Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is temporary detour, not a dead-end street.
Augustine’s mom had big dreams for son. “You’re going to be a great writer,” she kept telling him. By age five, he was reading adult books and, while he was in high school, his goal was to attend college and study journalism. Then, when he was 17, his mother died and the dream ended. He joined the U.S. Army Air Corps, flying 30 combat missions during World War II. After the war, he tried to find work but, there was not a big demand for bombardiers with a high school education. He married his high school sweetheart and became a life insurance salesman. After work, he began stopping at a bar, for one drink, which soon became many. Then his wife left him, taking their young daughter, and he lost his house and his job. ”I was a drunk,” he said, “a 35 year-old bum, ready to end it all. I had thirty dollars in my pocket, and when I saw a gun in a pawnshop for twenty-dollars, I bought it.” On the way out of town, he stopped at a local library and he began reading a motivational book and was so impressed he contacted the author. Augustine made such an impression over the telephone; he was hired as a salesman. After writing a sales manual, he became the sales manager and later editor of the company’s motivational magazine, where he remained until the first of his eighteen books were published. The long-ago dream of his mother’s finally came true, to a far greater degree than either of them could have imagined. Along the way, he began using a shortened version of his name, or Aug, which, on a whim one day, he decided to spell his name Og. By the time he died in 1996, Og Mandino had become the most widely read inspirational author in the world, with sales of more than fifty million copies of his books in twenty-five languages. For all of us who, at some point in our lives have known disappointment and failure, he left us this advice: “Remind yourself, in the darkest moments, that every failure is only a step toward success.”
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AuthorMusings from Gammon Irons. To desire and strive to be of some service to the world, to aim at doing something which shall really increase the happiness and welfare and virtue of mankind - this is a choice which is possible for us all; and surely a good haven to sail. Archives
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