One of the most common causes of defeat is the habit of despairing and giving up because of temporary defeat. Everyone makes this mistake from time to time.
R. U. Darby’s uncle had a “gold craving” during the gold rush days and went west to find gold and become rich. He had never heard that there was more gold in people’s minds than could be mined from the earth.
After weeks of hard work, he was rewarded with a glowing ore. He needed a machine to bring the ore to the surface. He quietly closed the mine and returned to his home in Williamsburg, Maryland. He told his relatives and neighbors about the “mineral ore” he had found. They all got together and collected the money needed for the machine and sent the machine there. Uncle and Darby are back in the mine. The first wagon to be mined was sent to the mine liquidation. The result was that they had one of the richest mineral deposits in Colorado! A few wagons that were issued would pay off the debts. Then big profits would come.
The excavations have begun! Darby and his uncle’s hopes are high! Then something happened. The gold vein had disappeared! They had reached the end of the rainbow and the gold cube was not there. They kept digging, desperately trying to find the vein again, but it was all in vain.
In the end, they decided to give up.
They sold the machine to a scrap dealer for a few hundred dollars, got on the train and went back home. The scrap dealer called a mining engineer to look at the mine and did some calculations. The engineer said the project failed because the mine owners did not recognize the “wrong veins”. Their calculations showed that the seam was a meter away from where the Darbys had stopped digging! It was exactly there.
The scrap dealer made millions of dollars from the ore at the mine because he had considered enlisting the help of an expert before giving up.
After a long time, Darby discovered that desire can be turned into gold, and he made up for his loss several times. His discovery came when he started selling life insurance. He took advantage of this experience in his chosen business, remembering that he had lost a great fortune because he stood a meter away from his gold. He kept saying to himself: “I stopped a meter from under him, but if I ask people to buy life insurance and they say ‘no’, I won’t stop.”
Darby joined a small group that sells over a million dollars a year in life insurance. He owed his “determination” to the lesson he had learned from his “giving up” in the gold prospecting business.
Napoleon Hill – “Think And Grow Rich”
