Before you complain about not succeeding ask yourself how many times you have actually tried and failed. If this number is less than 100 then you don’t want it bad enough. Remember success is also numbers game.

You’re more attractive if you’re already in a relationship. You’re more employable if you already got a job. In fact you’ll make a lot more money once you have lots of money. It seems to me that in life, all you have to do is make a name for yourself just a few times before you can take advantage of the snowball effect of success. You can then sit back and reel in opportunities that feed off of each other.

This prediction error works as follows. You are about to buy a new car. It is going to change your life, elevate your status, and make your commute a vacation. It is so quiet that you can hardly tell if the engine is on, so you can listen to Rachmaninoff’s nocturnes on the highway. This new car will bring you to a permanently elevated plateau of contentment. People will think, Hey, he has a great car, every time they see you. Yet you forget that the last time you bought a car, you also had the same expectations. You do not anticipate that the effect of the new car will eventually wane and that you will revert to the initial condition, as you did last time. A few weeks after you drive your new car out of the showroom, it will become dull. If you had expected this, you probably would not have bought it.

Excerpt from The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Select your niche. It is very difficult to succeed in a crowded field. I have found that you can move more rapidly if you select a segment of that crowded field and become an expert in it. For example, the field of law is very crowded. A new attorney entering as a general business attorney will find slow growth. But a new attorney selecting a niche such as sports law will have the opportunity for rapid growth.

Search out that special growth segment in your field and become an expert. You will grow more quickly than you can imagine.

Excerpt from If I Knew Then What I know Now by Richard Edler.

My father used to tell us this story about a guy who loved soda, so he went into the soda business, with a product called 3UP. It failed. So he started again with a soda called 4UP. It failed, too. So he decided to name his product 5UP and worked just as hard to make it work, but sure enough, it failed again. He realized that he still loved soda, so he tried again with a product named 6UP. It failed, and he gave up completely.

Then, a few years later, someone else came up with a soda product and named it 7UP, which became a huge success. When I was young, I couldn’t understand why my father kept telling us this story. He told it many times. Later, I realized he was telling us to never give up.

Excerpt from Why We Want You to Be Rich by Donald Trump.