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But if you do try and you do fail, at least you should fail success
fully. By that I mean, you shouldn't brood about it, but as Mr.
Armstrong has intimated in his book, The Seven Laws of Success, you
should really use those failures purposefully. Those failures,
rather than being stumbling blocks to your success should become
stepping-stones to your success. I wonder how many of you realize
that Thomas Edison failed some 499 times to produce a working light
bulb before the last one did work? He showed a tremendous amount of
resourcefulness, a tremendous amount of what Mr. Armstrong calls
stick-to-it-iveness.
Someone asked Thomas Edison whether he considered himself a failure
at or about the time, for example, that he failed for the 450th
time. He said, "No, not at all. I wasn't a failure. All I was
doing was eliminating those possibilities which weren't too practical."
Which I think is a good way of using the failure or the s.eries of
failures as stepping-stones to success.
At any rate, faith can release you from this deep freeze that fear -
fear of trying -- can put you in. You shouldn't sit around day
dreaming about what you could accomplish if you had the breaks or if
you had luck.
How many of you play golf or have seen golf on TV on Sunday? I see
that not a high percentage have. Gary Player is world famous. He's
from South Africa, and he's a small man playing amongst giants
physically. And yet he has managed to win every conceivable tourna
ment wherever that type of tournament is played.
This year he had a remarkable run of exceptionally fine golf, winning
the United States Masters, and then two other tournaments in a row,
which today is a very difficult thing to accomplish. As he was about
to win his third straight event, and each of them was accomplished in
this come-from-behind fashion (coming far from the back of the field
of players to the fore and winning), which of course makes the win
even more spectacular, he was approached by the ubiquitous announcer.
Sometimes they have announcers who know almost nothing about the game
-- whether it be the fight game or golf or tennis. Once in a while
it does happen but not each and every time by any means. On this
occasion, one of the announcers just really didn't know much about
golf and didn't really know much about what it is to compete. He
stuck the microphone under Gary Player'� mouth as he was walking up
the fairway. And in an effort to say the right thing, I guess, he
congratulated him on what appeared to be now his third successive
win, and said, "You know, you have to be rather lucky, don't you,
Mr. Player, to win three in a row?" Gary smiled (and he has a very,
very pleasant smile) and he said, "You know, you're right. You're
absolutely right. You do have to be lucky to win. But you know,"
he said, "it's a funny thing. I found out that the more you practice,
the luckier you seem to get."
As Mr. Armstrong's booklet, Seven Laws of Success tells you, perhaps
the most important element is also tije most neglected, and that's the
element of faith in God. And of course, this element of faith is a
gift. It's a gift from God. But literally, it opens closed doors.
I accomplished things for Mr. Armstrong around the world that I