It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.
We have all set out on a mission. Be it professional, personal, or spiritual, a decided course of action is the recipe. The road to travel.
As is the case with most of the journeys, they appear achievable at the outset, and that enables us to set sights and commence.
Most of the complicated journeys are fraught with complications along the way. If it is a weight loss journey, it might be a period where your weight appears to have hit a plateau that is not going to disappear. On a scholastic journey, it might be the world coming down with Covid and suddenly your lessons are happening remotely, or you encounter a professor whom you do not connect with. On a career path it could be an employer with whom you do not see eye to eye, or a client who opts to make your life untenable.
The world of fiction mirrors reality because reality is continually showing us how difficult all of our journeys really become. Something that appears easy at first, is almost always complicated along the way.
The difference, in my humble opinion, between success and failure then, is not one of prefocused determination, but rather, tenacity. The art of being tenacious is an acquired skill, developed on a very slow schedule, and cultivated within ourselves during moments of hardship in which we are encountering resistance.
In most circumstances, it always seems so much easier to just quit. We all feel like that. That moment of sheer frustration and disappointment and resentment/anger. Our dream seems an impossible destination, our lofty goals seem unreachable. Despair and depression come pounding in like a wave of uncontrollable emotion, ready to smash us down and render us useless.
The secret that seems to accrue over a lifetime, is an innate understanding that these feelings are just part of the package. They are the guardians that prevent everyone from being an overachiever. They are the guidelines that illuminate our weaknesses and demonstrate to us how intensely vulnerable we are to the slightest provocation.
The secret is to discover that deep within lies a resilience. A determination. An unbreakable bond between our deepest inner self and the goal we put into place. That resilience is tenacity. It is one of your greatest weapons. And most certainly, one of your greatest allies. Muhammad Ali was asked how many repetitions he did of a specific workout. He responded that he did not count all of the repetitions, only the ones that come after he is in real pain and struggling to continue.
Dreams fuel our lives. Without dreams, life would be considerably more dull and disappointing. With those dreams come challenges of magnitude in parallel with those dreams. If your dreams are huge, the obstacles will be as well. If you recognize that at the outset, and expect the obstacles to arise, you will not be blindsided by them at the moment of discovery. It may not make them any easier to overcome, but when you anticipate them, at least you have some sort of a prepared mindset in place to enable you to prevail.
Any dream that is worth your real time and energy is worth completing. The path to achieving that may be far more convoluted than you might have initially imagined. But the reality is that the one variable that will make that dream come to fruition is your tenacity. Even if things slow down to a crawl, and your expectations are not even remotely being met, as long as you are continuing to pursue your dream with the resources at your disposal, you are still on the way.
Do not stop. You will be considerably more content with yourself if you continue to make progress, regardless of whether your speed has diminished and your progress slowed. Stay the course!
Happy Monday!
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