and try to cover up the hurt with “Gee, I didn’t really want it
One of the greatest novels in American literature was the result of a very discouraging day for the author. Nathaniel Hawthorne had lost his job at a customhouse, and went home to break the news to his wife, Sophia. Rather than the reaction he expected, she was joyous. “Now you can write your book,” she told him.
Unconvinced, Hawthorne asked her, “And what shall we live on while I am writing it?”
Sophia opened a drawer that contained a substantial amount of money and told him, “I have always known that you were a man of genius. I knew that someday you would write a masterpiece.” She went on to explain that she had saved some of the household money each week, and had accumulated enough to last for a year. And with that, Hawthorne set to work on The Scarlet Letter , required reading for many of us in our high school English classes. And all because Sophia Hawthorne refused to let her husband be discouraged.
In her book The Right Words at the Right Time , Marlo Thomas tells the story of Shaquille O’Neal, the NBA superstar center. When he was fourteen, he attended a basketball camp expecting to astound the coaches with his brilliance. He was in for a rude shock. He had been a star in his San Antonio high school, but at the camp he was just one of many star athletes. Not getting the attention he was accustomed to from the coaches, he began to worry that perhaps he wasn’t good enough to make the grade. His self-confidence took a nosedive.
Discouraged, he turned to his parents for advice. I’ve had some conversations with Shaq’s mother, Lucille, about that advice. She told him, “You must fulfill your dreams while there’s still room for you to do so. Attack them with a full head of steam. There’s no opportunity like now. This is the time you can show people.”
His confidence almost gone, Shaq told his mother, “I can’t do that right now. Maybe later.” Then, says Shaq, his mother said the words that he remembers changed his life: “Later doesn’t always come to everybody.”
Mackay’s Moral: You aren’t finished when you are defeated;
you are finished when you quit.
“By god, you’re not a man who’s afraid to fail.”
© 2009 The New Yorker collection Charles Barsotti from cartoonbank.com . All Rights Reserved.
Chapter 14
Being Your Best with
Things at Their Worst
If at first you don’t succeed . . . you’re doing about average.
Rebounding from rejection is an essential skill to acquire, especially in job hunting. Here are five tips for beating rejection:
• Ten setbacks are the going price for any worthwhile win. If you look at the major league baseball standings at the end of any season, you’ll find that, out of thirty teams, only eight make the playoffs, and only one of those winds up winning the World Series. Are those annual standings the end of the world for the twenty-nine losers? Hardly.
• Analyze every failure, but never wallow in one. President Harry Truman once said, “As soon as I realize I’ve made one damned fool mistake, I rush out and make another one.” Failure is a condition all of us experience. It’s our reaction to our failures that distinguishes winners from losers. What makes a great racehorse as compared to a cheap claimer is not just speed, it’s heart. A claimer usually makes just one run. Once the horse is passed, that’s it, the animal quits and the race is over. But stakes horses, the best of the breed, are different. Even if they fall behind, they’ll come back and try to regain the lead. There’s no quit in them. Like National Football League (NFL) coaching legend Vince Lombardi’s teams, they never lose, they just run out of time. Defeats are temporary. Heart and class are permanent.
• Don’t rationalize away the hurt. You didn’t get the job? Turned down for a raise? Denied admission to the college of your choice? Don’t kid yourself and try to cover up the hurt with “Gee, I didn’t really want it
Similar Books
On a Farther Shore
William Souder
Inner Circle
Jerzy Peterkiewicz
Smolder: Trojans MC
Kara Parker
Danny
Margo Anne Rhea
Summerset Abbey
T. J. Brown
Night Soul and Other Stories
Joseph McElroy
How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds (Counterpunch)
Paul Craig Roberts
November-Charlie
Clare Revell
