People seldom see the halting and painful steps by which the most significant success is achieved.
~Annie Sullivan~
Recently, I attended our village’s annual lawn party fundraiser for our small but excellent library. A friend who now lives with her husband year round in New Orleans, attended the event after just returning from a trip to California to see her two sons. They, like Bob’s and my two younger sons in LA, are entrepreneurs in the entertainment industry.
Kathy and I got into a conversation about our sons and the challenges they’ve faced to making a living and a career out there on the West Coast.
In order to pursue careers in music, performance and writing, all of them have done the usual and not so usual jobs in order to pay the bills such as waiting tables, landscaping, food prep, car repair, modeling, serving at a juice bar, and club promoting.
Kathy and I agreed that to become a success those young men have had to be persistent, consistent and committed.
For my sons, that has finally started to pay off. One son is earning income writing scripts and another just got a commission to write music for a film project. (And the third son, in VA, has had his photographs exhibited in local shows even while working a full-time job and being a husband and father.)
They persist, they work at their creative careers consistently, and they’ve stayed committed to making a success of their work, however each of them defines success.
Perhaps, sometime in the near future, someone will label their success as overnight, not seeing “the halting and painful steps” that were taken to get there.
I’m sure you’ve read books or listened to music or seen art and thought, “My work is just as good (if not better). Why can’t I find an agent/publisher/gallery/etc.?”
Sometimes, success is a matter of being in the right place at the right time with the right person.
But do you know how you get to that right place at the right time?
By persistent, consistent, committed effort.
The ones who give up and give in never catch success, overnight or otherwise.
Don’t quit. Don’t give up. Even if the steps are halting and painful.
Pursue your Overnight Success.