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.

Goals and values

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If it gets the same result, then why not use whatever method necessary to get to the goal?

In our microwave world, where the ‘hustle’ is seen as the way to do things, get it done whatever the ‘costs’ and it has to be now, means that how we achieve that goal is less important than the goal.

However, it is not possible to have a goal that matches our true values, yet then achieve it in a way that would be contrary to those values. That would mean that we have not reached our true goal but a watered down version of it.

If you want something no matter how you get it, then that is fine, but very few of us would find that matching our true values and would not really find that very meaningful or ethical.

Even if it takes twice as long, I would rather stick to my values, to my true goal, than simply settle for something less that can be achieved in any way possible.

Values will always last, will always be meaningful and it will avoid the need to sell our soul to reach a false goal.