“Don’t ever give up.
Don’t ever give in.
Don’t ever stop trying.
Don’t ever sell out.
And if you find yourself succumbing to one of the above for a brief moment,
pick yourself up, brush yourself off, whisper a prayer, and start where you left off.
But never, ever, ever give up.”
~Richelle E. Goodrich, Eena, The Tempter’s Snare
I won’t lie-it’s hard to go the distance, and scary because its the ‘not knowing‘ that haunts you. The point is to keep moving, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, toward where you want to be. There is that focal point waaaay out there in the future that you keep your eye on, akin to a Ballerina focusing through her pirouettes. Have you watched a Prima Ballerina or an ice skater start off turning slow only to work themselves up into a spinning frenzy…and they don’t fall down or get dizzy.
As I sit here and think about how persistence and re-calibration help keep me moving forward, I feel like I am at the final wall to over come before breaking through to the other side. Standing there trying to find the point of entry you have so many people talking AT you inside of your head: What gives you the right to be so special and create your own job? Why are you so special? Just Give up and get a REAL job! The rest of us did! We don’t have the “luxury” of doing what we want!
How you persist with with all the negative self talk will determine your success. Will you harness that energy to propel you forward, crashing though that wall? Or will it make you succumb, retreat, and say “Well, that wall is too high, how could I have ever thought to gone over it?”
Usually, when I have other’s talking in my head of how I Can’t do something, I end up digging in my heels and persist. Half to prove it to myself, half to prove it to others. Mom used to shake her head at me when I was younger because I was so stubborn about giving in. The word stubborn stuck to me in both positive and negative ways. Positive: I didn’t give up. Negative: I didn’t give in to pressure from others and they didn’t like it.
I think I would like to change that adjective about myself today to “Persistent.” Persistence, Patience, and Perseverance keeps me on course, eyes scanning for other ways to get through, over, and in.
So, I am going to keep going, Holding on just a little bit more to move a bit farther.