Tag: success

Hang on

One of my favorite quotes about achieving something great is from Thomas Edison –

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

Indeed, I’ve seen many many smart, hardworking and capable people failed to achieve anything just because they decided to give up instead of hanging on.

If you’re a professional tennis player (of course, 99% of you are not), and if you have a chance to reach the final of Wimbledon (99.9999% of you will not), then you will see an inscrption above the entryway, before you enter the Center Court:

If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same

These two lines are extracted from Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If”; but in fact, the other few verses of the same poem pretty much described the same thing about hanging on:

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”

So, if you’ve been fed up with everything you see, got tired by the work day after day, felt hopeless after countless trying, or no one is willing to give you a hand … think again, and tell yourself “Don’t give up, never ever give up.”.

Don’t give up, because you know you can adapt to this crude world, because you will be full of power again the very next day, because you can make a dent to the universe one day and because someone around you will eventually help.

Hold on to what you believe; and hang on to your dream.
It’s never over, unless you give up.

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Made to stick

Finished the book Presentation Zen (see below) some time ago but still I was puzzled by one thing. That is, even we can create the most eye-catching slides with today’s advance graphic software, but how can we make the message we send across stick in the audiences’ minds ? It’s the reason we do the presentation, isn’t it ?

That’s why I bought the book Made To Stick (again, see below) and I am glad to tell you all that it’s a very good read. This book outlines a very practical approach to increase a message’s “stickiness”, and it’s called SUCCESs:

  • Simple — find the core of any idea
  • Unexpected — grab people’s attention by surprising them
  • Concrete — make sure an idea can be grasped and remembered later
  • Credibility — give an idea believability
  • Emotion — help people see the importance of an idea
  • Stories — empower people to use an idea through narrative

Except some minor irrelevant sections in the last chapter, the book is very well written and included many good references and case studies. So if you want to improve your presentation, don’t miss these two books !!