Never Quit

I want to share a personal story here today in the Six Minutes to Success, and I guarantee you there’s a phenomenal lesson in it, for you and for many people that you may communicate with.

It’s a personal story and it’s about my son, Raymond. Raymond is a big guy, he’s much bigger than me and when Raymond was in high school that’s quite a long time ago. Raymond was on the swimming team, and he was a good swimmer, he was a very good swimmer. I went to a couple of meets and I did mention I talked to the coach one time. And the coach said they really like having Raymond on the team because he was such a strong swimmer. He was strong because he was big, and he liked it I think. Well I think it’s probably much the same almost everywhere if you’re on a swimming team in school or in college. You probably train very early in the morning. And we hear Raymond leaving the house at around five o’clock. Didn’t make too much noise but it was enough that we knew Raymond was leaving the house and he’s off to school and he’s going to be in the tank and practice swimming. And this went on for quite a while. And one day Raymond and I were in the kitchen. I was in kitchen when he came in. And Raymond’s wandering around wandering around I often say it’s like they’re circling the field and you know they’re going to drop something on you and you just don’t know what it is.

So anyway, Raymond he’s talking, he said, “Dad can I talk to you for a minute?”

And I said, “Sure Ray what’s up?”

“Well” he said, “Dad, I’ve been thinking about the swimming.” And he said, “I’m thinking of quitting the team.”

I said, “I thought you enjoyed it?”

“Well, I did but, I’ve been thinking a lot about it and, you know, I’m not going to use swimming when I graduate, it’s not going to help me with my income or in the job I get.”

And I said, “Well that’s probably true unless you become a life guard or something.”

And so he said, “I just think I’m going to quit.”

And I said, “Are you a pretty important part of the team?”

“Well maybe yeah I guess I am.”

And I said, “How does the team feel about this?

“Well I haven’t told them yet.”

“How does the coach feel about it?”

“Well I haven’t told him yet.”

And I said, “How do you feel about it?”

“Well I just decided that I’m going to quit.”

Now I knew exactly what Raymond’s problem was. Raymond was sick and tired of getting up at five o’clock in the morning while all the rest of us stayed in bed. He didn’t like it. He wasn’t thinking of the win. He was thinking of the price he was paying.

So he said, “Well you don’t mind?

I said, Hell no I don’t mind.

I’m not on the team not going to bother me. If you want to quit, quit.”

“Oh gosh,” he said, “I thought you’d be upset.”

“What? No I’m not upset. You want to quit, quit.”

And you could just see a sigh of relief. And he was leaving and he said, “It’s okay then?

I said, “Sure.”

And just as he was leaving the kitchen I said, “By the way Ray.” I said, “You’re having trouble with this aren’t you?”

“Well he said yeah a little.”

And I said, “You’ve been thinking about this for a while, and you’ve had trouble with it for a while.” I said, “I’ll bet you even had trouble coming to see me.”

“Oh yeah.”

I said, “You know something Ray you put a long time into this.” Now I said, “Next time you go to quit it’s going to be easier. It’ll be a lot easier because you’ve learned how.” And I said, “If you keep it up Ray, you’ll master it. And you’ll be a quitter.” I said, “You think about it. You do what you want to do.”

Well he looked at me and he said, “Okay.” And he walked away. He understood what I was saying.

And that’s the way it is. When the going gets tough quitting should never be an option. In every project there’s escape hatches and if you don’t bolt them closed when the going gets tough, boom, away you go. When you make up your mind to do something quitting should never be an option. If you’re going to quit, quit when you’re at your peak when you’re very, very successful. You’ll often see that with TV shows. They quit when they’re very successful. But don’t quit because you’re tired of paying the price, you see if you pay the price, the reward is going to be that much sweeter.

Now Ray learned that as a young guy. I learned that a long time ago. Raymond and I both learned a lot out of that. Hopefully you’ve learned something. Absolutely refuse to quit when you know what you’re doing, what you’re studying, the price you’re paying is going to pay enormous dividends in the long run. Remember 3% of the population earns 97% of all the money that’s being earned. It’s not an accident. It’s not that they’re that bright some of them aren’t. But you know something. They’ve learned to pay the price and they always earn the reward. It’s got nothing to do with being smart. It’s got nothing to do with being better. It has to do with being wise. And if you learn that lesson and you burn it into your mind, you will always come up with Results that Stick.

This is Bob Proctor, thank you.