Tag: perseverance

‘Just keep swimming’

Posted on by philipdodson

A phrase that was made famous from the Pixar film ‘Finding Nemo’ where Dory, a blue tang fish, with a bit of a memory problem, says ‘just keep swimming’ to keep everyone going towards the search for the missing Nemo. Especially, she uses it when they reach the usual challenges in their search that such film genres have as part of the plot of making the film engaging. Often at the point when others perhaps are disheartened and feel like giving up

OK, so life is a little different to an animated Pixar film based on humanised fish, but the phrase ‘just keep swimming’ is one that fits as a reminder that often in life we have to just keep going. Sure, with things that are outside of our control, like everything except what we do, then letting go and leaving it is the right answer.

But with ourselves, we have to have a bit of perseverance and determination, especially during the hard times, when we are challenged and pushed to the limit of our self-belief and resilience. This is not some macho strength thing, this about keeping our faith, adapting and keep trying.

If you persist, you get there. As I said yesterday, the last freedom we have that can never be taken away is our freedom of choice of how to react.

Just keep swimming, believe and great things come.

Keep going

Posted on by philipdodson

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.