A Winner Never Quits and a Quitter Never Wins
Mar 14th, 2008 by Mehdi Tags: Strength Training
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Reader Randy Hunt replied to what would you do if this happened to you?
There are only two options - either give up and accept it, or push, push, push until you overcome it. That’s really what strength training is about anyway. Every day is a mental challenge as much (or even more so) as it is a physical challenge.
Thomas Jefferson once said, “a strong body makes the mind strong.” But the concept is much older than him, and has been said throughout history.
Moreover, the principle of overcoming adversity is the single most important factor in success. You find the theme repeated throughout history by all the most successful people, and it’s really driven home in the book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.
Winners never quit. Quitters never win. The choice is simple.
Which condition do you have to master before you can get successful?
Failure.
Napoleon Hill experienced poverty before becoming rich. Lance Armstrong had cancer before winning the Tour de France 7 times. Steve Jobs made Apple big 10 years after getting fired out of Apple.
Napoleon Hill spends a whole chapter in the Law of Success about failure and the 7 failures he experienced before becoming successful.
Every failure will teach you a lesson that you need to learn if you will keep your eyes and ears open and be willing to be taught. Every adversity is usually a blessing in disguise. Without reverses and temporary defeat, you would never know the sort of metal of which you are made. - Napoleon Hill, The Law of Success.
You would never know the sort of metal of which you are made. Winners know failure is temporary. Winners know increasing your failure rate increases your success rate. Winners know the only answer to failure is persistence.
Rocky. Before Sylvester Stallone became a successful actor, he had to deal with many adversities. Much of the Oscar winning movie Rocky is based on Stallone’s life. Here’s a video of Anthony Robbins telling Rocky’s story.
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Nice and inspiring article Mehdi. Like Thomas Edison said, whenever he failed making a workable light bulb, he just said, that he knew another way not to make the light bulb. After so many tries, he made what is probably one of the most important inventions of time, the light bulb! Indeed, a winner is one who never fails, but one who never quits.
Thanks for the linkback and the quote, Mehdi!
This is one of my favorite topics — that of pushing past failure. I think that’s really what makes me like strength training so much, because the concept gets tested every day when I enter the gym and get under the steel.
Every time I add more weight than I was able to lift previously, I fail. It’s a mental challenge as much as a physical one. That point at which I fail can be the end where I just give up, or else I can push through the pain and make that steel move.
Every day, it is my MIND that is getting stronger. The development of my body is just the external evidence of the internal workout.
I had no idea about Sly and his story. That is really cool and actually makes me like Rocky a whole lot more now! I am glad you posted that video too!
An interviewer asked Brett Favre what he thought about his “infamous” record of 288 career interceptions and Brett said simply: “I guess I’ve just tried more than everybody else.”
I also like the commercial (Nike?) with Michael Jordan wherein Michael does a voice-over listing all his “failures”: “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot…and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
I had heard some of the Sly story before, but that was pretty good. Kind of question some of his decisions but they sure worked out!
Good vid also about failure:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45mMioJ5szc
This is absolutely right on the mark. I read that Sly wrote the first Rocky sitting on a milk crate. One of the greatest stories of inspiration I have ever heard.