The Path to Success
“If you continue to move forward with unflagging perseverance, although you may be facing situations that are so difficult, they would cause the ordinary person to give up, people will start to look at you in a new light. Although they may have assessed your abilities as rather limited, they will start to see that you have a great many more good points than they had perceived and think of you as someone with great potential.
Some time ago, I read a philosophy of success by an American author that contained a good example of this. A man who had no academic background or other qualifications that were to his advantage for job hunting wanted to get a job with a very successful retail chain. All he had was his enthusiasm, so he decided to gamble on this.
He sent his job application to all the stores in the retail chain, to every single one of the 150 shops. Day after day, he wrote, “I have no particular strengths, no experience or education qualifications but I am highly motivated to work for you” and sent the letters to all 150 branches. Despite his endeavours, he received no replies from any of the stores.
At this stage, an ordinary person would have given up. However, having sent his letter to every single store in the chain, he thought that as a last resort, he could go to the head office, and so he put his idea into practice. In fact, the letters he had sent to all the branches had been forwarded to the head office, and the personal manager there has received all 150 letters and was convinced that the enthusiastic applicant would come. As expected, the applicant showed up at the head office. The personal manager said, “I have been waiting for you. I was sure you would come. This is your 151st try, isn’t it?”
He was of course hired and eventually climbed the corporate ladder all the way to the top, to become a highly successful executive. This story shows that there really are people with an indomitable spirit. The ordinary person would have given up after the first or second letter, at most, at the 50th or 100th letter, would have decided to stop such a fruitless endeavour, but this man never gave up. There was also a man who was secretly admiring the applicant’s efforts, anticipating he would appear and waiting for him. As a result, the young man was guided to the path to success.”
From Happy Science Monthly “The Path to Success” by Ryuho Okawa
