Keep going

Some days you feel that all the effort and hard work is not paying off, a couple things don’t go your way, you seem to hit all the red lights, the train is delayed and so on.

It happens like this in life sometimes, however, we are programmed to think that this is all part of some catastrophe and it only reaffirms the ‘truths’ we tell ourselves. An almost ‘see I told you, I knew you’d fail’ and other such pessimistic responses in our heads occur or even from those around us. We are conditioned to think that worst will happen from an early age in life.

The truth is, the world isn’t against us, people aren’t against us, and some days, shit happens. But 99.999999% of the time it is shit that we can deal with, that passes and often it teaches us to improve, remodel and get further ahead on our journey.

However, if we spent more of our time recognising the great things that happen every day, then we’d notice the ‘hiccups’ a lot less.

The truth is, stick with the plan, keep going. Rovio, you might not have heard of them if they’d quit, were a struggling gaming app developer in Finland. 5 years in they thought this isn’t going well, but someone started to sketch some Angry Birds, and 2 years later more than a billion people had downloaded the app.

There’s always the instant gratification route of the modern business culture, that says ‘fail fast’, ‘pivot’ and move on. Society often does not encourage patience as dissatisfaction feeds consumption and that makes money.

But the truth is, often the best things in life or business, happen to ones who persevere, who keep going, no matter what comes up. Show some patience, bad days pass and are rarely as bad as they seem.

Always stay true to what you believe.

Letting others down

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In life, we are often concerned or even preoccupied with the fear of letting others down.

‘Oh, I can’t do x, as I don’t want to let ‘so & so’ down’.

The thing is, why are we not so concerned about letting ourselves down?

We are taught always to think of others first and when we don’t we are often shamed for doing so by peers.

We need to turn that around and stop letting ourselves down, stop missing our deadlines, stop holding back on the things that make us happy. Stop feeling guilty about others as we could be accountable to ourselves first.

In doing so, we are much less likely to let others down. If we are happy, fulfilled and achieving what matters to us, then we are better placed when needed to be helpful, reliable and supportive of others.

Often, though, it is when other people are letting themselves down that others are needed to step in.

It’s not being selfish to think about ourselves, it is helping us to be happy. Surely that will count to the right people around us.