Bill Hewgley
It does not matter what the goal is in life-your persistence in achieving it through focused, directed efforts are the most critical ingredient in success. The great ideas and plans are just fantasies unless you push forward, non-stop towards achieving the desired results at each level of the journey. Dreams do not become reality, but your hard work can make your reality look a lot like your dreams.
Looking at that boulder in your driveway and visualizing it turn into gravel in various theoretical ways does nothing. Getting your butt out of bed each morning and applying a sledgehammer to it for eight hours does. Sooner or later, it will crack in half, soon into quarters, then eighths, then one day you have your gravel.
Life and business abide by the same natural laws. Strategic hard work on a consistent, persistent, unyielding basis works wonders for any enterprise. Just desire and hard work are not enough, for you would never crack the boulder pounding away at it with a rubber hammer, would you? A lifetime of grueling work would only wear out a fortune in rubber hammers.
Select a goal, make sure you have a strategy and set your mind firmly in the right place. Go earn, beg, borrow or steal (not recommended) the very best tools available and start hammering! To be successful, you must be a “Happy Warrior”. If you cannot tolerate pain and the taste of blood in your mouth, you will not win at much of anything in life. Sorry, you lose.
If you are doing your child’s homework, cleaning their rooms, buying them everything, bailing them out of trouble or jail, you are not helping them; you are handicapping them. Anything worth having is worth fighting for…anything not fought for is rarely appreciated. Children of adversity are the achievers throughout recorded history-they burned to get something done in life to leave a mark on the world. Will you leave a footprint in the sand? Will you even make the effort?
Where you spend your time and money is who you really are - not what you say you intend to do with your life. I am truly impressed by the people who shout out where they are headed as they pedal furiously over the horizon. They got it!
Don’t spend your life pondering the nature of the universe -“go do something damn it, even if it’s wrong…if that didn’t work, try something else!” - Bill Hewgley Sr. circa 1967
If you must have regrets, make them regrets of failures, not regrets you never even tried.
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Bill Hewgley is president, Metalworking Solutions, LLC, a company he founded after retiring as president of American Manufacturing Company. One of his chief priorities is to mentor this upcoming millennial generation, while honoring those who helped him find his own way in life, by passing it on.
You can contact Bill at mailto:Bill@metalworkingsolution.com and visit Metalworking Solutions at www.metalworkingsolution.com.