HAVE you ever watched a child who
doesn’t want to go someplace? His
steps become smaller, he drags his feet, and finally sits down. Have you watched a relay in which the last runner has to catch up with the others to win? His strides become longer and longer and his feet like mighty wings fly into the air, as if carried by the wind!
The same holds for us. When we fix a goal for ourselves, we know the number of steps we have to walk before we gain success, but ever so often we find that the goal is a little farther than what we had first imagined. The successful man lengthens his stride, the failure drags his feet, sits down and weeps like the little child.
What goes into the lengthening of one’s stride; more muscle, more determination and greater resolve. Thomas Edison did not sit down and give up when his first efforts to find an effective filament for the carbon incandescent lamp met with failure. He lengthened his stride! He sent men to China, Japan, South America, Asia, Jamaica, Ceylon and Burma in search of fibres and grasses to be tested in his laboratory.
Luther Burbank the plant wizard did not quit when obstacles blocked his path. At one time he personally conducted more than six thousand experiments before he found the solution. George Westinghouse was treated as a mild lunatic by most railway executives,. “Stopping a train by wind! The man’s crazy!” they laughed. Yet the man persevered and finally sold the ‘air brake’ idea to the world.
James Watt built model after model of his steam engine before he got one that worked efficiently. Lets go back to the child sitting on the ground. His mother picks him up and carries him doesn’t she? So often that happens to us grown ups. We cry and sit down and strong father, uncle, husband or wife carries us along.
Some reach the top in this way. They never have to lengthen their stride through life, but when Mr Problem comes up, they buckle down and fall. They’ve never developed muscle.. I was with a friend the other day who told me how he sold his business for two hundred crore! “Wow!” I said.
“But before I got the money something went wrong and my business crashed. “What did you do?” I asked. “Picked up the pieces and built a bigger empire!” he said smiling and gesturing to thousands and thousands of square feet of his huge sprawling firm. He lengthened his stride and came out a topper! You and I can do the same. Stand up, lengthen your stride and walk..!
