Roger Federer, defending Wimbledon champion and the greatest of all time very nearly lost in the first round of Wimbledon this year. He came back from the very brink to win the match and as he admitted, “I won this match that I should have lost.”

How does someone so great survive and snatch victory when defeat seems assured?

This is the one characteristic of Federer that is so underated – his ability to survive and keep fighting until the very end. And this is what we can learn from the great man.

How many times in life have you been faced with tough challenges, overwhelming circumstances and things not going right? What do you do when that happens?

Every New Year’s eve, one of the top 3 most common resolutions is to lose weight. We go and buy the new training gear, perhaps sign up at the gym and get started. Yet very quickly, most of us give up on our new routine as “life gets in the way.” But a few persist, regardless of the challenges and a few months later they are enjoying their new found health and fabulous looking bodies while the rest of us look forward to the next New Year’s eve so we can start all over again.

Does this sound familiar? Have you started something in the past only to give up when things got tough? I know I have – many times unfortunately. However, the great ones, the ones that achieve the success they are looking for, never give up.

The ability to persist in the face of massive challenge, adversity and circumstances out of our control is the number one characteristic that distinguishes the ones who make it from the also rans.

When we set ourselves a goal in life, we must also resolve that no matter what, as long as we still want to achieve that goal, we will stick with it until we achieve it. Sadly very few of us make this decision. Most of us want a goal and are willing to work for it until things get hard, but that’s when the rubber meets the road. That’s when you know how much you want the goal – when you’re willing to still go after it even when everything seems to be going against you.

Federer says that he felt that everything was going against him, he could not play the way he wanted to play and his opponent just had it all over him. So he said the only thing he could do was hang in there and fight as hard as he could.

What about you? Do you resolve to hang in there and fight as hard as you can until things turn around? I know that isn’t always easy to do – as I said, I’ve given up many times before. But now I don’t give up anywhere near as often and that’s made a big difference to the results I’m achieving in my life.

So how do you keep going when things get tough? You look at your reasons why you wanted to achieve that goal in the first place. If your reasons are strong enough, you will find a way. I don’t know exactly what Federer’s reasons are but I know that he feels that Wimbledon is his tournament and nobody is going to take it away from him. He knows that if he lost in that first round match, he would have to endure the pain of that loss for a whole year. There was no way he was going to face that. So he fought!

What are your reasons? Why would you get back up when you get knocked down? I’ve heard the quote: “Success is falling down 7 times but getting up 8.” However, the only way you are going to get up is if you have a big enough reason. Remember, the size of a challenge is limited but the size of your reasons can be unlimited.

So next time you go after a goal, make sure you know exactly why you want to achieve it. And then decide that no matter what you will persist until you achieve your goal. Change your strategy if you need to but never give up on your goal!

Leave me a comment below and let me know what you think this post. What do you think separates the successful from those who never make it?

To never giving up,

Niro Thambipillay

PS: If you liked this article, please share it on Twitter, Facebook or Stumbleupon. I’d really appreciate it

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“If you enjoy the process, it’s your dream. … If you are enduring the process, just desperate for the result, it’s somebody else’s dream”
- Salma Hayek

I absolutely love this quote and the wisdom it contains. If all of us could focus more on doing something we enjoy and following our passion, then our lives would be so much better. I am so guilty of not adhering to this and ending up frustrated and miserable. In this short video, I talk about how following Salma Hayek’s philosophy could lead to a life more enjoyable and more rewarding than you ever thought. I hope you enjoy it and please leave me a comment below….

Let me know what you think of this video and leave me a comment below. I’d really appreciate it if you shared it on twitter and facebook as well.

I have to admit, I’ve always been a fan of Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky movies – primarily because of their inspirational messages. This video highlights a message that I think is more pertinent today than ever before.

Rocky’s son blames his dad for not getting what he wants from life. We’ve all been there at some time in our life – looking for something to blame out of pure frustration because things are not going the way we want. I know I’ve been there on more than one occasion.

However, as natural as the inclination to blame other people and events is, it will never ever make any difference to our situation. Playing the blame game is like sitting in a rocking chair – it gives us something to do but it never gets us anywhere. In reality, it does not even make us feel good. The only solution is to take responsibility for the situation and move forwards, but why don’t we do that? Because that requires courage and true courage is rare commodity these days. As someone once told me, true courage is that little voice that says at night, “Tomorrow, I will try again… one more time!”

Stallone addresses this very smartly with his line, “If you know what you are worth, then go and get what you are worth – but you have to be able to take the hits.” This is just so true. He goes on to say, “There ain’t nobody who can hit as hard as life, but it don’t matter how hard you can hit. What matters is how hard you can get hit and keep moving forwards – how much you can take and keep moving forwards.”

Whenever, I’m going through tough times, I always remember these words: “Life is about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forwards.” One of my mentors says it differently – he says, “When you’re going through hell, keep going. Because if you stop, you end up in hell”. In other words, when you’re going through tough times, you must have the courage to persevere and get through. Otherwise, you’re just going to end up stuck in a rut, frustrated and looking for things to blame.

“Tough times don’t last but tough people do” – often the key factor determining your success in life is your resilience, your tenacity and your ability to persist. We’ve all heard the saying, “success is falling down 7 times but getting up 8”. The ability to be able to last through tough times is what separates the men from the boys – it’s often the single quality that is the difference between success and failure. Harrison Ford, star of the Indiana Jones and Star Wars Series said, “I knew that to succeed in this industry, I just needed to hang in there longer than everyone else.” Ford was paid $65Million for the latest Indiana Jones movie.

So go out there and strive to get what you want from life – but it is not always going to be easy and it is not always going to be smooth sailing. As J. Sidlow Baxter said, “Every opportunity has a difficulty, & every difficulty has an opportunity.” So get yourself ready for the hits and go forwards anyway!

Unfortunately, there is a whole movement out there which seems to suggest that if you just sit around and visualise success, then success will come to you easily. Nothing could be further from the truth – as Rocky says, “The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It will beat you to your knees and keep you there if you let it.”

Everyone has had their tough times and tough times will come again – the question is what will you do when they come? Will you let life beat you down or will you aim to stand up one more time? Will you allow yourself to lie on the canvas or will you get up for another round? There have been times for me, especially when I was over $109,000 in debt with no income and people suing me for money that I wanted to throw in the towel. I have to admit, I was on the canvas and I felt like lieing there.

However, no matter how tough life gets, always remember that you and you alone decide how many times you want to get back up again. You can choose to quit or you can choose to persist. I have 3 strategies that I use whenever I feel like quitting:

1. I tell myself, “I can always quit tomorrow so why not just go another round today?” It’s a silly little saying but it keeps me moving forwards and ultimately that’s all that matters
2. Another strategy I use when I’ve had a tough day is I’ll take the day off and get an early night. When I wake up in the morning, I remind myself that today is a brand new day. Whatever happened yesterday is in the past and today is a clean canvas and I get to create it anew.
3. When things are going really badly, like when I was almost on the verge of bankruptcy and I felt like the whole world was against me, I remembered saying to myself, “I might as well quit now because things are not going to be any different tomorrow.” And then I remembered thinking, “Ok, let’s say I quit and I go back to just being like everyone else… and in 50 years time when I look back at my life, would I be happy that I quit just because a few people were trying to make my life hell or would I have wanted to keep going until I got through the tough times?  That was a very easy question to answer and I persisted and I fought and I got through. Let me assure, life looks a whole lot better today. So whenever you feel like quitting, project forwards a couple decades and look back on your life. Would you wish you’d continued or are you happy that you quit? The answer is often quite easy.

Many of us have seen great sporting feats where a team or an individual was down and out; yet they found something from deep within them that turned everything around. It is these stories that we find inspirational and Rocky is a classic example of this. But why not be your own inspiration? Why not reach deep down from within yourself and inspire your own revival? After all, what do you have to lose?

Remember, this thing called life has an end – but it ends when our hearts give out and not before. And as far as I’m concerned I’m going to keep striving for what I want from life until one of the following two things happen. Either, I’m going to get what I want or I’m going to die first – it’s just that simple. How about you? Are you willing to dedicate your life to achieving something glorious or are you going to allow life “to beat you to your knees”?

What strategies do you use to bounce back from adversity? Remember, “there ain’t nobody who can hit as hard as life but it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forwards. How much you can take and keep moving forwards.”

Leave me a comment below and let me know if you think Rocky’s advice is sound and what strategies you use to get back up again when life knocks you down. I’d love to hear from you.

And finally, if you ever feel like things are getting too much, remember the famous words of Winston Churchill:  “Never, never, never, never give up!”

To bouncing back from adversity,

Niro

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Have you ever struggled in business? Almost every entrepreneur has at some time or other – and it really sucks! As entrepreneurs, we take the risk of going against the grain, being different to the masses and following our dreams. Yet for most of us, this decision only results in pain, both financial and emotional. At times, it seems that the entire universe is conspiring against us.

I know I’ve been there.

When I decided to open up a pizza restaurant a few years ago, one of the most stupid decisions I ever made (a decision that was driven purely by my ego and greed) we struggled to get customers in the door. We seemed to be working so hard to pay the rent and to pay our staff, only to have very little for me and my business partner to live off. It was a terrible time.

So what did we decide to do when times were tough? We decided to cut prices by 10% thinking that would do the trick. And what did that do? That just dropped revenue by 10%. So now we were struggling even more – it became all too much for my business partner who one day stole the remaining $20,000 I loaned to the business and skipped town, leaving me to face the firing line..  This was not a happy time at all but one in which I learned several lessons.

As entrepreneurs and business owners, the majority of us believe that if we drop our prices, everything will be ok – yet, this is rarely a sustainable way of doing business, especially since our original prices are often not that high to begin with.

The main reason we think that lowering prices is a solution is because even though we are business owners, entrepreneurs and producers of products and services, we think like consumers. You see, as consumers we are often conditioned to look for the lowest price so many entrepreneurs sadly think lowering prices is the way to line their pockets.

Here’s the truth – lowering prices will NEVER make any long term positive difference to your business, especially if not enough people know about your product or service in the first place. That was the case with my pizza store. I opened it up in a small country town with a tiny population thinking that my business partner and I could grow this into the next big multinational pizza franchise. I’m not sure exactly where my head was at, but it certainly wasn’t anywhere intelligent – that’s for sure. Opening up the restaurant in a bad location placed at a disadvantage to start off with and then lowering prices only killed us off completely.

So how can you turn around a struggling business? There are only two ways – you need to sell and educate your way out of a hole! That’s it – these are the only two ways to get off struggle street. For example, if you have a great product but you can’t sell enough, don’t lower your price – instead look at your marketing. What can you do differently?

One of the key things to ask yourself as well is whether there is actually a market for what you have to sell. Most of us go into business thinking we have this great product or service that people need. Yet, rarely do people buy what we think they need – instead they buy what they want. So when you’re going into business or if you have already started a business that is struggling (like my pizza shop), do some research to confirm there is a market for what you have to sell. Then get some education about how you can tap into that market.

Invest in your most valuable asset which is your mind and your thinking. It is often said that to earn more, we must first learn more – and that is never truer than in business.  The successful entrepreneurs and business owners really do think differently and it is their thinking that ultimately makes all the difference.

What are your thoughts? How would you turn a business around? I’d love to hear from you so please leave me a comment below and then please share this article on twitter and facebook.

To your success,

Niro

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It is an overused quote that the difference between the rich and the poor is that the rich think differently. However, it is true. In this short video, I talk about a great quote from the late Jim Rohn that typifies how the rich think differently. This quote took me from struggling to pay my bills to a six figure income and so I hope you get some great value from this 3 minute video.

If you liked the video, please leave me a comment below and then sign up for my newsletter so I can send you more great content.

To your success,

Niro

In this 3 minute video, I share some advice that I recently learned that I wish I’d known before I started some of my past failed entrepreneurial ventures. This advice could have easily saved me personally and my business partners hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue. So take the time to watch the video and then please leave me a comment below.

Note: Please don’t dispel this wisdom just because it seems so simple – often the greatest advice we can ever receive is simple.

If you enjoyed this video, please leave me a comment below and subscribe to my newsletter so I can share more of this sort of content with you.

Yours in gratitude,

Niro

Failure is something that most of us will do almost anything to avoid for fear of pain, punishment or loss of face. Yet, failure is a natural part of success. Think of the young child who learns to walk. She has to fall over and fail several times before she can succeed at walking. Yet, I don’t know any mothers who would say, “Look child, you’ve fallen over 7 times – I just don’t think you’ll learn to walk, so stop trying.” No, a mother will say, “My child will walk! And she will keep trying until she can walk!” And even if the mother did not say that, the child would never give up anyway. Yet, as mature adults, we seem to have lost that sense of drive and conviction that we can achieve anything we want. We seem to be afraid of failure and try and avoid failure at any cost and avoid taking any risks. Many of us in fact stick our head in the sand and just hope things will turn out for the best. Many of us do the same things day in day out, hoping that life will change. Yet, we’ve all heard the saying that “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.” In fact, I believe that the fear of failure is the primary reason why so many of us do not actively pursue the life of our dreams. The irony is the person who is willing to have a go and persist, might fail many times, sometimes even painfully so but in time he will succeed. However, the person who avoids failure at all costs, ends up on their death bed regretting their failure to take action and wishing they could have another chance at life. Regardless of what you believe, this is the only life you will remember, so why not give it all you got. Your life is not a rehearsal. Mark Twain said, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Many of us seem to have forgotten the very truth that every child knows – when you set a goal you might fail several times, but you only need to succeed once. Regardless of how often you fall over, you only need to succeed once at walking and once you do, your failures become immaterial. When you are pursuing the partner of your dreams, you might have several failed relationships, but you only need to succeed once. Why? Because once you succeed once, you have achieved the goal, learned the skill and enjoyed the experience. Ask any person who has succeeded in achieving the life of their dreams or any goal for that matter, and they will tell you that their success was worth every ounce of pain, every sacrifice and every perceived failure. In fact, I’ve spoken to people who have not achieved their goals despite giving it their all and they will tell you that they are glad they tried because at least they know that gave it their best; they gave it a shot! It seems that there is no real long term downside to giving something a go, pursuing a goal or chasing the life of your dreams.

Henry Ford said, “Failure is only an opportunity to more intelligently begin again.” I constantly remind myself of this statement because I know I have “failed” in my life so many times. I choose to also adopt Michael Jordan’s belief which is that “I have failed time and time again… and that is why I succeed.” Personally, I believe that it is because I have failed so many times in my life that I succeed. Every successful person knows that failure is simply a rung on the ladder to success.

Yet, there are those among us who discount this theory arguing that it is a philosophy put forward by those “positive thinking” and “motivational” people. They argue that everyone knows that failure is the opposite of success. Isn’t it amazing how people will go to great lengths to justify their ignorance? Let’s look at failure from a scientific perspective – which ironically argues that there is no such thing as absolute failure. Even failing to get the desired outcome is still a successful outcome in and of itself because failure is a required part of every experiment. Thomas Edison understood this perfectly.

The story of his apparent failures are legendary – it is said that he failed 9,999 times before he succeeded in inventing the light bulb on his 10,000th attempt. The story goes that he and his assistant were working on the light bulb when Edison did something that caused an explosion. Edison and his assistant were thrown backwards and glass smashed everywhere. Edison’s assistant was frightened witless, yet Edison got up, calmly dusted himself off and started writing in his journal. The assistant was incredulous and started yelling at Edison. “Are you crazy? Can’t you see you nearly killed us – why do you keep trying when you just failed…. AGAIN?” Edison, again calmly, looked up and replied, “I have not failed. I have simply discovered the 9,999th way not to invent a light bulb. However, I have also found a way of making an explosion and I better write it down before I forget.” Now that’s the positive mindset that gave human kind the light bulb and changed the course of our destiny forever.

Sometimes it is in fact our failures that lead us to our greatest results. For example, the simple “Post-It Note” from 3M is a classic example of this. Apparently, 3M were looking to create something that could be stuck on permanently and they failed. However, they looked at how they could use their “failure” for a benefit and they marketed it as the”Post-It Note”…. the rest is history. What about you? What do you do when you fail?

Tony Robbins says that there is no failure. There are only ever results. Some results we expect  and we like which we call success and others we don’t like, which we label failure. For me, I try and look at situations where I don’t achieve my goals as stepping stones and lessons. I believe that as long as I’ve learned something in the process and I’m a better man for the experience, then my effort was worth it. Now I know more for next time. I also believe that if I fail to get the outcome I wanted it is because there is something even better in store for me so I always try again. Besides, for me “Giving Up” is the ultimate failure. I don’t want written on my tombstone when I die – “He Gave Up Before He Could Succeed”. Do you? Remember the line “Quitters Never Win and Winners Never Quit.”

There is another famed fable from Napolean Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich” about the gold digger who went digging for gold. He dug and he dug, and he finally gave up saying that there was no more gold to be found there. So he sold his gold digging equipment, which I imagine was just a shovel (clearly gold digging is not my speciality ) and then went home. The person who bought his stuff continued to dig and just 3 feet from where the first gold digger gave up, this guy struck gold – literally. In fact, it ended up being one of the richest veins of gold ever found during the gold digging era. The man who gave up, gave up just 3 feet from his greatest success. His failure was not in failing to find gold. His failure was giving up too soon. Have you ever given up too soon? Remember, the greatest success stories would never have made it if they gave up at the first sign of failure or rejection. The Beatles were told their music would never be main stream, the authors of “Chicken Soup For The Soul” were told on countless occasions that “nobody reads short stories anymore”, Michael Jordan did not make his high school basketball team, Richard Branson’s first business did not make any money and Steve Jobs was actually thrown out of Apple! Often the single difference between those who make it and those who do not is the unwillingess to give up, regardless of the challenge.

How often do you give up? And what if you give up just at the point when you are about to succeed. Remember, our biggest failures come just before our biggest successes. The night is always darkest just before dawn and the start of a new day. Remember the gold digger who gave up just 3 feet from his greatest success. So never give up on going after the life of your dreams. And never shy away from trying something new. Remember, it is only by trying something new that we can get a different result. Doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result is, as I said above, the definition of insanity. Are you insane?