Curiously, most people recognize the right response to failure when they see others display it.

What separates exceptional people from the crowd is the way they respond to failure.

He should understand that over the span of a lifetime, the only lasting failure is the failure to try.

Whatever the endeavor, I’ve come to the conclusion that the most successful people have some of what we call natural talent, but not so much that it makes them complacent. They’re brimming over with the character traits, like Ben Hogan’s, that promote patient, persistent, hard work. Their physical talents are sufficient to persuade them that they

“When I knelt down to say my prayers last night, I didn’t say them to Tiger,” Hal said. “So I guess he’s not God.” Hal chose to respect his own talent that day rather than Tiger’s. It’s one of the choices champions always make.

Most of the time, though, an honest competitor understands that he could just as easily have lost.

Habits are powerful forces in our lives. When we act from habit, we don’t need the grit-your-teeth type of willpower. We just do something without thinking much about it. It’s almost a reflex.

The visualization might also include the ultimate failure of a sales effort.

“If you’re going to play the Tour, you have to love golf all the time,” he said. “It’s not going to work if you can only love it when everything’s going your way, every putt’s going in the hole, and every carom is bouncing into the fairway instead of out of bounds. It’s not going to work if you practice every day and only love it when the ball is