Three Feet from Gold

In Think and Grow Rich, Hill tells the story of a man who was caught up in the gold rush of the 19^th century.  He discovered a vein, and went back east to get his family’s help in raising money for the machinery to mine the ore.  He returned to Colorado and began drilling, but to no avail.  The vein that seemed so promising was not yielding any gold.  Desperate, he drilled on for weeks and weeks, but never located the gold ore.

Finally, the man decided to sell the equipment for a few hundred dollars to a junk man.  E then returned home.  The junk man didn’t scrap the equipment he’d bought.  He spent a little money to consult a mining engineer to study the fault lines in the area.  The engineer predicted that he’d find gold just three feet from where the first man stopped drilling.   He was right.

The junk man decided to consult a professional before giving up, and he made millions from the mine.  The first man paid back all the money loaned to him to build the machinery, and more importantly, learned the lesson from his failure.

He vowed never to stop again at a simple “no, ” and he turned that determination into a very successful sales career.   Determination plays an important role in every successful person’s career.  How determined are you to get a great job?  Did you ever give up on an opportunity that might have been gold?  Many people told Napoleon Hill that their greatest successes came just one step beyond the point they thought they’d been defeated. 

Take one more step after you believe you have exhausted your options.  You never know when you might be three feet from gold.