how many times should you try before success?

Notes by Paul Zane Pilzer , Anna Vital & TheBestLife.Net

F R A N C I S M A D O J E M U

http://TheBestLife.Net

W H Y D I D G O D C R E AT E A W O R L D W H E R E T H I N G S W O R K O V E R T I M E B U T N O T E V E R Y T I M E ?

PA U L Z A N E P I L Z E R


• My children, ages 7, 8, 9 and 11, have realized that whether they are studying for a test in school or practicing for an athletic event, hard effort does not always yield the desired reward.


• During my 21 years teaching at NYU, I was often been asked “how come” a particular effort didn’t lead to the expected reward.

• While I tried to console my students, I, too, have been frustrated that although God made a world with rules and order, God also made a world in which some rules don’t work all of the time.


• You may have a sales process that succeeds with more than 50% of your qualified prospects, yet a new salesperson you hire may fail again and again only to give up in frustration.

• When it comes to predicting the weather (70% chance of rain today), illness (15% chance of getting the flu), or business success (50% of new businesses fail), our lives seem ruled by statistics


• But statistics are only relevant after you have tried a process a significant number of times, what mathematicians call having enough “frequency.”

• Here’s an exercise I use to teach frequency to new employees and students


• I ask the person to flip a coin 10 times and record the result.

• Most people think it’s going to be an even 5-5 split between heads and tails.

• It’s not—it’s often 7, 8, or even 9 heads.


• Then I ask them to continue flipping the coin 90 more times (100 total)—and it’s almost always 51 to 49 heads or tails.

• This is a great exercise to teach that you need to try something more than 10 times to figure out if it works.


• This exercise also teaches why you must have enough frequency before scaling your business.

• You might develop a strategy that fails with the first 8 or 9 of your 10 initial qualified prospects, but then succeeds with 50 percent overall.


• Conversely, you might experience success on the first few sales calls and then expand too fast with a non-sustainable business model.

• I’ve often wondered why God made a world subject to statistics versus absolute rules.


• Some people think God did this because He didn’t want people to become too cocky by having things work out for them every time.


• Some people think God did this because He wanted to give a chance to those who didn’t have all the qualifications that others dictated they needed to succeed.


• And some people think that God did this because He wanted a world that would constantly challenge, and thus strengthen, our faith.


• A world where everything doesn’t work out every time, but a world where everything does work out over time—especially for those of us, like Job in the Bible, with enough faith to follow our plan regardless of how much adversity we experience.

S T E V E N S P I E L B E R G

• 3 times Steven Spielberg was rejected by University of Southern California Film School [biography at Yahoo Movies].

T I M F E R R I S

• 25 times Tim Ferris’s book The 4 Hour Work Week was rejected by publishers.

A N N A V I TA L

• 162 times the author of this infographic made searches for this data

104 Times an average couple has sex before conceiving

T I M W E S T E R G R E N

• 300 times founder of Pandora.com approached investors before he got funding.

400 Times a National Geographic photographer shoots before getting the final image

• 400 times Richard Branson launched companies before he finally founded one that is out of this world [Virgin Galactic] pun-intended.

• 1009 times Colonel Sanders who just started KFC was turned down when he

tried selling his fried chicken

recipe.

S Y LV E S T E R S TA L L O N E

• 1500 times Sylvester Stallone was rejected when he tried selling his script and himself as what would become the film “Rocky” [account by Tony Robbins, Stallone’s personal friend].

• 5126 times James Dyson created failed prototypes of his vacuum cleaner before succeeding.

T H O M A S E D I S O N

• 10000 times Thomas Edison created failed prototypes of his electric bulb before succeeding.

• John Grisham's first novel, A Time To Kill, was rejected by 28 publishers before Wynwood Press, an unknown publisher, agreed to give it a modest 5,000-copy printing. Only 5000 copies. By 2008, his books had sold over 250 million copies around the world.

• For Chinua Achebe, he had an additional curse --the colour of his skin. The manuscript of Achebe's first novel, Things Fall Apart, was sent to several publishing houses; some rejected. The novel has been translated into at least forty-five languages and has sold several million copies.

I S A A C ' S S T O R Y

• In Genesis 26 we read the encouraging account of Isaac's experience in a place called Gerar - in the land of a people called the Philistines. There was a famine in the land of Canaan and so Isaac went to Gerar.

• The Lord promised him that if he stayed there for a while instead of travelling to Egypt, He would bless him and his descendants (v4). Isaac obeyed, and God blessed him indeed.


• Verse 12 states that "Isaac sowed seed in that land and received in the same year one hundred times as much as he planted and the Lord favoured him with blessings." God is always faithful to His word.

• However verse 14 states that the Philistines envied Isaac. In the midst of God blessing Isaac, those around him became jealous.


• They must have thought to themselves "this man isn't even one of us, he is a foreigner, so how comes he has so much?"

• They didn't understand that Isaac's wealth wasn't from his own efforts as such, but it was from his God. In fact, the envy was such that Abimelech - King of the Philistines - ordered Isaac to move away as he said "you are much mightier than we."

N E V E R G I V E U P - I S A A C D I G S A N O T H E R W E L L

• Genesis 26:17-22 (New King James Version)

• Then Isaac departed from there and pitched his tent in the Valley of Gerar, and dwelt there. And Isaac dug again the wells of water which they had dug in the days of Abraham his father, for the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham. He called them by the names which his father had called them.



• Also Isaac’s servants dug in the valley, and found a well of running water there. But the herdsmen of Gerar quarrelled with Isaac’s herdsmen, saying, “The water is ours.” So he called the name of the well Esek, because they quarrelled with him. Then they dug another well, and they quarrelled over that one also. So he called its name Sitnah.



• And he moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it. So he called its name Rehoboth, because he said, “For now the LORD has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.”


• So Isaac moves away - no fight, no fuss. He puts up no resistance whatsoever.

• Now he is in a new place, and he needs water for this flocks and herds, so his servants dig wells.

• However we see that as soon as they did so, the Philistine shepherds from Gerar quarrelled with them and made a claim to the wells.


• Notice, they did not dig for water themselves, but as soon as Isaac's shepherds found water, the claimed the wells!

• Isaac at this point could have given up, but he did not. He tried again, and his servants dug up another well.


• However the Philistine shepherds still opposed him. Isaac decided to try yet again, but this time Isaac did not dig the 3rd well in the same place.

• He moved away. The scripture doesn't say how far he moved, but he did.


• What I love about Isaac is that he wasn't afraid to move on and try again. He didn't waste energy fighting.

• He didn't grumble over the fact that his servants did all the hard work of digging the wells but others were benefitting from it.


• This time, he persevered.

• His servants dug, and the Philistines left him alone. Isaac made an adjustment by changing his location, and God gave him the victory.

C O N C L U S I O N

• From Isaac we can also learn that once we make up our minds not to give up, there comes a point when God steps in and gives us us rest from the enemy.

C O N C L U S I O N

• Isaac kept on digging and eventually the Philistine shepherds could no longer keep on contending!

how many times should you try before success?

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