Transcript

Persisting #1207 · From Chad

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The whole country was told to turn off the lights for Felix
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Dennis. They were already off.
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There's a story behind that. This is your daily message from
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Chad #12107 to upgrade your middle game today by telling
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yourself a better story. Because the most important story
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you hear is the story you tell yourself.
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This message is dedicated to Charlie Smith.
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Here's the upgrade. You may feel like you've run out
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of options, but upgraded thinking knows you've only run
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out of the easy ones. Here's the story.
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It's the winter of 1974 and Britain is falling apart.
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Coal miners are on strike. Oil prices have exploded.
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The government puts businesses on a three day week to save
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electricity. Television goes dark at 10:30 at
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night. One minister even suggests
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people learn to shave in the dark.
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A young man named Felix Dennis is trying to start a publishing
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company with no money at this time.
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He says the shortage was nothing new to him.
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His electricity had already been cut off weeks earlier, so at the
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gas he couldn't pay the bills. He's living in an unheated flat
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behind a sweatshop in London. To stay warm, he pulls broken
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furniture out of the trash and burns it in the fireplace.
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His girlfriend has a normal job and she tells him to quit and
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get one too, but he won't, so she leaves.
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Years later he wrote this quote. That was the secret ingredient.
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I would not take no for an answer.
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I would not give in. I was going to be rich somehow,
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some way, and I would not retreat to the safety of a
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decent job until I was starved out of house and home.
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End Quote. He didn't pretend it was noble.
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He called those the worst months of his life.
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They were pure misery. It was like bashing his head
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against the brick wall. But looking back, he suspected
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it was his finest moment. Thomas Edison is credible
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credited with saying when you've exhausted all possibilities,
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remember this, you haven't that broke young man built Dennis
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Publishing which eventually had 50 magazines.
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He was one of the richest self-made men in Britain.
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Near the end of his life he started planting trees, not a
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few a forest, over 1,000,000 saplings in the English
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countryside. And when he died in 2014, he
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left most of his fortune to make sure the planting never stops.
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I love that juxtaposition. The man who once burned
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scavenged wood just to survive the winter spent his last year's
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planting a forest that will outlive everyone who knew him.
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I think that's what persisting looks like.
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The better story to tell yourself is I haven't run out of
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options. I'm only run out of the easy
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ones. You haven't exhausted all
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possibilities, you've just exhausted the comfortable ones.
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The real ones are still out there waiting for the person who
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won't retreat. You know Winston Churchill,
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after his famous Never Give in line, continues quote.
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Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
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Before them, obstacles vanish into thin air and mountains
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crumble into atoms. Great work is never done by
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temperamental geniuses, but by obstinate donkey men.
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Felix Dennis was just a donkey man.
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He never gave up. That's what persisting looks
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like. Tell me a story of persisting
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through a dark season to from chadsmith@gmail.com.
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Send someone a text and tell them you haven't run out of
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options. You've only run out of the easy
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ones. Keep going.
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You can get a free copy of my book, The Most Powerful Story in
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the World, by going to fromchad.gumroad.com.
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The transcript of this message and hundreds of others are
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always available at www.fromchad.com.