R.U. Darby, a gold prospector in the mid-1800s, had discovered an extraordinarily rich vein in the State of Colorado. Upon harvesting the first car of ore, he sent it to the smelters to determine the gold content and it was determined to be one of the richest finds in history. Accordingly, Darby fired up the drills and went after the gold with a vengeance, but he hit a wall. The gold vein had mysteriously vanished. He changed the slant of his dig and went deeper and deeper into the mine, but to no avail. After many attempts to find the gold on his own, Darby gave up and decided to sell the mine and all the equipment. He found a purchaser who made a point of buying “junk” for pennies. The equipment and mine were sold to the buyer for a mere few hundred dollars.
While Mr. Darby took the train back to Maryland, the “junk man” hired a mining engineer to look at the mine and do an analysis. It did not take long for this specialist to discover Mr. Darby’s error. He had overlooked or was unaware of fault lines and their nature trails. The specialist had ascertained the gold vein was indeed still there, but just THREE FEET away from where Mr. Darby had initially run into the glitch. The result: The junk man took in MILLIONS of dollars in gold ore out of the mine simply because he had the presence of mind to seek an expert before deciding to ditch the dream.
Had Mr. Darby sought out the assistance of a specialist, he would have made his intended fortune, but instead, he vacated and abandoned his objective.
“Most failures are due to limitations which men set up in their own minds” – Napoleon Hill
The moral of this little story is that a negative mindset coupled with self-doubt can become the biggest obstacle to our success. When faced with economic, personal, or career adversity, we tend to sink to our lowest natural inclination, instead of rising to the level of our goals and aspirations. In Mr. Darby’s instance, and in fact, in all our instances, we sometimes need a hand to help us through the muck of the swamp we are facing or guide us out of the maze from poor decision making. It’s ok to ask for help. Frankly, it’s an act of courage to acknowledge your vulnerabilities … and admit your mistakes.
And Mr. Darby did just exactly that. He saw the lesson in his giving up and vowed never again to surrender his dreams in the face of hardship. He went into the life insurance business and used his prior experience of having lost a fortune because he had stopped just three feet away from the gold. He remembered the experience and vowed in his new business never to stop because someone or some situation said ‘no’ to him. He pursued every life insurance sales opportunity as if his own life depended on it and in the end, built an insurance empire, amassing sales in the million-dollar range in 1900’s dollars, which today, translates to 30 times that amount.
No matter where you are in your financial journey, there is only a short distance between where you are presently and where you want to be. But the question remains, “In the face of difficulty, will you abandon your quest just before reaching great success, when you are only three feet from gold?”
If you would like to take advantage of my free 15-minute consultation, call (561) 888-4963 or email marylu@maryluworkman.com. It would be my honor to answer your questions or to coach you through your situation.
In the meantime, go for the gold!
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