Remember the last time you went to a seminar where the speaker talked about their success? And then you heard stuff like, “I meditate for 20 minutes every day before I get to work” or “I used a certain project management methodology”, and even “I work 100 hours every week” (this one’s actually from Elon Musk).

But when you tried it yourself, nothing came out of it. You may have religiously followed their tips and tricks to the letter but in the end all you get is exhaustion. More often than not, the thing that determines your success, the tipping point of your life, all depends only on one single decision or coincidence.

Take Facebook for example, their initial boom took place not because the website had been great or that their team had had impressive coders, no. Facebook initially started in Harvard and soon spread to other campuses in The U.S, one of them being Stanford. A girlfriend of a friend of Sean Parker happened to be using the website and Sean Parker happened to look at the website. Soon afterwards, Sean contacted Mark, they met and had a chat, and before you know it, Sean introduced Mark to Peter Thiel, who is Facebook’s first investor of $500,000.

This $500,000 investment became Facebook’s grand kick off, and using the funds they got, Facebook ended up the multi-billion company it is now.

If Facebook had not arrived at Stanford yet when Sean Parker was visiting, or Sean Parker had not a glanced at the website, or if Mark had declined meeting Sean after being contacted, we might not even be scrolling through their feed three hours a day while simultaneously declining Farmville and Candy Crush invitations.

So what is the conclusion? There are no sure-fire ways to success? No tips and tricks to get that golden ticket to the chocolate factory? The answer is no, there are no life hacks for this matter.

There are many factors, and the ones that determine our success are mostly what we can’t control, such as economy, parents, friends, the girlfriend of your friend who opens her laptop at the right moment, etc. But do not despair, as we have learned in the law of probability in 8th grade math, if you keep shooting arrows on the target board, one of them is bound to hit the bullseye.

The key here is perseverance.

As the overused motivational image above shows, if we just keep digging, we are bound to hit diamonds (but be smart and dig where the diamonds are clustered tho).

One more step, one more sales call, one more pitch, one more lap, one more day, one more practice, is all it takes. Even if you didn’t get it, you’ll get it the next time, and the next time, and the next time, until you get one that turns your situation around.

Keep hustling, and don’t give up.