“The Loser is not the one who fails, but the one who gives up without trying again.”
Someone told me that recently, and I’ve heard variations on it my whole life. So who are the people who never had success but are admired ONLY for their perseverance?
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If at first you don’t succeed,
losing may just be your style.
Chael Sonnen, undisputed and undefeated
No one. Success is what really matters, no one cares how you get there, just empty “feel good” words.
If you watch interviews with Steve Jobs talking about the creation of iPod and iPhone, he touches on these topics a lot. He’s often saying things like “Early in the process, we didn’t fail, we just figured out many ways that didn’t quite work”, this mentality of relentlessly pursuing the goal – and “failures” are just opportunities to learn, seemed to be a common thread with Jobs.
Jimmy White, six times world snooker finalist, never a winner, ridiculously talented, no bottle… Jimmy White – Wikipedia Now better known, (at least in my house) as rhyming slang for “shite” – more specifically, “I need a Jimmy”, “Riddle?” , “No, White”
Van Gogh. Never sold a painting in his life. Was supported by his brother. Now considered one of the greatest artists of all time. I can’t imagine what it took for him to keep painting through it all.
Probably not the answers you’re looking for, but there are two ways of looking at this.
One is being happy without being successful, finding happiness and stability without fame or fortune. You’ll never know those people’s names or stories because they’re living their best life in a modest house on a low income job that doesn’t destroy their mental and physical health.
The flupside of that is people who got rich because they were famous or the other way around. The Kardashians are a good example of this, as are many of the more obnoxious media phenomena like the wave of talk show guests turned viral sensations. Without the slightest hint of effort they’ve been rewarded for bad behavior and have become successful by the fame and fortune metric while still being miserable and reprehensible.
That would mean that they haven’t failed to success. You have to get the bad ideas out of the way before hitting that “homerun”. In business, when you finally hit the homerun its not just 1 run. It can be 10 even 100s of runs. When you see successful people you just see the finished product, you actually don’t see the journey that it took to get there.
Donald Jerkass Trump
William Jennings Bryan was the democratic nominee in three presidential elections and lost each one.
Similarly, the Buffalo Bills lost straight super bowls in the early 90s
Probably only to be determined by society after the fact.
Rudolph Diesel, Diesel engine
Van gough, Painter,
Etc. come to mind, those guys died poor without ever seeing their creations success.
People chase money and status. But I chase control of my time. I make enough to support my life and interests. Time is finite.
I don’t know how people are successful if they have to work 60+ hours a week. I work 20-25 in a career i love and spend the rest of my time with the people I love and doing things I enjoy or find meaningful. My wife has the exact same career characteristics.
Instead of chasing shiny Beamers and gaudy McMansions, we chose “other”.
You can say this about every person who has ever succeeded.
No one hit a winning formula on the first go and executed it perfectly. There are always hang ups and obsticle to overcome. It’s the ability to overcome those obstacles that drive success
You’re better off asking for names of people who had winning formulas and smoothly sailing
I would imagine people who had scientific breakthroughs that weren’t recognised at the time, but were further into the future after their deaths fall into this category.
A youtuber that actually could be a youtubeceleb and was almost getting there but got hijacked was Mr. Kaka
Nicola tesla
Roy Hodgson, he’s had a ridiculously long career in football, he’s managed something like 30 teams, and yet he’s never won anything but cups in countries with small time leagues (like Sweden). In bigger leagues, hiring Roy Hodgson generally means your team has hit rock bottom. Yet, he’s been honored by the British Empire for his services, which apparently means mediocre managing.
Winners never quit.
Quitters never win.
But those who never quit and never win are idiots.
That said…. Terry Fox is all I’ve got although it could be argued that he did in fact succeed (albeit posthumously). Oh, and Van Gogh. Wasn’t he a failure in life?
The point of that saying is two fold, neither is what you’re saying.
The first is that failure is a terminal state. If you’re still in the process of trying, you literally haven’t failed.
The second implicit point is that everything you try has some kind of probability of success. As long as you’re genuinely trying, you will learn each time and subsequent attempts will improve and have higher odds of success than previous attempts, or at least not be highly correlated. If a process with those mathematical properties continues forever then the probability of success approaches 100%.
That second property is a very common characteristic of success. Successful people often fail more times than unsuccessful people try at all. The entire silicon valley model for building a company is based on this insight, keeping failure as cheap and fast as possible so that you can fail quickly over and over again, learning until you find the correct path.
I don’t know but… Why would it matter that people are admired? I found that to be a very empty pursuit.
I think you have it on the noise. Just don’t give up and keep trying. There’s plenty example of writers and actors(actresses) who don’t get their break until much later in life. Of course there’s also plenty of example of people who “fail”. I feel generally people who “do things right” at least end up average. Few are “successful” and some end up “worst off” but those “worst off” normally but not always bad some key bad decisions. Example I know someone in my extended circle that has zero sense of financial responsibility but was hell bent on running a business. Business always ends up failing because of irresponsibility money management. They would have been better off just earning a paycheck.