When is the right time for you to give up?

By amandaalexander | Resilience

Last Wednesday, at our meeting, I shared my “thought for the month”. Here is the gist of it:

I’ve had many people telling me they feel as if they are only just “getting started” with the year in the last week of January. It seems that many have had a tough start to the year. Some have faced challenges that they have hit head on and have felt like giving up. I’ve even had a few of my own!

But here’s the thing: Fortune doesn’t only favour the brave, fortune favours those who keep on going, doggedly and with determination. Much of the time, you won’t know it on the outside, but inside they are gritting their teeth. They might be holding back the tears. Catch them in a bad moment and you might even see one of those tears escaping from their eyes.

Resilience is about keeping going, even when you are exhausted, life is giving you a good old bashing and you feel as if your quest is hopeless.

Successful people may appear as if they have charmed lives. You may feel envious and wonder “How did they do that?” The reality is very likely that they just kept buggering on. You might only know how many obstacles they overcame until after they have succeeded. And you might never know, because they might never talk about it. So don’t assume that anything worth achieving has been easy, even by those who claim it was!

When you really want something and you believe in it, you have to keep going, even when everybody else appears to be coasting.

Failed again? Oh well! Have a cry, find someone who loves you and believes in you. Get them to “gee” you up. Dry your tears and then get on with it! Try again.

And again. And again. And again!

Seth Godin, a renowned and brilliant business writer and blogger, wrote a very short book called “The Dip”. Essentially, the message from “The Dip” is this: When you are at your lowest point, when you can’t see the light because you are right at the bottom of a pit and you’ve just slid that final few feet, this is the time when you most want to give up. But this is also the time when you should NOT give up.

Actually, you CAN give up – but only momentarily. You can give up for the day and say “I’m done”. You can eat chocolate, run a hot bath, pour a G&T or do whatever it takes. You can feel properly sorry for yourself.

But then, the next day, you’re going to get up and you start again. You will try again. Alas, that is NOT the point when everything will turn around for you. Hot baths, G&T and chocolate, are not miracle catalysts, they are just sticking plasters. You’ll still have dips.

But you must not give up.

When you least expect it, one of two things will happen:

1. One day, you will have an idea and that idea will WORK to get you out of the bottom of the pit. You’ll do something differently. All of a sudden, you realise you’ve found a way out of the pit. And you’ll start climbing up.
2. One day, someone will unexpectedly throw a ladder down into your dark pit. Nobody could have foreseen that ladder and it will seem like a miracle. You couldn’t have planned that ladder.

And the reason for no. 2 is that miracles always seem to happen to people who don’t give up.

Sometimes all it takes is someone to tell you! So I’m telling you – now is NOT the time for you to give up!

Want some proof that miracles happen to people who don’t give up? Your wish is my command! Here are 2 messages from a couple of the ladies at our Forward Ladies meeting:

The first is from Lara and I have transcribed it from the voicemail she left me. The second is from Brenda who spoke to me and then emailed me later:

I just wanted to say, “thanks for your little snippet at the end about January and things just happening. I feel like I’ve had an awful January and that really gave me a kick up the bum. Then as it happened I then took a really interesting phone call about something exciting and then I got a load of customer orders. So things are really on the up. Thank you, I needed that” Lara

Thank you for those comments – I was about to give up but I’m not going to now” and then by email:
As I said at the meeting, your comments really helped me, it seemed my dream was not going to come true but several new avenues have opened for me to explore!” Brenda

So, when is the right time for you to give up?
Not just yet…
Ask me again tomorrow. 🙂

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