Parking Places

This is an excerpt from one of my new books. I thought it seemed appropriate to include today in the blog.... Tell me what you think!
-Gene

Someone once wrote, “The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking places.” While most people tend to lose heart and surrender their dreams during life's horrible times, top performers learn these universal principles:

 You must discern the difference between temporary setbacks and permanent losses.
 Obstacles are there to strengthen you.
 Obstacles offer progressive measurements of your growing strength.

Difficulties actually accelerate your success, especially when you understand the value of opposition. Muscles never got stronger from inaction; much to the contrary, unused brawn tends to atrophy.

One of the most amazing stories of sheer courage in the face of tremendous odds is that of Nancy Merkl. Stricken with polio at ten, she was condemned to wear heavy braces and later crutches. Yet in four years, she became a swimming champion who, when asked by Franklin Roosevelt how she overcame such odds, said, “I just kept trying, Mister President!”
Her parents had taken her to a man named Jack Cody, swimming coach at an athletic club in Portland, Oregon. It took a year to teach her to swim the length of the pool. But she was determined. Finally, the coach realized that this young girl was not only interested in swimming as a mean of restoring her health and the use of her limbs, she also wanted to be a champion.
Four years from the time she was stricken with paralysis, she came in third at a meet in Santa Barbara, California. At the age of nineteen, she changed her style of swimming and emerged as the national champion.
Nancy Merkl kept on trying. So can you!