Believe In Yourself – And You Can Achieve Anything You Want


“That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others
can achieve it as well.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
Sooner or later you decide to take a path less traveled and what happens? People tell you a thousand and one reasons why it won’t work. It was like this for me in Internet marketing. “Why would you do something so crazy/foolish/strange?” people would ask. “You are a lawyer, stay a lawyer and just stick it out.” But I didn’t, and so people who knew me thought I was crazy.
Has this happened to you? It can get discouraging when all those around you are telling you to do something you don’t want to do, or telling you not to follow your dreams. This is why I want to share this true story with you…
Once upon a time, many years ago in the previous century, there was a man called Musa Alami (you can Google him if you like, but here I give you the rest of his story.)
After being educated at Cambridge, Musa went home to Palestine where he did quite well financially, until one day politics turned against him and he lost everything he had worked for – even his home – in the blink of an eye.
But in this loss Musa saw an opportunity to try something he’d always dreamed of doing – turning the desert into lush, green farmland. He went to the vast, arid desert of the Jordan Valley where almost nothing grew. The land was hot, the ground was salty, and there was no water to be had. Everyone knew that bringing water from the Jordan River for irrigation would be too expensive, and so the desert remained barren. That is, until Musa arrived to fulfill his dream.
“What about underground water?” asked Musa. Everyone laughed at him, because who had ever heard of such nonsense? This was a desert, there was no water to be had, not anywhere, and especially not underground. Everyone knew this. Everyone, that is, but Musa.
You see, Musa had heard of a place called California that grew crops in the desert by using subsurface water. If they had underground water in the California desert, why not in the desert of the Jordan Valley? So he decided to find water, and asked for help from the Bedouin sheiks. But they just laughed at Musa and said it could not be done. Next he turned to the government officials who agreed that Musa was a fool and should leave them alone. Finally Muse consulted scientists from abroad, and the learned scientists solemnly told Musa that there was absolutely no water there. And that was that.
But Musa? He did not believe the naysayers. He believed there was water, and he enlisted the help of a few poverty-stricken refugees from a nearby Jericho refugee camp. Together they began digging, not with well digging equipment, but with picks and shovels! As you can imagine, everyone laughed as this crazy man and his ragged recruits dug deeper and deeper, month after month.
I am sure by now you are thinking they struck water, right? And you are correct – one day the sand at the bottom of the well was damp. The next day it was wet. And the third day, after digging for over six months, life-giving water gushed forth from the dry desert.
Now then, what do you think the Arabs who gathered around to see this water did? Did they laugh? Did they cheer? No. They fell to their knees and they wept. These very same people who taunted Musa and called him a fool now gathered around him, kissed his feet and proclaimed him a hero.
Upon hearing the news, an old sheik from a nearby village traveled to the well to see it for himself. “Musa,” he asked, “have you really found water? Let me feel it and taste it.”
After putting his hand in the stream of water and tasting it, the aged sheik proclaimed, “It is good water. Thank God. Now Musa, you can die.” This was the simple tribute of a desert man to the positive thinker who would not give up on his dream.
Several yeas later? Musa had 15 wells supplying a ranch 3 miles long and 2 miles wide. He grew vegetables, figs, bananas and citrus fruit. And he built a school for boys on his ranch, to teach them to be farmers, technicians and tradesmen.
Of course, once Musa showed the way, others followed. Within a few years there were over 40,000 acres under cultivation.
No doubt you can write the moral of this story: When you have a dream in your heart – whether it’s owning your own online business or something else – let nothing and no one stand in the way of achieving that dream. Nothing great was ever realized without naysayers – that is the nature of dreaming big, pushing the boundaries and going where no man (or woman) has gone before.
“Some of the world’s greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible.”  ~Doug Larson

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