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- Success can take a long, long time.
- If you have a business idea that isn’t making any money, or a promotion that isn’t happening just yet, there may be an answer to why your hard work isn’t paying off.
- Here are 11 answers from Quora users on why it’s taking you so long to succeed.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Almost no one is an overnight success. Just because you haven’t gotten your business up and running yet, or gotten the promotion you’ve been expecting, it doesn’t mean you never will.
There are a number of possible explanations for a long-awaited pay-off that hasn’t arrived. It could be because you haven’t failed enough, or that your ego is in the way.
We compiled the best responses from Quora users to this question: "Why is it taking me so long to succeed?"
Here are their answers.
You’re not doing the tasks that count.
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Quora user Lukas Schwekendiek suggests that success comes after hard work, but only if that hard work is done properly. He writes:
"There are only ever a few tasks that really count, with the rest of the things supporting that core…In the same way, your business, relationships and finances are also not going to improve if you do not do the few tasks that matter!"
He compares running a business like going to the gym — you can read everything there is to know about the gym and go once a week, or you can know almost nothing about fitness and spend two hours a day at the gym. Chances are, if you spend two hours a day there, you’ll be healthier.
You haven’t failed enough.
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According to Quora user Kane Harry, failure is a crucial step towards success. Anyone who hasn’t succeeded probably hasn’t failed enough. He writes:
"While you sit there leisurely, others are challenging themselves with successive failures, learning new things. Because only when you fail can you get the lesson for yourself, like steel [that] has been beaten through the red fire, and you are able to cope with life full of sharper swords than you."
By failing again and again, you’ll sharpen your skills and your wits, leading you to make the right decisions the next time you’re faced with a challenge.
There are no shortcuts.
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Quora user Hector Quintanilla used an example from one of the most successful businessmen of all time, Walt Disney, to illustrate his point:
"Back in 1919, Walt Disney moved to Kansas City to pursue a career as a newspaper artist. He was fired because his editor felt he ‘lacked imagination and had no good ideas.’ After being fired, Walt made a deal with a local theater to screen his cartoons, which he called Laugh-O-Grams. Even though they were popular, by 1923, his studio was drowning in debt, and Disney was forced to declare bankruptcy. It took Disney nearly 20 years to succeed. It was not until December 1937, when Walt released Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which produced $1.5 million and won a total of eight Oscars, that he found substantial success. Because there are no shortcuts!"
Walt Disney would go on to be synonymous with children’s entertainment, and his once-bankrupt company is now the fourth-richest media company in the world.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
See Also:
- 14 rich and powerful people share their surprising definitions of success
- Nurses reveal 10 things they wish they could tell patients, but can’t
- 7 companies that sparked controversy for copying another company’s logo
Source: Business Insider – ideluce@businessinsider.com (Ivan De Luce)