"Let a person rejoice when he is confronted with obstacles, for it means that he has reached the end of some particular line of indifference or folly, and is now called upon to summon up all his energy and intelligence in order to extricate himself, and to find a better way; that the powers within him are crying out for greater freedom, for enlarged exercise and scope." -- James Allen

Courtesy of Santa Claus, we have a new puppy. This puppy is smart (yes I know all dog owners believe their dog is smart). We put up a baby gate to keep the puppy in the kitchen while everyone was gone. We came home to find the puppy on the other side of the gate! The next time we left the house we tried putting a cart in front of the gate. Again, we came home to find the puppy on the wrong side of the gate!

As an experiment we put the gate up while we were home and then waited. We watched as the dog climbed over the gate! He backed away from the gate, took a running start and then climbed over the gate!

Now that is pretty amazing, because this dog has done what many people do not. He overcame an obstacle. I say this because in the past year I have heard many people talk about their problems (obstacles). In almost every one of those conversations, each obstacle was perceived as a reason to quit, to give up and not go on. I became aware of this when reading an interview of a successful entrepreneur. This person was called a “serial-entrepreneur” because he hadn’t just started one company, he had started several. In fact, at the time of the interview he was starting his eighth company. He sold six of those companies for a combined total of millions of dollars.

It took me until about the third paragraph to decide that I liked this guy! One of the things he said really struck me. He said that most people quit when they reach the first real, major obstacle. He said that in almost all of his businesses, getting past that first major obstacle was usually the first step towards the success of that business. He also stated that the first major obstacle is where most people quit.

This guy starts a business, then starts looking forward to all the obstacles that he meets. He thinks its fun. Interestingly enough, he is one of the few people who has no problem financing a new company. Banks look at his track record of successes and are willing to lend him money – they want to be a part of his next success.

Since reading that article, I started noticing that most people do use obstacles as a reason to quit. Of course, there was this student who received a low ‘C’ on his project for a new business opportunity. It only received a low ‘C’ because of the amount of work he had put in to the assignment. Now that poor student owns FedEx. That poor guy is worth millions because he didn’t quit when he met his first obstacle a ‘C-’.

For what its worth, Zig Ziglar says we don’t pay the price for success, we pay the price the price for failure. I think he’s right. The price of failure is being trapped in the kitchen or giving up an idea for a business that has revolutionized how the world does business. The price of success is having a nickname of “Houdini” and making millions of dollars.