Tag: perisitence

KEEP SWINGING ⚾️

It is spring here in the Northern hemisphere. In this country, that means the start of baseball season. Out of all the sports, this one has one of the longest seasons. There are 162 games to play in a single year. By contrast, in the National Football League, they play 18. That means in the course of a baseball season you can have a run of good luck and great play, followed by a run of less than stellar play. What makes a good season? How can you get back on track after a bad streak? The answer is the same in baseball as it is in life. That answer is you keep swinging.

A few days ago we celebrated 1000 days in a row of sharing content. This is actually day 1003. How did we manage to keep this up through a busy life and many obstacles? We kept swinging. Sometimes our content reached hundreds, in many countries. Sometimes it was only a few in a few countries. On occasion we received lots of engagement. There were weeks when we received none and were left to wonder if anyone was reading at all. Life is like that too. Some days life can seem to be flowing along smoothly. There are days when we hurt ourselves just getting out of bed. Even a few days where we just can’t make it out of bed at all. What to do in any of those situations? Keep swinging.

Showing up in life doesn’t guarantee us success. Not showing up does rather limit our opportunities however. In my own personal experience, sometimes when you show up and can barely go through the motions is often when people need you the most. There are times that whether I am writing, at my day job or as a DJ, I feel I am not bringing my best and someone will tell me how much I have impacted their lives.

Many people talk about grind and hustle. I want to remind of the power of persistence and resilience. Being able to show up in the face of life’s storms takes a special skill but one that will define you as someone who can be counted on. It will expose you to the maximum amount of opportunity and increase your chance for success. I am going to leave you with a quote from the Rocky movies that wraps up what we have been talking about nicely. As always, I would love to hear your feedback!

FALL IN LOVE WITH THE BOTTOM OF THE ICEBERG 🧊

When we see a massive iceberg, roughly 90% of it is underwater. That means, doing simple math, what we see is only 10% of the entire thing. Same with success. The victory, the accomplishments and the achieving of goals is only 10% of the process. As the photo above shows, 90% of the process involves things like hard work, sleepless nights and persistence. If this is where most of our time and energy end up, it is important we need to fall in love with this aspect. Why settle for being happy a mere 10% of the time? You deserve more from you life.

Falling in love with the process sounds rather cute and cliche, but what is the true meaning behind it? More to the point, how can we start to do that? As an author, I can tell you that the time I get to celebrate publishing a book is a mere fraction of the time it takes to write it. If I were to only be happy when a book was completed, it would be a pretty miserable existence. One way I found that keeps me loving the process is celebrating small wins along the way. Whether that is finishing a chapter, designing a cover, or simply opening my computer to write, there is lots to celebrate. On days when the process is the most difficult, that is when it is important to celebrate the most. Maybe you can congratulate your self for just showing up. Take getting in shape. They say the heaviest weight in the gym is the front door. That means the most difficult part of working out is getting your butt to the gym. Anyone starting this journey certainly could agree.

Another way to love the process is to develop and maintain a growth mindset. That is to say seeing challenges and obstacles as a way to learn, grow and reach closer to your goal. This can be made a lot easier by being mindful and present. When you are fully in the moment and not upset that you are not where you want to be just yet, it allows you to focus and control your energy better. It is also wise to take a brief mental trip into the future and do your best to feel like you will once your goal is accomplished. Experiencing that, if only briefly, may give you the motivation to push on.

How do you fall in love with the process? What keys to success would you offer our viewers? Share in the comments below.

LET THE BEAUTY SHINE THROUGH

I took this picture the other day. Immediately I noticed the daisy. It is as if it were growing straight out of the rocks. You could say it is the rocks that made the daisy stand out. If this flower had been in a meadow it may not have grabbed my attention so much. This struck a chord in me. Beauty can often best be appreciated where there is none. For those of you who are a fan of rocks, I apologize and am not calling them ugly. Even if you are a fan of stone formations, you must admit the daisy does jump out in the picture.

This is not a blog about gardening, rocks or flowers, but one about improving our lives and ourselves. So, how do the two come together here? If we pay attention to the media at all we are filled with stories of hate crimes, war and other not so fabulous information. I don’t even watch the news, but see these things as I log into my email. It can make you feel there is no point in trying to be positive, that the world is going in the wrong direction. Even in our daily personal struggles life can seem overwhelming. We take one step forward and can fall three steps back. You can be tempted to throw in the towel and give up. Your life can seem like…well…a pile of rocks.

This is where the picture comes in. In a world, be it personally or globally, that can seem negative at best, hopeless at worst it is easy to just become another ‘rock’. It is also easy to save expressing our beauty around people that we know we receive it well. There are pluses to that. It helps us gain confidence and expressing our beauty anywhere is better than not expressing it at all. When we express our beauty in a place that truly needs it that is when we truly stand out. In fact, it is the very troubles in our lives that can make our beauty the valuable gift it is. Look at the daisy among the rocks. In a field of daisies we would be hard to pick out just one even though they would all add something special.

A real world example I can think of is Mother Teresa. She could have helped any part of the world. What makes us remember her is her choice to help those who were in some of the ugliest situations. She chose to help the people of Calcutta in India. Her foundation, Missionaries of Charity helps those suffering and dying of HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis. As well as soup kitchens and orphanages. Those in the foundation take a vow to provide “wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor”. Wouldn’t it have been easier to teach children of wealthy parents to read? Absolutely. That would have been a noble deed as well. By expressing her beauty in a place that needed it most she did more than give medical attention to the sick and dying, she gave them something far more valuable. She gave them hope and beauty they needed. She was there daisy among the rocks.

Now you do not have to move to a poor country and help the poor (although the world always needs more of that) to take from this example. Just know when you are tempted to give up in the face of negativity and challenge, whether that challenge comes from abroad or right in your own life, be the daisy. Give beauty to a world that so badly needs it.