Writers 
A common cause of failure is the inclination to surrender when encountering a temporary obstacle. Everyone goes through this mistake at some stage. An uncle of R. U. Darby became entranced by the excitement of gold during the gold rush period and traveled west to seek his fortune. He did not realize that human creativity has yielded far more gold than what has been pulled from the earth. He staked a claim and commenced his work using a pickaxe and shovel. The task was arduous, yet his aspiration for gold was evident.
After several weeks of diligent effort, he struck a vein of rich ore. He needed machinery to extract the ore from beneath the surface. Secretively, he hid the mine, went back home to Williamsburg, Maryland, and informed his family and a few local friends about his find. They contributed money for the essential equipment, which was subsequently sent to him. Both the uncle and Darby continued their mining activities.
The first shipment of ore was collected and dispatched to a smelter. The results showed they owned one of Colorado’s most cherished mines! A few more shipments of that ore would eliminate their debts and yield substantial earnings.
The drilling commenced once more! The aspirations of both Darby and his uncle soared! Then an unforeseen event took place! The gold vein disappeared! They reached the peak of their endeavor, but the treasure was absent! They persevered with drilling, desperately trying to locate the vein again, but to no avail.
In the end, they resolved to QUIT. They sold the machinery to a scrap dealer for a few hundred dollars and headed back home by train. Some scrap dealers lack insight, yet this one was clever! He hired a mining engineer to assess the mine and run some calculations. The engineer suggested that the project had been abandoned too soon since the owners were ignorant of “fault lines.” His evaluation uncovered that the gold vein lay JUST THREE FEET FROM WHERE THE DARBYS HAD STOPPED DRILLING! That is exactly where it was found!
The scrap dealer extracted millions of dollars’ worth of ore from the mine because he recognized the value of seeking expert consultation before giving up. A large portion of the funds for the machinery had been raised by R. U. Darby, who was then a young man. The money originated from his family and neighbors, who believed in him. He paid back every dollar, although it took him many years to accomplish this.
Years later, Mr. Darby recouped his losses many times over when he realized that DESIRE could be transformed into wealth. This epiphany came after he entered the life insurance field.
Reflecting on how he had lost a considerable amount of money by stopping just three feet shy of gold, Darby applied what he learned from this experience in his chosen career by reminding himself, “I stopped three feet from gold, but I will never quit just because people respond `no’ when I suggest they buy insurance.”
Darby is part of an exclusive set of less than fifty people who each year manage to sell more than a million dollars’ worth of life insurance. His ability to keep going can be traced back to the lessons learned from his inclination to quit during his gold mining endeavors.
Prior to anyone realizing success, they are bound to face various temporary challenges and possibly some failures. When a challenge arises, the simplest and most logical choice is to QUIT. This is exactly what a majority of people are inclined to do.
More than five hundred of the most successful individuals this country has ever produced revealed to the author that their greatest successes happened just a step beyond the point of feeling defeated. Failure operates as a crafty trickster with a keen sense of irony.
It relishes in causing someone to stumble at the very moment when they are on the brink of achievement.
