One of the most successful songs/videos in history was “Gangnam Style” by PSY (real name Park Jae-sang) from South Korea.
In 2012, the song caught fire and seemed to be everywhere. It won every award and accolade. It was the definition of going viral.
Most everyone lacks patience. People want to release a new product and have the world buying and consuming it within months if not weeks. Or they want to post a video and get 1,000,000 views overnight.
Why?
We have the belief that lightning can strike because we’ve seen lightning strike. We want that for ourselves. So the limiting belief is, it can’t take long otherwise it won’t happen.
Back to PSY. What most people don’t know is that (according to his Wiki page) “Psy made his first appearance on Korean national television in 2000 after his dancing caught the eye of a TV producer.” His first couple of albums, made in the early 2000s got him in a lot of trouble and the Korean government even banned one of them. By the time Gangham Style came out, he’d done 5 records to some success but still often being banned by the government.
So, his massive viral success was actually a twelve-year journey.
And yet it seemed that he came from nowhere and was an overnight success.
That’s what we all want. And yet it’s likely Psy wouldn’t have had the experience and ability to create the song, without all the time and experience writing and performing music.
We released our book Go for No! in 2000. To crickets. We published on our own and despite marketing efforts, it was not selling.
We didn’t give up on the book.
Finally, on New Year’s Eve, 2010, the book hit the #1 spot on Amazon’s Sales & Selling list. We did so many things to make that finally happen. And it’s now stayed in the top 50 of sales books ever since. But it took ten years to get there.
We must learn to appreciate the journey.
Value the time it takes and learn all the lessons you can along the way.
The question is: will you pursue your goal despite how long it might take, or will you give up if it doesn’t happen fast enough?
Make that decision very carefully because the truth for many people (myself included) is that their “overnight” success took ten years. That’s the secret to being an overnight success. (Everyone thinks it was, only you’ll know the truth.)
“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.” – Leo Tolstoy
Comments? Please let me know your thoughts. And if you liked this post, please share! – AW
Have you read Go for No! yet? Pick it up at our store here on our website or on Amazon if you prefer. If you’ve read the book and you’d like to go deeper in the Go for No mindset and strategies and become a No Getter in our private Facebook group, join our course. Check out details at www.GoforNoCourse.com