Without Risk have you truly Lived?

I was reading over some material from a 2005 Denis Waitley seminar I attended and this quote was there that really speaks to the Entrepreneur's spirit (click on this post title to link to Denis Waitley's site):

"Parable of the Cautious Man...There was a very cautious man, who never laughed or cried. He never risked, he never lost, he never won nor tried. And when he one day passed away, his insurance was denied, for since he never really lived, they claimed he never died."

I remembered my failures and I remembered how I succeeded even greater after every failure. The challenge is to remember to learn from your failure and then persevere. To persevere will require your passion to succeed to be great. Anthony Robins describes it as your "Why". Is your why big enough to succeed? An example of this is Sylvester Stallone and his desire, his why, to be an actor in Hollywood was so great that the many rejections he received from the movie Producers "...that he will never be an actor because of his slurred speech", spurred him on and he wrote Rocky.

Now, the Rocky story is well known but in case you don't know, Sylvester was offered $100k to produce the movie Rocky but he turned it down because he wanted to act in the part of Rocky. Sylvester was turned down by another producer who offered him over $250k for the movie without Sly in the lead role and again sly turned the offer down.

At this point Sylvester was down to his last $100., he had sold his favorite dog Butkis and was not going to be able to pay his next months rent. He was at Rock(y) bottom. Then at his next Producer presentation he was accepted as the lead actor by agreeing to a payment of $35k and I believe 3% of the gate revenue. Well we all know that Rocky was a great success and this turned out to be a great deal. However, at the time, no one knew it would be a blockbuster with a series of Rocky movies.

Sylvester's "Why" was big enough to make him an actor and a great success which helped him endure the rejections even when he was at his lowest financially. By the way, Sly bought back Butkis from the guy he sold him to on the street. The story goes, I can't confirm if it's true, but he paid $10,000 of his $35,000 to get him back and gave the person who had the dog a walk on part in Rocky . True or not, it's a great Rocky ending to his story.

For me, Sylvester is Rocky and the ultimate story of Perseverance.