Long before Kevin Feige became the president of Marvel Studios, he was rejected from USC’s film school program five times in a row. He was accepted with his sixth application.

Imagine if you were Kevin, writing the second, third, fourth, and fifth applications. Your family starts to ask you questions, inadvertently turning up the volume on your own doubts.

You might start wondering if another path could take you to your goal. Some call this pivoting, others would call it compromising. And nowadays, there’s no shortage of distractions to pull you away from your goal.

The key to keep in mind is this: if you think it’s important enough—and you can’t see a better path—then you need to put yourself out there again. And again. And again.
Seth Godin writes in The Dip, “A woodpecker can tap twenty times on a thousand trees and get nowhere, but stay busy. Or he can tap twenty-thousand times on one tree and get dinner.”