Among American idioms there is this phrase: “Someday my ship will come in.” It originally had reference to the old days when people would invest in a merchant sailing ship’s journey. When it returned, they would be paid a share of the profits. There was nothing, however, that they could do to make it come in any faster (or at all, for that matter.) Today the saying refers to some vague, unexpected good fortune that you hope will happen. “Then,” we say to ourselves, “My life will be what I want it to be.”

Lots of people spend their lives waiting for some sort of good fortune to happen to them. But it only happens to a very, very tiny percentage of those who are waiting for it to happen.

Success happens when four things meet at the same time: A dream, hard work, persistence and opportunity. And of these four, the last one, opportunity, is usually created by the first three.

Give up waiting for your ship to come in. It doesn’t dock here! And the pier is so crowded with people who are waiting for their ship to come in that you won’t even be able to get close enough to see the water.

The people who have the lives that you want to have didn’t wait for their ship to come in. They swam out to meet it, climbed aboard and took the wheel.

And sometimes you have to ignore the “No Swimming” signs. Often, they have been placed there by people who are on the dock….you know…the one crowded with people waiting for a ship that is not coming. They are unwilling to take the proactive plunge to swim out to meet their ship, but they don’t want you doing it, either.

In my experience, many things we regard as failures are actually the result of simply giving up too soon.

As for me, I’d rather drown swimming than die waiting on the dock!

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