Have you ever seen the TV show American Pickers?
Have you ever seen the TV show American Pickers?
I don’t watch very much TV but a couple of days ago my husband was running the channels and stopped on American Pickers.
In this particular episode, one of the “pickers”, Mike, digs up a backyard after hearing a legend about a buried Indian motorcycle. As the episode begins, he talks with the owner of the land and offers to pay her X dollars if he can dig in her backyard for an Indian Motorcycle he had been told was buried there. She agrees and they began digging.
They dug for hours and hours. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t paying close attention at first so I don’t know if they used a back-hole or did all the digging with shovels. The part that I saw…they were only using shovels and I think that’s all they normally use so they won’t destroy any buried treasure.
After digging for hours with no results, the rest of the crew were ready to leave and call it quits. They were beginning to think they were given false information about an old Indian motorcycle being buried there.
Mike (one of the stars) was determined and kept saying he wasn’t going to quit. He just wanted to dig a little more…a little more…just a little more.
Finally, after many long hours of digging in the dark he hit metal. All the digging was worth it to him. He had discovered the old Indian motorcycle and it was like striking gold to him. He had reached his goal!
He had not quit when the rest of the crew were ready to throw in the shovel.
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Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
I shared this adventure with you because it reminded me of another story. It is a story told by Napoleon Hill in the book “Think and Grow Rich”. As the story goes an uncle of R.U. Darby got “gold fever” during the gold-rush days and went to work with a pick and shovel.
He discovered ore and decided he needed machinery to make the digging faster. He borrowed money from friends and family to purchase the needed machinery. He was sure they had one of the richest mines in Colorado. He retrieved a car of ore, then another, then the vein of gold ore disappeared. They drilled on trying to pick up the view again but it didn’t do any good.
Finally, they decided to quit.
He sold the machinery to a junk man for a few dollars and went home.
The junk man called in a mining engineer and found out the reason the project had failed was because the owners were not familiar with fault lines. As it turned out, the vein could be found just three feet from where the Darbys had quit drilling. The junk man took millions of dollars of the ore from the mine because he knew enough to seek expert counsel.
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Three Feet From Gold
The Darby’s quit three feet from gold.
That brings to me the book “Three Feet from Gold” by “Sharon L. Lechter and Greg S. Reid.
This book takes a modern look at the core theme of Napoleon Hill’s revolutionary best seller. It’s an inspiring story about a young writer who sets out to interview business leaders and other influential figures on the importance of persistence in attaining your goals. Through motivational real-life stories, Three Feet from Gold offers advice about having passion for what you do, finding your own Success Formula, choosing good counsel, and above all: never giving up.
Both of these books focus on the importance of never quitting…don’t give up… but they also refer to the importance of seeking expert counsel. Meaning that you may not know everything but you are capable of seeking out someone who can help you with your particular situation.
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